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Page 58 of The Fortunes of Ashmore Castle

‘He’s moved back in with the Gales for the time being,’ Richard said. ‘He can’t use his right arm properly, so he needs help with washing and dressing. And he can’t cook for himself.’

‘It’s a grim business,’ Giles said, fiddling with a letter-opener on his desk. Richard walked restlessly over to the library window, then back. The dogs, lying in a patch of sunshine in front of the desk, watched him both ways, turning their heads in unison. ‘And there was no indication before?’

‘Evidently not, or he’d have had some other living arrangement,’ said Richard. ‘But the point is now, what’s to be done about him? Even when his arm is sound again—’

‘The damage isn’t permanent, then?’

‘Apparently not. But he’ll still need a housekeeper of some sort, and he has no more relatives.’

‘Pity he’s not married,’ Giles grunted. ‘He’s not a bad-looking fellow.’

‘In the mean time, there’s only Ogg to run the farm, and he’s a good worker when he’s told what to do, but no use when it comes to making decisions.

So I shall have to go down there every day and keep things running until Woodrow’s sound again and decides what to do.

He seems to have had the stuffing beaten out of him. ’

Giles looked up. ‘You think he might give it up?’

‘I don’t know,’ Richard said, sounding harassed by the question. ‘I certainly hope not. I was pleased to have found someone so perfectly qualified for our purposes. I can hardly hope to find another.’

‘Perhaps we’d better start looking for an assistant stockman. Even if Woodrow comes back, what with the increase in the herd . . . And, as you say, Ogg’s no deputy, if something happens when Woodrow’s out somewhere.’

‘I’ll ask around,’ Richard said. He walked back to the window. Tiger sighed gustily and laid his head on his paws, ginger eyebrows twitching. Silence settled, the book-lined, leather-scented, ancient silence of the library.

Giles looked up from what he was reading, at last. ‘I wonder if Bexley knows of a good stockman who might want a change of place,’ he said.

He stood up. The dogs stood too, and stretched fore-and-aft, expectantly.

‘I have to ride over to see him about those poachers in Crown Woods.’ Lord Bexley, of the Grange, was the local magistrate.

‘Why don’t you come with me? The ride and the fresh air would do you good.

You look as though you have the cares of the world on your shoulders. ’

‘Not the whole world. Just a hemisphere, perhaps,’ Richard said.

Maud Stainton had always had a sternly repressive policy towards ill health, and ill health had always been too cowed to defy her, so Alice had been shocked at the sight of her mother recumbent on a chaise longue with a counterpane over her, her face puffy and pallid, dark circles under her eyes.

Her hair was done differently, in what Alice supposed was a German style – tonged into thick horizontal rolls that seemed to gather and twist above her ears, like complicated bread products. Alice thought it looked strange and wrong – but no-one likes their mother to change.

She found Linda changed, too. She seemed to have put on some weight, which suited her, as did the fat roll hairstyle, which she had also adopted.

She was nervously, fidgetily pleased to see Arabella.

She talked in a rapid, high voice about her grief for her son and her determination never to be parted from her daughter again, but to Alice it seemed as though Linda was saying what she thought a mother should.

She didn’t sense any real feeling in it.

And Arabella didn’t cling and cry prettily and lisp of childish love.

Withdrawn and uncommunicative, still clutching Pepper tightly in one hand, she endured Linda’s embraces, and got away from her as soon as possible.

Since her brother’s death, Arabella seemed to have grown taller, and with the weight she had lost she was becoming bony and looking even more like her mother.

Though there was no entertaining in the Usingerhof, there were parties at other houses in the neighbourhood, to which Linda went on her mother’s behalf.

She spoke about this as a duty, but Alice did not sense any real reluctance to go.

Sometimes Paul accompanied her. Alice wondered how he could abandon his wife in her condition to go to parties.

But one day when all three sisters were out riding together, Linda gave away the reason.

She was talking about the dinner she was going to that evening at the Anhalt-Saales’ summer house, and said, with what was almost a girlish smile, ‘Cousin Pippi will be there again. He had to go back to his own estate because of some business, but Anna Anhalt-Saale says he’s returned at the earliest possible opportunity, when they hadn’t expected him back at all this summer. ’

‘Who is Cousin Pippi?’ Alice asked.

