Page 63 of The Affairs of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #2)

‘Let me guess, Angus came in. Oh, Rachel, did you plan it?’

‘No!’ Rachel exclaimed indignantly. And then admitted, ‘Well, actually I thought Johnny Etteridge might come in, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but I thought I might as well see what happened.

But it was Angus who found me, and he wasn’t flirty at all, but serious and rather upset-looking.

And it made me feel awfully queer inside because, well, you haven’t seen him for ages, but he’s really grown-up now, and awfully handsome.

I got a strange, fluttery feeling in my stomach.

I tried to hide it – told him he couldn’t tell Johnny off like that.

I said, “You’re not my father,” and he gave me such a look, and said, “No, thank God.” I said, “What do you mean by that?” And he said, “The last thing I want is to be a father to you.” And then he took me in his arms, and kissed me. ’

Alice was imagining the scene, only, of course, with herself in the place of heroine.

And the hero . . . She couldn’t bring Cousin Angus’s face to mind, but she gave him a tall, powerful body, with big, strong hands which were at the same time delicate in their touch, and a fair face with outdoor ruddiness, and tousled reddish-gold hair, and blue eyes.

And a faint delicious smell about him, of leather and wood-shavings and a particular clean, warm male smell . . .

She found she had closed her eyes. ‘What was it like?’ she asked, without opening them.

‘When his mouth first touched mine, it was like an electric shock. It’s so intimate, you know, and – and like something that’s, oh, sort of forbidden, and dangerous, and you oughtn’t, but you want to anyway. But it went on for a long time, and after a bit it was . . .’

Her voice trailed off. Alice opened her eyes. Rachel was staring into space, and Alice couldn’t read her expression. It almost looked sad .

‘My first proper kiss,’ she said, ‘with a real man. Angus – he’s not a boy, you know, he’s a real, serious grown-up. And I could feel he was serious about kissing me.’

She stopped, remembering. She had felt quivery and sort of – hungry: wanting something, but not really knowing what it was she wanted.

It had been disturbing. All this year she had been enjoying her mastery over the young men who flirted and danced with her and obeyed her every whim, vying for her smiles.

But now suddenly with Angus she had felt weak.

She felt she had no power over him. She didn’t entirely like it – but it was strangely exciting.

‘Yes?’ Alice prompted. ‘Then what happened.’

Rachel shook herself. ‘He asked me to marry him.’

Alice was impressed. ‘No! Not really?’

Rachel remembered how he had held her, how he had looked down at her, almost grimly, as if he wanted to shake her.

‘I don’t want to be your father,’ he’d said.

‘I want to be your husband. Will you marry me, Rachel? Say yes, and I’ll kiss you again.

You need kissing – and by a man, not silly boys like Johnny Etteridge.

Say yes, and I’ll kiss you until you swoon. ’

She didn’t tell Alice any of that. The gulf between her, now a woman, and Alice, still a girl, was too great. ‘Yes, he did,’ she said.

‘And what did you say?’

She had looked up at him for a long time, weakening all the time under his gaze, and if he had smiled at her, she would probably have said yes.

But he had gone on looking at her with that stern determination, and she had become aware that his gripping hands were hurting her upper arms. She had lowered her eyelids and said, as scornfully as she could, ‘Marry you? Even if I wanted to, Mama would never allow it.’

‘But you do want to?’ he had insisted, not as if it was a question.

Now she answered Alice. ‘I told him I wanted to have my London come-out before I even thought about marrying anybody. And then I ran away, back into the ballroom. I avoided him for the rest of the evening – but I could feel him watching me all the time.’ And of course, she thought, I was right – Mama would never even consider him. I’m to marry a duke or a prince.

Alice, still thinking about the kiss and the tall, strong hero who was not really Cousin Angus, said, ‘Daisy says that the man who gives you your first kiss steals a bit of your soul, and he owns that bit of you for ever.’

‘What vulgar nonsense!’ Rachel said robustly, though Alice could see she was a little shaken. ‘Servants’ talk. What does Daisy know about anything?’

‘You don’t think there’s any truth in it, then?’ Alice said, more to be provoking than because she thought so.

‘I mean to have a good many more kisses before I choose my husband. How will I know I’ve got it right if I’ve got nothing to compare with?’

‘ Mama will choose your husband, not you,’ Alice pointed out.

Kitty’s carefulness in not changing Lady Stainton’s room did her no good, because when Maud came down to the drawing-room she noticed the sheer contrast with the room she had just quitted.

Everything gleamed: there was new upholstery on chairs and sofas, what she took to be a new carpet (actually just cleaned so that you could see the colours again) and, most noticeable of all, the new curtains.

She stared, and her nostrils flared. ‘What have you done?’ she demanded.

Kitty was scarlet and tongue-tied. Alice, noting the direction of her mother’s gaze, said, ‘Oh, the curtains? Aren’t they splendid? They’re actually the same as the old ones, only you’d never know.’

Kitty rushed into explanation. ‘We unpicked the hem so that we could see what colour they originally were, and then we matched the material exactly. They really are the same, you know, only now they’re nice.’

Lady Stainton looked at her with faint contempt. ‘To expend so much thought and energy on a curtain verges on the vulgar.’ She looked around her with disapproval. ‘All this newness. It looks – like a suburban bank clerk’s parlour.’

Sebastian smiled. ‘My dear Maud, I cannot persuade myself you have ever seen the inside of a suburban bank-clerk’s house.’

