Page 37 of The Fortunes of Ashmore Castle

Having been sitting for so long, the girls were happy to stand and walk about while eating the sandwiches and pasties the school kitchen had provided.

Bron had made friends with a young golden retriever belonging to a strolling couple and was throwing a stick for it.

Julia had asked Miss Palgrave about a small plant she had found growing in the grass, and Miss Palgrave told her it was self-heal, and was describing how it had been used in the past to stop bleeding, heal wounds and cure scrofula.

In another group Alice was discussing the exciting possibility that one of the senior girls might have something accepted for the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy.

Then someone else said that Mr Wentworth was working on a painting of Cleopatra and Caesar, and if he finished it in time it would almost certainly be selected.

At the mention of his name, Alice instinctively looked round for him, and saw to her horror that he was standing by the rug where she had been sitting and was looking through her sketching-pad. She abandoned the group and hurried over, wondering if she dared snatch her book away.

But as she reached him she saw it was too late. He had folded it open at his own portrait. He looked up at her with a glinting smile.

‘So, Miss Tallant, we bring you all the way out here to show you these wonderful views so that you may practise your landscape drawing, and you scorn the very idea!’ She blushed, and tried to think what to say.

He went on, subjecting her to a thorough examination, which did nothing to restore her equilibrium.

‘Miss Tallant, I think, has an independent spirit.’

‘I – I prefer figures to landscapes, sir,’ she muttered awkwardly, wondering if she was in trouble. She couldn’t tell from his voice, not knowing him well enough. He sounded mocking rather than angry, but of course that could change in an instant.

‘So I see.’ He looked at the drawing again. ‘And I see from the style of the jacket and the hair that this is meant to be me.’

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she mumbled.

‘Don’t be,’ he said. ‘It is quite good. You have a talent for figures. It is not very like, though.’ He looked up at her quizzically. ‘You have the folds of the jacket quite well – fabric is a whole skill of its own and we can work on that – and the hair is mine, but the face? No, not very like.’

Alice felt her blush increasing as she realised she had drifted without realising it into drawing the profile she knew best. She stared at the page, willing it to burst into flames, rather than meet Wentworth’s eyes.

‘And I do not think I have a neck like this,’ he went on. ‘Or such broad shoulders. No, it is not like me – but I think it is like someone?’

She felt him looking at her insistently, and suddenly rebelled. ‘It’s a fancy head,’ she said defiantly. ‘Just my imagination.’

‘Hmm,’ he said, keeping her gaze, and she made herself meet it steadily, hands clasped behind her back, chin jutting just a little. What had she done, after all, that was so terrible?

Then he smiled, a dazzling smile that seemed to be minted just for her.

‘No need to look like a startled fawn, Miss Tallant. If you drew this face from imagination – or was it memory?’ He paused, but she was not tempted to answer.

‘Either way, you have a promise that should be nurtured.’ He put her sketching-pad into her unresisting hands and strolled away.

Bron and Julia, who had been drifting closer, wondering what was happening, hurried to her side. Alice explained.

Julia clapped a hand to her mouth. ‘You drew him? I wouldn’t have dared! He’s the Ivor Wentworth!’

‘Was he very angry?’ Bron asked.

‘No,’ Alice said. ‘I think he was laughing at me, really.’

‘Show me the drawing,’ Bron demanded.

Alice handed it over reluctantly, and the two bent their heads together over it. ‘It doesn’t look very like him,’ Julia said after a moment.

‘That’s what he said,’ said Alice.

‘You haven’t got the proportions right,’ Bron said. ‘But as a picture, it’s very nice.’ She looked up. ‘You should think of specialising in portraits. A person can make a good living – rich people always want to have themselves done in oils and hung over the fireplace.’

‘It sounds like a mediaeval torture,’ Alice said, and the conversation ended in laughter.

Kitty had never needed to know anything about money.

Before she married, everything had been bought for her; now she charged all purchases to account.

And she had always known she was the heiress of a large estate, so that anything she had wanted, within reason, had been within her reach.

So when Fenchurch’s estimate arrived, she had no idea whether it was a shocking, impossible sum, or something reasonably affordable to the man who now owned her inheritance.

