Page 44 of The Affairs of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #2)

Nina felt her cheeks redden, and sipped her tea to cover it.

‘Nina, you have told him?’ Lepida pursued.

She had to answer. ‘Not yet. I was going to, of course. I meant to. But, you see, I enjoy it so much, it’s so delightful, that I couldn’t bear to risk his saying no.’

‘Why risk upsetting him over something he didn’t need to know?

’ Bobby said. ‘You didn’t know, to begin with, that you’d even like it.

But he’ll have to know sooner or later. We’ll have to think of a way of getting round him, because I’m determined to find you a horse that will carry you cross as well as side-saddle.

That’s why I haven’t come up with one yet. ’

‘I wondered why it was taking so long,’ Nina said.

‘I did tell you it had to be absolutely right for you. I’ve heard of several suitable docile animals trained to side-saddle, but that’s not what I want for you.’

Lepida put her cup down quietly in her saucer and said, ‘Don’t you think Nina needs to worry more about what her husband wants for her?’

There was an awkward silence. Nina said, ‘I know I ought to tell him . . . ask him—’

‘You married him, of your own free will,’ Lepida said. ‘You took on certain duties and responsibilities as a wife.’

‘But to force women to ride side-saddle is so unreasonable,’ Nina began. ‘It’s—’

‘It’s never right to deceive your husband,’ Lepida said unemphatically.

Nina met her eyes. ‘I know. But I’m so afraid he’ll make me stop, and if he does—’

‘Are you so afraid of losing a little bit of pleasure? He lets you ride.’

Lets! thought Nina. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are,’ she cried. ‘Your parents allow you to do anything you want.’

‘Yes, I am lucky,’ Lepida said. ‘I don’t want to marry, and I never will, and best of all I will never have to, because Mother and Father give me an allowance, and I’ll inherit Father’s fortune, which will give me freedom. But you chose your own fate, Nina—’

‘Chose it? I had no money to inherit. What else could I do?’

‘You could have been a teacher,’ said Lepida.

Another silence. Yes, I could have been a teacher, Nina thought, but I didn’t want to be. And as a teacher I would have been poor, and a drudge. Mr Cowling offered me an establishment. His money was supposed to make me free. He said when he courted me that I could do anything I liked.

She thought of how he had allowed her to move the establishment from Northampton to Market Harborough.

How he was allowing her to furbish the house in the way she wanted.

How he had readily agreed to buy her a horse.

He was very kind to her. He wanted her to be happy.

She should be grateful, she was grateful, but—

But he had the ultimate control over her, and it galled.

‘I’m afraid,’ she said in a low voice, ‘that if he forbids me this, I shall hate him for it.’

The subject had to be changed. Bobby took a breath, and in a bright tone asked Lepida, ‘What are the London fashions like this year? We are sadly out of touch down here. Has anything interesting come out?’

Lepida took the cue, and they chatted their way out of danger.

Heat in London was not like heat in the country.

It stifled. And the smell of horses, which in general was a smell Richard quite liked, became overpowering.

That was why wealthy Londoners always quit the capital in August. Parliament was in recess, the Season was over, and Scotland, the seaside, or the round of country-house visiting beckoned.

Those who couldn’t get away made the best of it.

There were, at least, wonderful parks in London.

And the river. A steamer ride down to Southend, to walk along the prom in your best straw hat and eat whelks and jellied eels and ride back in the twilight was enough of a treat for those who didn’t enjoy many.

There were even some well-to-do Londoners – usually those who had large gardens – who actually liked to stay in the capital, and claimed that London was only tolerable when it was half empty.

Neither Richard’s aunt Caroline nor his grandmother was among them.

They were both going to the C?te d’Opale, and begged him to go with them.

‘Even Giles is not such a slave-driver as to refuse you a holiday in August,’ said Caroline. And when he declined, ‘At least go down to Ashmore.’

‘You want to close up the house,’ Richard surmised. ‘I suppose there are hotels. At least they’ll be empty.’

‘I don’t take the whole household with me to France,’ Caroline said, a little crossly. ‘There will always be someone here, and of course you can use the house if you wish. But why do you wish? What can you do in London?’

‘There is a woman in it,’ said Grandmère, when he didn’t answer. ‘Depend upon it. Cherchez la femme .’

‘But what sort of a woman stays in London in August?’ Caroline asked blankly.

