Page 14 of The Affairs of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #2)

‘Hard luck on the Willoughbys,’ Richard said.

‘I suppose it was their turn.’ Giles gave him a stern look.

Richard returned it with a cynical grin.

‘Oh, what? Don’t pretend you haven’t thought about getting up a rota to spread them more thinly.

’ He turned to Kitty. ‘They’ll love it at Croombe Park – interesting old Tudor place, hardly touched since Queen Elizabeth last slept there.

All the medieval comforts. So we’ll be all alone here, will we? ’ he asked Giles.

Giles hesitated. ‘I did think – if it won’t be too much for you,’ he said to Kitty, ‘of having a couple of my old friends to stay. London people.’

Richard perked up at that, but cautiously. ‘When you say “London people”, are we talking about people of fashion – amusing, debonair, sophisticated? Les gens du monde ?’

Only Alice saw Kitty shrink at the idea.

‘I was talking about my archaeology friends,’ Giles said.

‘Oh,’ said Richard, blankly. ‘What fun.’

Alice stifled a giggle.

Giles addressed Kitty. ‘Not a huge crowd,’ he said. ‘I was thinking just Archie Baxter and John and Mabel Portwine. Should you mind it? I’ve been concentrating on the estate so much, I haven’t had any intelligent conversation for – I don’t know how long.’

Uncle Sebastian looked up from the ‘cutlet’ with which he was wrestling – it seemed to have come from some animal with more sinews than the average sheep. ‘I observe they didn’t teach tact at University College. Perhaps you should have gone to Oxford after all.’

‘You know very well what I mean,’ Giles said crossly.

Alice lost control of her giggles. ‘Oh, Giles!’ She snorted. ‘Your face!’

‘Behave yourself,’ Giles snapped at her, ‘or you can go back to eating in the nursery. I’m only concerned with Kitty’s feelings. Would you be equal to some company here from Saturday to Tuesday? Would it be too much for you?’

Kitty was so touched that he was asking her that she said at once, ‘Oh, no! I mean, yes, of course invite them. I should like you to see your friends. You work so hard.’

‘You needn’t worry about having to entertain them,’ Richard told her gravely.

‘They’ll disappear into the library straight after breakfast, and talk about old bones until they turn into fossils themselves.

And for a little light diversion on Easter Monday, Giles will take them to stare at a bit of broken wall. ’

Nina explored the rest of Wriothesby House alone, while Mr Cowling was occupied with a note that had arrived by hand on Saturday morning.

It was a grand house, and had once been attached to considerable land, which the previous owners had sold off parcel by parcel until there was nothing left to sell but the house.

But she could see it would have been fit for a lord, and that they must have entertained in grand style at one time.

As well as the huge dining-room and drawing-room on the ground floor, there was a long gallery on the first floor, running along one whole side above the dining-room, where one could have held balls.

All the rooms were panelled, which she thought gave a cosiness to the grandeur: it was not an overpowering house like Dene Park, where she and Kitty had once attended a ball.

There were two more small parlours on the ground floor, one of which Mr Cowling was obviously using as a business-room.

On the first floor, apart from the bedrooms occupied by her and Mr Cowling, there were three more, one of them a state bedroom, whose even more massive four-poster bed had blue velvet hangings and ostrich feathers sprouting from a gold-painted crown at the apex of the tester.

There were a further six bedrooms on the second floor, none of them now furnished.

And there was actually a bathroom, though it was only a little slip of a room, and contained nothing but a high-sided bath on claw-footed legs.

Water would have to be brought up in cans from the kitchen.

Getting down on her knees, Nina saw that the plug hole sat over a zinc cistern which could be dragged out and emptied – presumably into the same cans, for disposal downstairs.

It accounted for why the bath sat on such tall legs.

‘And it’s up here because these are the bachelor rooms,’ she instructed Trump, who was under the bath searching for rabbits, ‘and only gentlemen would be expected to use a bathroom. Ladies bathed in their bedrooms beside the fire. Still, it is a beginning. If there’s one bathroom, there can be others.

And there’s certainly enough room. We don’t need eleven bedrooms, do we? ’

Trump emerged, a little dusty about the ears, and looked at her enquiringly. She looked back, and he gave a yap.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose I am thinking about it. But it’s no good, is it? He doesn’t like the place.’

