Page 24 of The Fortunes of Ashmore Castle

Maud accepted. ‘I want you to see where I come from,’ she told her husband. ‘My childhood home.’ The prince, still a little bemused and infinitely tender, agreed readily.

Caroline was frank. ‘At this time of year? No, thank you. I still remember the chilblains I had when I was eleven.’

Giles refused politely for him and Kitty, saying that they already had engagements right up to Easter. ‘He could have taken her round some friends’ estates first, and gone north when the weather was better,’ he said to Kitty. ‘He’s going to give her a poor idea of England.’

‘I’ve never seen Cawburn,’ Kitty said, but he didn’t catch her slightly wistful tone.

‘You haven’t missed anything,’ he said.

Only Linda was eager for the trip. She still wanted to ingratiate herself with the prince. He was as rich as Giles, if not richer, and from what she had observed far less stingy.

Then Maud decreed that Rachel was to come with them.

Rachel begged to be left behind, but Maud narrowed her eyes, suspecting some secret tryst was planned.

‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘Your place is with me. You were only allowed to stay at Ashmore to recover from your exertions, and I can see that you are recovered.’

Rachel went up to her room, and wrote a frantic letter to Angus, sprinkling the page with tears.

I know if once she takes me out of England I am doomed.

I don’t know if she plans to come back to Ashmore before going to Germany.

If she goes straight back to Germany, we must pass through London, and perhaps I can escape somehow from the station when we change trains.

Oh, my love, I wish you were here to give me courage.

I am so weak and foolish, but I will hold on to the best of my poor strength.

Kitty suggested hopefully to Linda that it would be good for Arabella and Arthur to see where their maternal family came from, but Linda replied shortly that since Fergus had seen fit to marry (she made it sound like a particularly egregious aberration) they had nothing to expect from Cawburn.

The fact was that she had no intention of hampering herself with two children when she had successfully shrugged off that responsibility onto Giles, Kitty and Miss Kettel.

Cawburn Castle was set amid tall pine trees at the top of a steep cragside above a raging burn.

It was built of grey stone and had a castellate, fortified air that appeared to set it in the time when the borderlands were wild and dangerous.

In fact it dated only from the 1840s when Prince Albert, missing his homeland, had romanticised everything Scottish, and Maud’s grandfather had felt that Northumberland was close enough to Scotland to qualify.

Inside, the fake-baronial had replaced the original baronial and was, in fact, more comfortable in many ways, wood panelling being cosier than bare stone walls, and edge-to-edge carpets an improvement over flagstones.

But it was still a bleak place in winter, and the small resident staff were slow to respond to orders to light fires in every room and keep them burning brightly.

But Fergus could not bear the sight of his bride looking pinched and shivering. He ordered lavishly, chivvied both the old staff and the new who had been hired to augment them, and by the time the Usingen party arrived, things were looking more promising.

Giulia was determinedly gay. The journey north had been a severe trial to her, the trains slower and more uncomfortable with every change, and the final leg of the journey by carriage almost more than she could endure.

The first sight of Cawburn could not fail to impress: massive, looming, romantic with its turrets, pinnacles and crenellations, like something out of a fairy story.

She had married the lord of the castle, and this was only the first of his properties!

But she was a child of the warm south, and what was within those towering walls made her wonder what on earth she had done, especially when the cruel wind came soughing round the walls, fingering its way under the doors and, worst of all, driving belches of smoke down the chimneys and into the rooms.

‘It’s only because the chimneys are cold, m’lady,’ the housekeeper assured her. ‘it’ll be better by and by when they’ve warmed up.’

Giulia, huddled into the fur that had been one of her wedding presents, wondered if that would be in her lifetime, and pondered how people could live in places like this when they had the whole world to choose from.

But she was too proud to regret the mad impulse that had made her accept Fergus’s offer, and told herself that they would not be here for long.

His other houses must be better than this; and if they weren’t, well, there was London and there was Venice, and he was so besotted with her she was sure he would follow her desire. Which was never to be cold again.

In the mean time, she had a front to keep up.

She had been angry and disappointed to learn that Giles would not be coming, but his mother was, and she must take back to him a report that Lady Leake could not have been happier and was basking in her fond husband’s attentions and enjoying his resources.

