Page 43 of The Fortunes of Ashmore Castle

The early-summer weather was fair, mocking him; the willows were filling out with pale green leaves, reaching down to the water, the oaks thick with olive-yellow flower.

The river was peopled with pleasure boats, rowers and idle paddlers: under a sky of tender robin’s-egg blue, the constant ripples laid their flèches of light and shadow on the surface, rocking the ducks and moorhens as they dabbled along the banks.

And everywhere the hawthorn hedges were in starry bloom, filling the air with their sweet, maddening scent.

Sebastian brooded as he walked. When he had been a young man, he had wanted to marry a girl named Phyllis.

He had delayed asking her because of family disapproval, and in the delay she had caught the fever and died.

How could he have lost his love again? He went over and over the few phrases he had exchanged with Dory before she ran away.

What should he have said instead? What combination of words would have cut through her panic and won her over?

He was a clumsy fool to have bungled it.

Where was she now? He tortured himself with imagining her suffering.

At best, she would have got a position, but it would be a lowly one without a reference.

She might be scrubbing doorsteps, or toiling in a laundry, dragging wet heavy sheets from boiler to mangle for fourteen hours a day.

Or a drudge in a house where they kept no other help and pitilessly drove the maid-of-all-work from dawn to midnight with scolds, abuse and contempt.

Around him the days lengthened and new life was everywhere, the fields greening, insects busy in the campion and rattle, the cranesbill and loosestrife, the red clover and the bugle.

The first swifts screamed overhead, glorying in their own speed; ducklings and moorchicks followed the adults in neat, sagittal flotillas.

Mrs May, his housekeeper, tried to tempt his appetite with lamb and spring greens; even Crooks dared to murmur something about a new straw hat for summer wear, as if that might lift the winter in his heart.

He did not play the piano. He could only mourn in silence.

And then one day as he exited the garden wicket onto the path leading down to the river, he saw a figure in the shadow of the trees at the end.

An undefined female figure, any-woman-shaped, in drab skirt, jacket and felt hat.

She was almost indistinguishable in the bosky darkness, but he knew who it was, and his heart contracted so sharply it hurt him.

He started forward, almost tripping over his own feet in his haste.

‘Dory! Dory!’ he cried. The figure hurried from him, darting away out of the tree-shadow, turning onto the riverside and out of sight. ‘Wait! Dory, wait!’

The river path was narrow where the gardens of the houses came down to it, and it was thronged.

He glimpsed the small, dark-clad figure some way ahead, but he was too bulky to slip through the crowd as she did, and she was getting away.

At the end of this section was a cattle gate, which further slowed him down, after which the way opened out into meadows and he could move freely.

But where was she? In the wide open space there were couples and groups dotted about, sitting on rugs, one set playing a game of cricket with their children, others strolling.

He twisted about, searching for her. And then he spotted her hurrying to the top of the meadow where it joined the road.

Gentlemen of his age and condition did not run.

He probably had not run since the last time he had played cricket for the village team, years ago.

He attracted stares of disapproval, suspicion and, in the case of a group of young men, derision; but the road led back into town and he’d never find her there.

He ran, clutching his hat and his stick, until he was close enough to cry out, breathlessly, ‘Dory! Wait! Wait! Talk to me!’

She had gained the road. She turned her head to look, and for a moment he thought she would hurry on and leave him behind. But she hesitated, and he cried, with the last of his breath, ‘Please!’

And she stopped.

He reached her, hot, breathless, feeling dishevelled, ridiculous. She looked so small in her practical dark-brown stuff coat and skirt, just a working woman no-one would give a second glance to; but to him she was limned in light.

There was a bench a little way along, and they sat in silence while he got his breath back and his heartbeat slowed.

He took off his hat and laid it on the bench beside him, and felt the fingers of air cooling his head.

She sat with her hands folded in her lap and everything about her quiet, but he felt her tense unhappiness as though she were radiating it.

When he could talk normally, he said, ‘How long have you been in Henley?’ It seemed as good a question to start with as any.

‘Some days. A week, perhaps,’ she said. ‘I lose track of the time.’

‘But why didn’t you come to see me?’

‘I didn’t know you were there. I thought you were at the Castle.’

‘Then – why did you come to Henley?’

She didn’t answer for a moment. Then she said, ‘Because it was your place. I’ve stood and looked at your house. Just because it was your house.’ She stopped.

‘How have you been living?’ he asked. ‘I’ve been so afraid that you – were destitute.’

‘I had some money saved. And I’ve had odd jobs. Scrubbing, mostly. I earned a shilling here and there. I couldn’t get a proper job because I had to keep moving.’

Now he turned to look at her. ‘But why ?’ he cried in anguish. ‘Why did you run away?’

She began to speak, and stopped, and made a useless gesture with her hand. ‘It all seemed—’ She stopped again, and looked away from him, as if she was ashamed. ‘I don’t know,’ she muttered.

‘Dory!’ he protested.

‘It was such a shock,’ she said. ‘All these years I’ve lived with the fear. Always looking over my shoulder. Never able to settle. Not really a person at all. And then there was you.’ She stopped again, at the worst moment for him.

‘Did I make it harder for you?’ he asked.

‘You did,’ she said.