Trump made a short whine.

‘All right for you,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t be the one to get into trouble. Shall we go and look outside?’

There was a pleasant terrace of broad flags outside the French windows, with a balustrade punctuated by large urns dividing it from a lawn.

Formal flowerbeds were cut into it, in which Nina saw the pointed green noses of bulbs beginning to come through.

At the end of the lawn was a pergola stretching right across, occupied by tightly clipped roses, dividing it from the rest of the pleasure grounds.

Evidently Deering wasn’t able, alone, to keep up all the grounds, for beyond the pergola everything was overgrown and neglected, specimen trees and shrubs with winding paths among them leading down to the small lake and the stone temple.

This was placed, Nina realised, so that the sun would slant into it and warm the person sitting on the stone bench inside.

A perfect place for solitude and thought.

The lake was overgrown and silted up, but she imagined it cleared and planted, with water-lilies, clumps of iris and bulrushes, and bright ducks paddling about.

Trump, burrowing about at the lake’s edge, had dislodged a frog, whose enormous leap made him scuttle backwards in fright.

Nina laughed, then pressed her hands tightly against her breastbone to stop her excitement rising.

We won’t be living here , she told herself, he doesn’t like it .

But the damage had already been done. The thought of Beechcroft was more prison-like than ever.

On Saturday afternoon Mr Cowling took her for a walk around the little town, which was charmingly compact, centred on the marketplace. All the people they passed smiled and greeted them pleasantly, as if they were happy to be living there.

He had something in particular to show her.

Just around the corner from the church, and coming as a surprise in that location, was a massive factory, the front stretching right along the street.

It was four storeys high, built in the same handsome red brick as Wriothesby House, with a multitude of big windows as if it were a great mansion rather than a workshop.

‘It’s right in the centre of the town!’ Nina marvelled.

‘Why not?’ Mr Cowling said. ‘Work is the heart of a place, just as much as church. A man with no work’s got nothing in his belly and no stomach for sermons.

’ He looked up at the facade with interest and pleasure.

‘Aye, there can’t be many folk in the town that haven’t depended on this place for their bread and butter, one way or another. ’

‘This is the one you’re thinking of buying?’ Nina asked.

‘That’s right. Crawford’s stockings. It’d go well with Cowling’s boots and shoes, don’t you think?’

And you could walk here from Wriothesby House , Nina thought longingly.

Easter Sunday was a bright, breezy day of sudden sunshine and racing shadows, with a taste of fresh dampness on the air.

There was a bowl of primroses on the breakfast table.

Nina thanked Mrs Deering with a heartfelt look as she brought in the coffee.

And when she came downstairs dressed for church, the housekeeper brought her a little bound bunch of violets to pin to her coat, their purple faces still damp, and smelling of spring.

Nina was so touched she had no words, but Mrs Deering looked content, as though she had read her mind.

Trump came bouncing up, ready for a walk. ‘No, you can’t come,’ Nina said. Trump, reading her tone of voice, lowered his tail and his ears. ‘Oh dear, poor dog, you do hate being left behind,’ she said.

‘I’ll look after him, madam,’ said Mrs Deering. ‘Come along, you come with me to the kitchen. I’ve a bit of old rug I can put down for him by the stove,’ she added to Nina.

Nina remembered Mrs Mitchell, and was almost tearful with thanks.

They walked to church. It was handsome, in the perpendicular style, full of light, simple and elegant – quintessentially English.

She liked it as much as she liked Wriothesby House, and felt a twinge of guilt, suspecting Mr Cowling would prefer something flamboyantly Gothic.

Oh dear. She hadn’t known she had any taste, and now she was discovering that what she liked was the opposite of what her husband admired.

As they entered, many heads turned, and Nina knew herself subjected to inspection.

Mr Cowling seemed to like it, and pulled himself up taller, pressing her captive hand against his ribs and strutting a little, proud of her.

A sidesman scurried up to them and whispered, ‘Allow me to show you the Wriothesby House pew, madam, sir,’ which proved he, at least, knew who they were.

In a small place, news gets about quickly.

Nina would have liked to look about her but, as the stared-at person, had to keep her eyes forward and pretend serene indifference.