Giles intervened. ‘Are you home for good? Will you be hunting this year?’

‘We are settled here,’ Maud said. ‘Except for the preparations for Rachel’s coming-out and presentation.

We shall have to go up for fittings, consultations for the court dress, and I should like to introduce her at a few of the Little Season events.

I assume you will be entertaining here between now and Christmas, and that will be useful in showing her.

And of course I shall hunt. How is my horse going? ’

Alice answered. ‘We brought her up two weeks ago and I’ve been exercising her. She’s going nicely. Mama, am I to be brought out next year as well?’ She would be eighteen in March, and though she didn’t want any of that débutante fol-de-rol, she thought she’d better be prepared, if it was to happen.

Maud looked at her as if she had only just noticed she was there. ‘I can’t concentrate on bringing out two daughters at once,’ she said. ‘Rachel must be given every chance – she is the one with prospects. She can look as high as she likes. You—’

She examined her youngest daughter, and perceived that she really had grown during the year, and was clearly no longer an absolute child.

But she had the manner of a child, the undisguised straightforwardness that would not show well in ballroom or soirée.

If she left her another year, she would be nineteen, old for a debut.

On the other hand, what sort of marriage would suit a girl like Alice?

Would she shine in high society? Surely a rich country gentleman with plenty of acres and horses would be enough for her – a baronet or knight, or even a plain mister if it was a good, old name that would not disgrace the family.

She might meet that sort of person at home, or going round the country-house circuit.

Would a formal come-out, let alone Presentation, really be necessary?

It wasn’t the expense that deterred her, but the actual process.

She had enjoyed showing Rachel off, though it had been exhausting; but Rachel fell in with plans, and was rewarding to dress.

The idea of dragging a reluctant, always dishevelled Alice around the ballrooms and drawing-rooms of the Ton was repulsive.

‘I dare say we shall have Rachel’s wedding to attend to next summer, but you might meet someone there, or during country-house visits.

I don’t see that a formal debut is necessary for you.

Linda can chaperone you to one or two balls during next year’s Little Season if necessary.

Once Rachel is back from her honeymoon, she will be entertaining at the highest level, and I’m sure will help you, if you haven’t already had an offer by then.

’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘You haven’t formed an attachment, I trust? ’

‘No, Mama. How could I? I don’t go anywhere.’

‘Don’t be pert,’ said Maud automatically. ‘That sort of attitude will never get you married.’

‘I don’t want to get married,’ Alice said.

‘Well, I don’t suppose Giles wants to have to keep you for the rest of your life,’ Maud retorted. ‘Or Kitty.’

The last was so obviously an afterthought that Alice felt indignant on her sister-in-law’s behalf.

Kitty’s head was down, her face invisible as she fondled the ears of Isaac, whose head was in her lap.

Of course it hurt that Maud barely acknowledged her existence, but she so much preferred it to being the object of her attention.

Having to mention Kitty reminded Maud of something much more agreeable. ‘How is my grandson?’ she asked.

Giles answered, while Sebastian caught Alice’s eye and they exchanged a look. It was so typical of Maud that Louis was always her grandson, never Kitty’s or Giles’s son.

Rumour below-stairs that Mr Sebastian was about to marry grew thin from lack of nourishment and finally died.

No one could put a name to the putative lady, or even any place he had gone where he could have met her.

Interest in him died away. He was just old Mr Sebastian who liked his claret and his cigars, whose life seemed a simple circuit between fireside chair and dining-table.

Even his piano-playing – the only difference between him and any other old gentleman – wasn’t in itself interesting , any more than his occasionally playing billiards was. It was just what upstairs folk did.

But for the two closest to him, it remained a matter of unspoken speculation.

After that first visit, when he had taken Crooks and Dory, he had been back to Henley on several occasions, and up to London twice, but on those trips he had taken no one.

It was a fact that he went away more often than before.

Dory didn’t now think there had been anything in the rumour; but she feared any change.

What if he were planning to move out, and live permanently in Henley?

She imagined life at the Castle without those precious interludes of music and conversation, and it looked bleak, a featureless desert of work.

Such was the usual life of a person in service, but having had something more would make that reality harder to bear.

Crooks’s fears were more basic. When his master went away, these days, he said, ‘It will only be for a couple of nights. I can manage without you.’ Crooks was too good a servant to protest – but he was rattled.

And there were the London trips to take into account.

Mr Sebastian rarely went to London, and when he did, he always took his manservant with him.

Now he had gone twice alone. Crooks had imagined Mr Sebastian pottering into Boodles or Mappin’s to buy a ring, and he could not now get rid of the image.

The thing all valets knew was that when a gentlemen married, if his new wife took a dislike to his manservant, he had to go.

This was more likely when the gentleman was of a fixed bachelor persuasion.

Wives liked to put their own stamp on a household, and confirmed bachelors and their valets tended to get into settled ways that could make the new wife feel shut out.

Jealousy and pique were usually followed by the dreaded new broom, and the valet, with his proprietary intimacy, was the first to be swept clean.

When the old earl had died and Crooks had become a masterless dog, he had thought his life was over.

Then by a miracle he had been brought back from despair to the safe haven of Mr Sebastian’s service – undemanding, comfortable, and, he had felt entitled to assume, permanent.

Now he was nervous. Something was up, he knew that deep in his bones; something was going on.

And whatever it was, if Mr Sebastian was keeping it a secret from Crooks, that could only bode Crooks no good – no good at all.