She was intending to pick the right moment to approach Giles, but seeing it all written down, suddenly so much closer to being real, she couldn’t wait, and hurried along to the library where she knew he was alone.

He looked up when she came in, and his expression was not welcoming. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘I’ve something to show you,’ she said eagerly.

‘I hope it’s important. I’m rather busy.’

She was too happy to be put off. ‘Oh, it’s very important! It’s the estimate from Mr Fenchurch! For my garden,’ she added, seeing that the name didn’t have the same glorious ring to him. ‘Look!’

She laid it down on the desk in front of him, and with a sigh, he picked it up and began reading.

‘He wants to start as soon as possible,’ she said. ‘And, oh, Giles, I can’t wait! To see it all coming real at last – like magic! I wonder how long—’

He held up a hand to silence her while he read.

She watched his frown of concentration harden into something grimmer as he turned the pages; when he reached the last page and the total, his eyebrows shot up.

Even she could not convince herself it was in surprise at how small it was.

She clasped her hands in front of her. ‘Giles?’

He looked up at her. He put the pages down. ‘No,’ he said.

‘No?’ she faltered.

‘Absolutely not! How could you even think for a moment—’

‘No?’ she said again, but in a harder voice. A flat denial? Was that all she was worth?

‘It’s an outrageous amount of money! I had no idea you were thinking of anything on this sort of scale.’

‘You would have had an idea, if you’d ever bothered to talk to me about it,’ she said.

‘All these earthworks . . .’ He was turning pages again. ‘Moving half a mountain!’

‘A hill,’ she corrected.

‘You want to take half the hill from the back of the house and move it to the front. Change the course of rivers. Plant what sounds like an entire forest of trees and shrubs. Engineering works, stone works, waterworks. And you expect me to pay for all this – this –’ he sought words extreme enough for his outrage ‘– rampant folly?’

She flinched at them, but fought on. ‘You know we haven’t enough flat ground for a pleasure garden. It was almost the first thing you ever told me about the place, the first time I ever came here. You said there’d never been a proper garden because there was no flat ground.’

‘And there are good reasons no-one has ever tried this before,’ he said, flicking the pages with a dismissive finger. ‘You could rebuild the Pyramids for less! No, Kitty, it’s out of the question.’

She suddenly felt very cold and very still. ‘Just like that? You dismiss it just like that?’

He was angry. ‘You should never have let it get this far without consulting me.’

‘You said that the jam business was doing very well. You said it was making lots of money.’ Her voice came out higher than she’d meant it to.

‘And I need every penny for the estate. You have no idea how much it costs just to keep this place going, let alone improve it. What do you think I work and worry about night and day? I can’t throw money away on frivolities!’

Another word that hurt. ‘But it’s my money!’ she cried.

That made him even angrier. He hated to be reminded that her inheritance had saved Ashmore’s bacon. ‘In point of law, my dear, it’s my money now.’

Bringing the law into a private argument was unfair. And the ‘my dear’ was like a slap. She stared at him, quivering with emotion. ‘Am I to have nothing , then?’ she cried passionately.

He rose to his feet. ‘Nothing? I have given you a home, a family, a title. A position in society. You call that nothing? And when have I ever questioned anything you buy for yourself? Let me tell you, some husbands in my position give their wives an allowance and check their receipts every month!’

‘Oh, I am lucky indeed!’ she said.

‘Sarcasm is the resort of someone who knows they are in the wrong.’

‘Yes, a female is always in the wrong! I think we were born wrong.’

‘Don’t talk such nonsense. You knew perfectly well that this garden scheme was out of the question. I don’t know why you went on with it, unless it was to vex me.’

‘Vex you?’

‘When you know how much I have on my mind already – keeping a roof over your head, and your children’s.’

‘Oh, now they are my children, are they?’

‘For Heaven’s sake! I haven’t time for this, Kitty,’ he said tersely. ‘Take your plans.’ He folded the pages together and held them out to her. ‘I’m sorry.’

She took them. ‘Are you?’ she said. ‘Well, I am, too. Very sorry.’ She turned to leave him.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I’m sorry I’ve taken up so much of your valuable time,’ she said, without looking back. She went out, and closed the door quietly behind her.

Giles stared down at his cluttered desk for a moment, and then thumped it with a fist and said, ‘Damn!’