Maud saw nothing wrong with the temperature.

She had been brought up here and if, in her childhood, anyone had asked whether she was cold, she would not have understood the question.

Comfort was never thought to be a requirement of a Forrest. She was unexpectedly glad to be back at Cawburn, and went from room to room remembering people and occasions, from window to window rediscovering views.

Her husband revelled in her new-found communicativeness as she relived the nicer parts of her growing-up. He was delighted to see her happy.

Maud herself was surprised to realise that that was what she was.

Contentment had not often come to her since at the age of nineteen she had married Willie Stainton.

But Paul Usingen not only offered her security, he actually liked her.

He was kind to her. He cared that she should be happy.

And she found too that she was glad, despite the initial shock, to be carrying a child for him.

She wanted – this was something quite new – to please him.

This unexpected softening – she put it down to a curious effect of pregnancy – was alarming to her at first, until she realised that there was no longer any need for her to be hard all the time.

There was nothing in particular that she had to strive for.

She could, if she wanted, simply enjoy things. It was very odd.

* * *

More guests came every day, and the atmosphere grew jollier with each arrival, since both Fergus and Giulia were determined, if for different reasons, that everyone should have a good time.

The house was very large, since the neighbours lived so far away, if they visited they had to stay the night.

So there were plenty of bedrooms. And if southerners had been wary about visiting the wilds of Northumberland at that time of year, friends and relatives in Scotland had no such fears.

Which was how Maud came down from resting on her bed one afternoon and discovered a bustle of welcome in the great hall for Sir Gordon Tullamore, accompanying his daughter Beata, now Lady Elrick, and her husband.

Sir Gordon was brushing snow from his shoulders and saying, ‘I don’t think it’s settling. We saw a lot of deer on the way up, Leake – your people haven’t been taking care of them. That’s the trouble with being an absentee landlord.’

‘Giulia thinks they’re pretty,’ Fergus said defensively, and sought to divert attention. ‘Here’s Maud. You haven’t said hello to Maud.’

A stiffness came over Sir Gordon, but he bowed and said, ‘Maud. Are you well?’

‘Tolerably so, thank you.’

‘I thought you had gone back to Germany.’

‘Not yet. Fergus is my only brother. I must pay his bride suitable attention.’

‘Quite so. Quite so. Beata, my dear, are you ready to go to your room?’

Beata had forgotten for the moment Maud’s connection with the banishment of her brother, and was in any case newly enough married for her husband to push everything else out of her head.

‘Oh, no, Papa, Roly and I must have a cup of tea first. It was a dreadful journey. The roads are terrible. Is there tea, Uncle Fergus?’

‘As soon as you ring. Giulia, my dear, show our guests to the fire.’

‘I’ll go up, and join you shortly,’ said Sir Gordon, and turned to the stairs, just as Rachel was coming down them. She stopped and blushed scarlet, then came on, and Sir Gordon, instead of waiting for her to step off at the bottom, started up, brushing past her without acknowledgement.

Maud’s lips tightened; Beata looked embarrassed, remembering what she had forgotten. ‘Oh dear, I hope there won’t be unpleasantness,’ she whispered to her husband.

Maud heard her. ‘Unpleasantness?’ she said coldly.

‘We didn’t know Rachel would be here,’ Beata said awkwardly.

‘Where should she be?’ Maud demanded.

The prince, recognising the onset of conflict, stepped between them and offered each an arm. ‘If I may be of service, dear ladies,’ he said. ‘To such a good fire to go on such a day is pleasant, not?’

Sir Roland Elrick took pity on Rachel, left standing, and offered her his arm, and she took it gratefully.

The atmosphere deteriorated slowly. Maud and Gordon Tullamore should have been on the same side: neither wanted the Angus-Rachel marriage.

But because Rachel was an earl’s daughter and Angus only a baronet’s son, Maud had always believed it was for her to do the rejecting, not Tullamore.

And it was not by her choice that Angus had been banished from the family and lost to his father (though she would have come down equally hard on disobedience) so it was rather too bad of Tullamore to treat her coolly.