Page 20 of The Fortunes of Ashmore Castle

‘You really don’t know that since I was a girl I have been in love with you absolutely?’

He was silent a moment. ‘I didn’t know,’ he said. ‘But, Giulia, surely I never gave you to think that I—’

‘Not until the Valley of the Kings.’ Another silence. ‘Don’t you remember? Il cielo di velluto, le stelle come diamanti ,’ she said softly. ‘Your voice caressing me in the darkness.’

‘Giulia!’

Her voice was not angry now, but warm, inviting. ‘Is it possible that you felt nothing? No, I can’t believe that.’

‘I’m a married man,’ he said desperately.

The warmth disappeared. ‘And now I am a married woman,’ she said. ‘So we are equal.’ Her smile was malicious. ‘You came so seldom to Italy, but now I am in England, we shall meet all the time.’

‘Giulia—’

‘You cannot refuse when your aunt summons you to visit her, can you?’

She laughed again, and fortunately for his sanity, the music stopped just then, saving him from finding something to say. He doubted he could have formed a coherent sentence.

In the seclusion of the alcove, Rachel and Angus exchanged hungry embraces and murmured endearments. ‘It’s so wretched that we can only meet like this,’ he mourned. ‘I want to claim you as my own before the world.’

Rachel clung to him. Her eyes were wet. ‘She’s dying. Mama’s dying.’

‘ What? ’

‘It was the first thing she said when she got out of the carriage. “I’ve come home to die.” She wants to have me married to the Russian before – before the end. But if she – goes first, the prince will finish things. He will be my legal guardian.’

‘But that’s outrageous!’

‘She’s my mother, and she’s dying!’ Rachel cried. ‘I can’t go against her now. How would you feel if it was your m-mother?’

He drew out his handkerchief and gently mopped her tears. ‘My poor darling! It’s dreadful. But it’s your whole life at stake. You can’t let her command you from beyond the grave.’

The word ‘grave’ made her cry even more. ‘I don’t want my mother to die!’ she sobbed.

Angus held her in silence until the tears subsided.

‘What are we to do?’ she hiccuped dismally. ‘It’s hopeless.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ he said. ‘I have a position now, a good one. In a year or two I shall be able to keep you in comfort.’

‘But it will be too late. I’ll be married and living in Russia by then!’

He held her close, and said, ‘If it comes to it, we’ll have to go to Scotland. You’re old enough to marry in Scotland without consent. And once we’re married, they can’t part us.’

She looked up at him, damply, but with hope. ‘Is that true?’

‘Yes. Scottish law and English law are different.’

‘So – we could go now? Tonight!’

‘The difficulty is that you have to live there for twenty-one days before you can marry. And if I disappeared for twenty-one days I’d lose my new position. And then I couldn’t support you.’

She was silent, looking at him trustingly, waiting for him to solve the problem.

‘Look,’ he said at last, ‘we’ll do it if we really have to.

I promise you. But let’s wait a bit and see.

She might change her mind. If she’s really – you know – she might see things differently.

It’s bound to change your view of things, isn’t it?

But if it looks as though there’s no other way, we’ll go to Scotland and I’ll just have to find another position – though I doubt I could find another as good. But we’ll manage somehow.’

It was a chilly, damp and blowy evening, and Richard was not pleased to be dragged outside onto the terrace, where no-one else was foolish enough to be lingering. ‘What on earth’s got into you?’ he grumbled.

‘It’s Giulia,’ Giles said.

‘Oh, Lord!’ He fumbled for his cigarette case. ‘Wait until I light a cigarillo . . . All right, carry on.’

Giles told him.

‘Well, that explains a lot,’ Richard said, at the end. ‘A lifelong crush on you makes much more sense. She was madly in love with you, you kissed her and then rejected her. Of course she’s furious. Hurt pride, broken heart, Italian passion heating the brew to boiling point.’

‘But I swear I never encouraged her! I always treated her like a sister, nothing more!’

But he hesitated, remembering the warning given him by Mrs Antrobus in the Valley of the Kings .

Surely you must know she’s in love with you , she had said.

He had dismissed it as female fantasy. You treat her with a friendliness and a lack of formality that can only encourage her.

But they had always talked like that! He had told himself the woman simply didn’t understand.

The way you sit and talk with her late into the night, your heads together and your voices lowered .

. . Now he remembered Giulia’s recent words: the sky like velvet, the stars like diamonds, your voice caressing me in the darkness . . .

Giles put his hands to his head and groaned. ‘Oh, God, what have I done?’

‘I don’t know, old dear. What have you done?’ Richard asked calmly.

‘Perhaps the setting was a little – romantic.’ He gave a stilted description of those evenings.

