Lily - an extract

The rain fell skittishly like nuptial rice on the morning Jonathan Hopgate brought home a limp bride who would begin dying in the east wing at High Withens.
Beads of bright rain-water clinging to the bridegroom’s hair. Scuds of wet earth, swampy as desire, spattering his wedding clothes. And his bride of a few hours calling out from the trailing carriage ‘Jonathan have a care for yourself!’ For his damned horse had stumbled; its hooves continuing to slither on the slippery track that led up from the valley to the moors around High Withens.
A hot rain, flung from a too blue sky on to the land that was unstable and sodden, must have drowned-out her voice for he didn’t answer; riding on ahead into the the thicket of lilac trees that grew low, awry, bent by the stern winds that whipped the moorland.
Bridegroom and bride pressing on under the canopy of stunted trees that dripped sap and rain over them. Then, as the path narrowed, the progression of the carriage was impeded by the ever thickening branches of lilac that scratched the fading Hopgate crest from the lumbering vehicle. Three times Jonathan dismounted to cut away the importunate tangle of branches and already withering white lilac that smelled all the sweeter as it neared decay. Three times the bridal carriage lurched forwards, trailing Jonathan on horseback, until at last the summit was gained and a stout wind shooed the rain back down the valley to where the land churned and sickened.
At last ... destiny ...
The bridegroom’s arm sweeping a flourish as he pointed to where the house lay ahead of them.
Thirty years in exile from his inheritance.
His bride calling again from the carriage, ‘Jonathan you must help me out, if I’m to see anything.’
So he dismounted and fetched the poor, crippled thing to whom he’d pledged himself; his invalid bride cocooned in her shawls and mantles. Snatching her up into his arms, her crooked spine nestling against his chest as he showed off the estate that had been heavily mortaged by his errant grandfather before being irrevocably ruined by the Hopgate who’d spawned him; his own father having gone to damnation in the belief the Hopgate line faced a greater curse: descent into penury and oblivion.
Two upright coffins, beyond a tarn stagnant with waterlilies.
Lily looked again and saw it was only High Withens, the east and west wings louring at her.

But his wife’s shudder of awe thrilled Jonathan. The lustre of her new wealth tarnished by this visible symbol of old blood. Hopgate blood. For a brief moment he almost desired her; the coarse brown hair straggling from her bonnet, chafing his neck, its wiry strands stirring him like wickedly probing fingers. Now she saw what he was worth! The history ... the land ... and inheritance that after centuries had come to such a sorry pass of dissolution.