Page 15 of The Affairs of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #2)

At the end of the service there was the usual press of people around the door waiting to talk to the vicar. Nina was resigned to joining the queue, but Mr Cowling spotted someone outside and drew her along with him, bypassing the pastoral blockage.

‘Crawford!’ he called. ‘Over here, sir!’

It was a thin man with an anxious expression in slightly dusty-looking Sunday blacks.

The woman on his arm was thin and mousy in a wide hat that looked too big for her, as if it were bent on squashing her into the ground.

They turned and waited for Mr Cowling, who, though no taller than Crawford, seemed in his breezy confidence to tower over him.

‘Nina, my dear, may I present Mr Arnold Crawford and Mrs Crawford – my wife. I’m glad to see you, Crawford. You hinted you had a plan to tell me about. Not changing your mind about selling?’

Mr Crawford removed his hat and bowed to Nina; Mrs Crawford gave her a nervous smile, and clung harder than ever to her husband’s arm.

‘Now, Mr Cowling, you know it was never an outright sale we mentioned,’ Crawford said.

‘My grandfather built that factory, and it’s been at the heart of Market Harborough for three generations.

It’s my sadness that I haven’t a son to leave it to.

But to sell it outright would be like parting with one of the family. ’

‘Then, what’s this plan of yours?’ Mr Cowling asked impatiently.

‘By your leave, sir, not here, not now.’ For all his mild appearance, he could speak firmly when he wanted to.

‘I’d like to put it to you when we both have time to consider it carefully.

I have figures and drawings to show you.

From what I know about you, I think it is something you will find interesting. ’

‘Ah, looked me up in my glory, have you?’ Even Mr Cowling’s jokes sounded too robust for this sad man. She imagined Mr Crawford giving away a beloved old dog because he couldn’t afford to keep it – hoping it was going to a good home, but unable, of course, to be absolutely sure.

She spoke before she had realised she was going to. ‘Would you and Mrs Crawford do us the honour of dining with us tomorrow? Then you and Mr Cowling can talk business after dinner, while Mrs Crawford and I have a comfortable coze by the fire.’

None of the other three looked at her with the surprise she felt in herself. But Mr Cowling said, ‘Capital idea, my love! Yes, do come and dine, if you’ve no other engagement. There’s no party, I’m afraid – it will be just us. But we’d be delighted.’

The Crawfords exchanged a glance, and Mr Crawford smiled and said, ‘That’s very civil of you, Mrs Cowling. We’d be delighted.’

‘We’ll dine early, if that suits you,’ Cowling said. ‘Then we’ll have time to discuss this mysterious plan of yours. Six o’clock?’

Kindnesses were murmured, hats were touched, and Mr Cowling led Nina away.

She felt anxious, and was assembling excuses for her strange outburst, when he said, ‘A good notion of yours, my love, to get him onto my ground where I’ll have the upper hand.

I can see you’ll be an asset to my business.

’ This was only partly a joke. ‘As long as you won’t be too bored.

Mrs C doesn’t look like sparky company. Pity we can’t get young Decius over to entertain you while I dissect friend Crawford.

You’ll speak to Mrs Deering about putting on a slap-up dinner?

From the look of them, they don’t get many. ’

Nina took a bracing breath. ‘Speaking’ to Mrs Mitchell had always meant listening while she told Nina how things would be.

But Mrs Deering wasn’t like that. And speaking to the housekeeper was something a real lady of the house did, a proper, grown-up married woman.

She didn’t feel particularly grown-up, but she thought that Mrs Deering would help her through.

It would be her first dinner party as hostess – a milestone.

It might even be fun.

For all his greater age and experience, Mr Cowling proved more nervous about the engagement than Nina. He fussed about the menu Mrs Deering had chosen. He fussed about the bareness of the dining-room. He fussed about the laying of the table. He fussed about what Nina should wear.

‘Is that all the jewellery you’ve got? You should have more. Why didn’t I buy you more stuff before now?’ he mourned.

Nina had worried that the diamond necklace he had given her for a wedding-present was too fine for the occasion. ‘I don’t think the Crawfords will be very dressy,’ she ventured diffidently. ‘I didn’t want to look too—’

He wasn’t listening. ‘That’s real silk, anyway, your dress. And they won’t have seen it, which is a blessing. But we must get you up to London and buy you more things. You ought to have a dozen evening frocks. You ought to have a tiara.’