His heart hurt. ‘I never wanted that. I never meant to add to your burden.’

‘But it was good. A good pain, like the pins-and-needles when numbness wears off. Only – there was no future to it. I knew that. So I couldn’t let myself .

. .’ She shook her head. ‘It would have been wrong to enjoy it. And then you came and said you’d killed him.

What was I to do? I couldn’t let myself be that person.

All I had left was my self-respect. It was all that kept me breathing.

If I lost that I might as well be dead.’

He had winced at the word. ‘But I didn’t kill him! I never said that. If you’d only let me explain – but you ran away. And what did I feel when I realised you’d gone, not just from me but from Ashmore, from everything, all alone again when I wanted only to look after you and make you happy?’

She sighed deeply. ‘Tell me it again, then. It was such a horror, I don’t think I really took it in properly. Tell me everything and I promise I’ll listen.’

He could hear from the tone of her voice that she still thought it was hopeless, but he was determined not to waste this one chance Fate had given. One last chance of life.

Quietly, unemotionally, he told her everything, in detail, of his dealings with Mr Bland, his visit to Brighton, how he had found Jack Hubert, and exactly what had been said and done between them.

He described the inquest, and then the days when he had wandered about the seaside town, too shocked and debilitated to go home straight away. And then he stopped.

She was silent for a long time, staring in the direction of the river. At last she said, quietly, ‘His death was caused by you. You were the reason of it.’

‘He was trying to kill me,’ Sebastian said. ‘I had to defend myself. I would not willingly have killed him. He was the villain of the piece, not me. You must see that.’

She sighed again. ‘How could I ever lie easy—’ she began, almost too quiet to hear.

His patience broke. ‘No!’ he said, and, startled, she looked up at him.

‘He was a bad man. You told me yourself he would have killed you if he’d found you.

He tried to kill me, for no reason except that he was drunk and mad.

You ask how you could lie easy? There is no trial of conscience here!

Not mine and not yours. An accident has freed you, not of your causing and not of mine, either.

The only question you have to answer is, do you love me? ’

He was so afraid of the answer that he could hardly bear to wait for it.

He was an ordinary, middle-aged man of no particular beauty, and he had fallen in love with a woman of strange courage and luminous integrity, who could have married him for his money and never mentioned the previous husband – who would ever have known?

– but instead had held fast by her self-respect, and would die for it if she had to.

After a lifetime of loneliness he had found the one person he wanted to be with, and the idea of losing her was terrible.

He made himself look steadily down into her face; and she scanned his, as though hoping to see some holy script written there.

‘Do you love me?’ he asked again, when she didn’t answer. It might have been the bravest thing he ever did.

‘Yes,’ she said at last, as if it was an irrelevance, and not what was really being asked at all. ‘How could I help loving you? You are so kind and good and clever and – and everything a woman could want. But—’

He almost laughed with relief. He grabbed both her hands. ‘There’s no “but”,’ he said. ‘You love me! And you know I love you. That’s all that matters. We are both free to marry now. Will you marry me?’

Now a faint smile passed across her pale, drawn face like a gleam of sunshine on a winter’s day. ‘What would people say? What would your family say?’

‘You can have no idea,’ he said, ‘of the depth of indifference there is towards me and my affairs.’

‘I don’t believe that for a minute. Can you really imagine me entering the main door of Ashmore Castle as your wife, when I’ve always gone in by the kitchen yard as a servant?’

He hunched his shoulders a little. ‘ My wife can enter by any door she pleases. But we needn’t bother much with Ashmore Castle. I have a house of my own, and no-one in Henley knows you.’

‘Your servants do,’ she pointed out.

‘I’ll get new servants,’ he said largely, ‘if you can’t deal with them. But if you’re half the woman I think you are, you’ll manage them all right. So? You haven’t given me an answer. Will you marry me?’

‘I want to—’

‘Then do!’ He lifted her hands to his lips, one after the other, and kissed them. ‘Say yes!’

The rigidness went out of her. ‘Yes,’ she said, on an outgoing breath.

‘With all your heart?’ he insisted.

‘With all my heart. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve you, but if you really want me—’

‘You know I do.’ He couldn’t kiss her in this public space, so he kissed her hands again.

They looked at each other for a little while. Then she said, ‘What happens now?’

He thought for a moment. ‘Where have you been staying?’

‘The last two nights at the Ship, across the river.’

‘I don’t know it.’

‘It’s a common alehouse.’

He frowned. ‘That won’t do. We must—’

‘You’re thinking of moving me into the best hotel in Henley, aren’t you?’

He was startled. ‘How did you know?’

‘If you take me there, tongues will wag. And I don’t have the right clothes.’

He thought again. ‘We’ll take the train to Wallingford. No-one knows me there. The Coach and Horses is a decent place, not too fine. And there are shops in Wallingford. You can buy yourself new clothes, just enough for now, until we can get you fitted out properly.’

‘And where will we marry?’

‘In London. The most anonymous place of all. And then you must decide where you would like to go for your honeymoon.’

She looked startled. ‘Honeymoon? You mean like a holiday? I’ve never had a holiday.’

He blinked back tears. ‘Oh, Dory, there’s so much I want to give you.’

‘Well, you can. But not all at once, or I shall be overwhelmed.’