Richard laughed mirthlessly ‘And this was you not encouraging her?’

‘It was just conversation. I never so much as touched her hand! And she knew I was married. How was I to know she was – harbouring thoughts? I thought she was more sensible than that!’

‘I applaud your modesty, if not your common sense. You’re not as handsome as me, but you’re not bad-looking, and you’ve got a title. You really didn’t think she fancied you?’

Giles was silent. His experience with women was very slight in any case.

And since he had fallen hopelessly in love with Nina, he had shut thoughts of love and romance out of his head.

Being immune to anyone else, he had arbitrarily assumed no-one else could fall in love with him. ‘What am I to do?’ he said.

Richard was still thinking. ‘You don’t suppose . . . ? Are you thinking she married Uncle Fergus simply to get back at you?’

It was what he feared. ‘I can’t believe that of her,’ he said uncomfortably.

‘Poor old Uncle. You can see he’s as in love as it gets.’

‘Should I tell him?’ Giles said miserably. ‘Perhaps I ought to.’

‘That his new-wedded bride wants to be off with a raggle-taggle gypsy? Are you mad?’

‘But if she’s deceived him—’

‘I dare say most people getting married are deceived one way or another. The poor old beast is blissfully happy – why spoil it for him?’

‘Then what can I do?’

‘Nothing. Just behave yourself from now on. Exemplary uxoriousness is to be your motto – if you can pronounce it.’

‘She said now she’s my aunt, I’ll have to come when she summons me.’

Richard laughed. ‘Good Lord! Yes, I’d forgotten that!

She’s your aunt – how delicious! Mine too, if it comes to it.

But look here,’ he grew serious, ‘even if there’s nothing you can do, there’s not much she can do.

You can avoid her. They might not spend much time in England, and then there’s his estates.

And even when they’re in London – well, you don’t come up very often.

I ’m more likely to bump into them than you.

And I think I can be trusted to resist her charms.’

Giles said nothing, thinking what a mess it was, how many people stood to be hurt, and how unfair it was that it should fall to his blame: he had never meant any harm.

Richard patted his arm, guessing his thoughts. ‘I know, you’re feeling unjustly put-upon. You really are rather dim when it comes to people, aren’t you?’

Giles looked cross. ‘For instance?’

‘For instance, keeping me standing out here. The damp is taking the starch out of my collar-points.’

Giles was forced to smile. ‘Let’s go in, then. And thanks for listening to me.’

‘Think nothing of it. You’re as good as a one-act play any day.’

Alice and Rachel met at the side of the ballroom at the end of a dance. ‘I’ve been dancing with everyone I can,’ Rachel said, ‘to allay Mama’s suspicion. I don’t want her to guess Angus was here.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘He said he was leaving, after we had our talk. But I haven’t seen Mama and the prince anywhere.’

‘They left when the ball started.’

Rachel looked disappointed. ‘Then he could have stayed! We could have danced together.’

‘I think you’re forgetting his father and mother were here too.’

‘Oh dear, yes. So he couldn’t have. Why are people so difficult?’

Alice thought of her own secret love, in comparison with which the strictest parent would prefer their daughter to fancy Angus. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I wonder what news Mama had yesterday. When she saw Sir Henry Felden.’

‘Oh, goodness, yes, that was yesterday.’ Rachel frowned. ‘Could it have been good news? If it was very bad, surely she wouldn’t have come tonight at all.’

‘But Uncle Fergus is her special pet, because of being a mother to him when he was a baby. I think she would come no matter what, for his sake, even if she didn’t stay long.’

‘But do you think she looked very low? Or not so badly?’

‘I don’t know,’ Alice said. ‘You know Mama – she never shows anything in her face.’

Giles found himself beside Uncle Fergus. ‘This is a very grand occasion,’ he said. ‘You must be pleased with how it’s going.’

‘Except for your mother leaving early,’ Uncle Fergus said. ‘She said she had a headache. You don’t suppose I’ve offended her, do you? I did wonder whether I ought to invite her and Usingen to the actual wedding, but I didn’t think she’d want to make the journey just for that.’

‘Perhaps she actually had a headache,’ Giles said, concluding that the princess had not told him about her real situation.

‘She never gets headaches,’ Uncle Fergus said certainly.

‘I suppose she doesn’t approve of my choice of bride,’ he went on, with a sigh.

‘But she’ll love her when she comes to know her.

You must put in a good word, Giles – you know Lady Leake better than anyone.

You’ve known her from a child.’ He gave a little smirk. ‘Funny to think she’s now your aunt!’

‘Believe me, that irony has not been lost on me,’ Giles said.