‘One who can do no better,’ Grandmère said. Richard whistled innocently. ‘ D?tes moi, méchant – it is not the girl, is it? La musicienne ? Please tell me you are not so abandoned to la folie as that.’

Oh, it’s much worse , Richard thought. You can’t imagine – or I hope you can’t .

‘There is no woman in the case,’ he said.

‘I may stay up, or I may go down to Ashmore, I don’t know.

Or a friend might invite me on a jolly – who knows?

Thank you for the invitation, but I don’t want to go to France, even with two such femmes adorables as my aunt and my grandmother. ’

‘There’s no need to be satirical,’ Caroline rebuked him.

He had been rebuked again in Golden Square, where Mrs Sands was looking fatigued. ‘It is the heat, that’s all,’ she said. ‘And it is galling that you, who could escape it, choose to remain here and suffer.’

‘But I don’t suffer,’ he said. ‘I never mind the heat. All those years in South Africa tempered me. Now that was heat. London simply doesn’t have an idea of it.’

‘You are wicked to remind me that you are a war hero, when I’m trying to be angry with you.’

‘Don’t waste your strength, cara mia . It’s too much fag to be angry in this weather. Let me take you away from all this.’

‘Don’t talk nonsense. How can I go away with you?’

‘Your pupils are all gone – no lessons until September – you told me so. And Chloe is away.’ Chloe had been invited by the parents of a fellow student at the Royal Academy to spend August at their house in Surrey, an invitation Molly Sands had been eager to embrace for her daughter. ‘So what’s to keep you from it?’

‘You know, Richard,’ Molly said in a low voice. ‘Don’t torment me.’

‘It’s you who torment me ,’ he said, serious for an instant.

‘I don’t care that you were my father’s mistress.

What difference does it make?’ He reverted to his usual tone.

‘The old man is dead, and I don’t know anyone who regrets him – not even you, if you’re honest. He’s gone, and I’m here – free, healthy, and over twenty-one.

Seize me while you can, before some less worthy female pulls the wool over my eyes and tricks me into matrimony. ’

She found it hard not to laugh. ‘You are a very cruel boy. I was very fond of your father.’

‘Fond of him you may have been, but you’re not weeping into your pillow every night, if you ever did. Dearest Molly, you know I amuse you. Let me lighten the cloistral gloom of your day-to-day existence and take you somewhere frivolous.’

She was not laughing now. ‘Brighton, perhaps? Or Maidenhead? To sign into a shabby hotel as Mr and Mrs Smith? You think little of me if you believe I would agree to that.’

He reddened. ‘You think little of me if you believe that’s what I meant.’

They stared at each other for a moment, two proud people. Then she sighed. ‘I’m sorry, but you don’t understand the difficulties faced by a woman in my position. As it is, Mrs Gateshill gives me suspicious looks when you visit too often.’

‘Damn her impertinent eyes!’

‘Damn all you like, but it is a fact of life. All women have to be careful, but women like me have to be more careful than most.’

‘There are no women like you,’ he said passionately.

‘Fallen women are ten-a-penny, my dear,’ she said sadly.

He dropped to his knees in front of her and took her hands. ‘I won’t let you talk like that about the most wonderful woman in the world!’ He kissed her hands one after the other. ‘You are not fallen! You are an angel!’

She looked uneasy. ‘There’s nothing special about me. I don’t understand why you say that.’

He grinned engagingly – kneeling, his face was on a level with hers as she sat – and said lightly, ‘There’s no rule about it, you know.

The little blind god fires his arrows completely at random.

And, if you will forgive my impertinence in lecturing you, there is no point whatever in questioning why someone loves you, when you could just get on and enjoy it.

Well, if you won’t come away with me – and I was intending separate rooms, by the by – will you let me take you out for the day?

’ He got to his feet. ‘A train to Henley, a picnic basket and a boat on the river. Now, don’t say that doesn’t tempt you. ’

‘It does.’ She looked regretfully into his handsome face. If only things were different . . . ‘Very well, you may take me to Henley. And thank you.’

‘Go and put on something pretty, then, while I run out and secure a cab. Unless Mrs Gateshill will do it for me?’

‘She’s away,’ Molly Sands said unthinkingly. ‘Gone to stay with her sister for a week.’

With a great effort, Richard made no comment. ‘Hurry up, then,’ he said. ‘Be ready by the time I get back.’