‘A tiara? Surely that would be too much,’ she protested, but uneasily – perhaps she was wrong and a tiara would be expected.

But Mr Cowling said, ‘No, of course not for this dinner, but for when we’re invited somewhere grand. I don’t want you to be caught out. I don’t want people thinking we don’t know what’s what, or I can’t afford to buy you the best. I don’t want anyone looking at you sideways.’

‘I don’t want to let you down,’ Nina began.

He clutched her hand. ‘You couldn’t let me down if you tried! Never think it! I’m the awkward one. I’m just a plain village cobbler got rich.’

Nina was glad, on the whole, that her first dinner party was such a small occasion, so that she got to practise without too much anxiety.

The guests had obviously taken the occasion seriously, for Mr Crawford’s hair was freshly cut and his white tie looked new – bought that day, she wondered, after invitation?

Mrs Crawford’s evening dress did not look new, but was covered all over with bugle beads, and in a fashionable shade of mauve.

Her figure was corseted into the correct serpentine shape, her hair was piled up into the fashionable style, and decorated with small feathers and a spray of crystal beads that glittered distractingly every time she moved her head.

Conversation in the drawing-room over sherry was stilted at first, but the men soon got onto current events and business news so the women were able just to listen.

Then when Moxton, in his guise of butler, escorted them into the dining-room, Mrs Crawford exclaimed spontaneously, ‘Oh, it does look nice! Such a beautiful room, this, I always think. We dined here a few times, when old Mrs Ampleforth was alive. The flowers are quite lovely. Did you do them yourself, Mrs Cowling?’

For her liking of the dining-room, Nina was prepared to forgive her for making her admit she hadn’t arranged the flowers herself.

And it gave her a conversational opening, in asking Mrs Crawford about the previous owners – a topic Mrs Crawford found comfortable, so the chat went on mildly though the dinner.

Nina had accepted Mrs Deering’s suggestions for the menu wholesale, not knowing any better, and thought it all good: artichoke soup, fillets of salmon, roast lamb with broccoli and new potatoes, coffee blancmange, a savoury of soft roes of herring, and dessert.

She caught Mr Cowling looking at her down the table at one point, but didn’t know what the look meant.

Both the Crawfords seemed to have good appetites, despite their thinness – or perhaps they were thin because they didn’t eat very much at home.

In sudden anxiety, Nina pressed her guests to second helpings.

When dessert was finished, Nina rose and led Mrs Crawford into the drawing-room, as she had seen done, leaving the men to talk business.

Mrs Crawford made the rest of the evening easy for her by talking about Market Harborough and local families, a topic that interested Nina and about which Mrs Crawford had plenty of information.

The men were so long that when they finally returned, the party reunited only to divide again almost immediately as the Crawfords departed.

‘Well?’ Nina asked Mr Cowling when they were alone.

‘Pretty well,’ said Mr Cowling. ‘The dinner was nice enough, though it could have been more fancy – only one soup, no duck or fowl, no choice of sweets.’

‘But I think for just four people . . .’ Nina said uncertainly. ‘More dishes might have been overpowering. Or don’t you think so?’

‘Aye, well, you could be right. But one of these days we’ll give a right grand slap-up banquet and invite everyone.

That table’d take thirty round it, easy – and I’ve a notion there’s more leaves somewhere in one of the attics.

Then you can wear your tiara,’ he added, in what might have been a joke.

‘Did your business talk go well?’ Nina asked, to distract him from that train of ideas.

‘Very well. He’s got an interesting plan, all right.’

Nina waited, but he didn’t elaborate, his brow buckled in thought. ‘What is it?’ she asked at last.

He came back from contemplation. ‘Eh? The plan? Oh, I won’t bother you with it tonight. You must be tired. And I want to look over the papers he’s left me again. There’s a lot to digest. You run on up, my love. I shall be a while.’

It was showery on Tuesday morning, rain and sunshine chasing each other like frowns and smiles across the same face, but after luncheon – which she took alone, Mr Cowling and Decius Blake having been out since early that morning – the sky cleared, the clouds grew high and white and innocent, and Nina went out into the garden with Trump for some much-needed exercise.

She was coming back through the wilderness from the lake when she met Decius coming the other way. ‘You’re back!’ she exclaimed. ‘Have you been at the factory all this time?’

‘Yes, and Mr Cowling is still there, but he told me to come back and see that you’re all right. He said I should take luncheon with you.’ He smiled. ‘I don’t think he has any idea of the time. You must have lunched long ago.’