‘You can’t have been paying attention,’ Linda said sharply.

‘Paul was talking about him at dinner only two days ago. He’s his third cousin – Landgrave Philip of Plotzkau-Zeitz.

He has a Schloss on the White Elster – not very pretty, but large and quite modern – and another in Thuringia.

He has a coal mine in the Saar and an ore mine in Württemberg – cobalt, I think Paul said, whatever that is.

And he’s distantly related to the Hesse family.

Hesse used to be part of Thuringia some time or other,’ she concluded vaguely.

This recital of his possessions brought a suspicion to Alice’s mind. ‘Is he married?’ she asked casually.

‘He’s a widower. What has that to do with anything?’

‘I’d have thought it had everything to do with everything,’ Alice said.

Linda coloured a little. ‘You’ve become very sharp since I last saw you. It must be that school you’re going to. I told Mama it was a mistake. It has coarsened you.’

But Rachel’s interest had been engaged now, and she said, ‘Do you like him?’

‘Pippi Plotzkau-Zeitz is a well-born person with perfect manners,’ Linda said loftily.

‘Yes, but do you like him?’ Rachel persisted. ‘And does he like you?’

She hesitated. ‘Paul says he’s spoken of me to him in very warm terms.’

‘Are you going to marry him?’ Rachel asked.

‘Goodness, what a question! He hasn’t even asked me yet.

I think we should canter along here.’ And she kicked her horse on, ending the conversation.

Alice fell in behind Rachel, thinking that it was not like Linda to be reticent, which suggested that the matter was not yet settled.

If Cousin Pippi was indeed a suitor, Linda was anxious that nothing should put him off.

It appeared also that stepfather Paul was keen to promote the match.

Perhaps having Linda under his roof for a prolonged visit had made him fear he would never get rid of her.

That afternoon Alice took Arabella out in the donkey-cart to give her and Miss Kettel a rest from each other.

They took sketching materials with them and settled before a fine view, where Alice passed on what she had learned of landscape drawing.

It was wonderfully peaceful, with the wind stirring gently in the pine trees behind them, and the bees working in the wild thyme at their feet, and no person or building in sight – nothing moving, indeed, but the occasional cloud-shadow over the valley, and an eagle gliding on an air current far above them in the intensely blue sky.

She watched Arabella wielding her pencil, and thought that she looked happy for the first time since Arthur’s death.

She knew from her own experience that art could take over your mind and leave no room for unhappy thoughts.

She wondered what would happen if Linda did marry Pippi Plotzkau-Zeitz.

Would she have Arabella to live with her, and would the new stepfather be kind?

Poor child. Alice was glad for once to have a mother who had no interest in her.

There was obviously no plot going on to marry her off.

And then an unwelcome thought arrived: was she to remain unmarried in order to be her mother’s attendant in Linda’s place?

Was she marked out as the spinster daughter-at-home, meek fetcher and carrier and possibly useful ‘aunt’ to the new baby?

When the summer ended and Mama was out of childbed, would she be allowed to go home?

I have to! I have to go! She thought of the school, her friends, and she longed fiercely to be back there.

If she tries to keep me here I’ll run away, she thought.

But as Rachel had before her, she realised deep down that without money she could not get from the depths of Germany back to England.

She would not get further than the Usingerdorf railway station.

The train beat its hypnotic rhythm on the rails, swaying like a dancer as the suburbs of London were left behind and it picked up speed.

The smiling countryside, fat and dark green with August, rolled by the windows.

The air was warm inside the compartment and smelt of dusty upholstery; the sunlight slanted in, with a shadow-flick from each telegraph pole it passed.

Sebastian looked down at his wife and said, ‘Are you all right? You’re very quiet. You’re not nervous, are you?’

‘Of course I am.’ She gave him the smile that said, I know more about the world than you, even though you’re older and much more clever .

‘There’s no need. You saw the letter – it couldn’t have been nicer.’

When they got back to England, he had written from their hotel to say that he would like to bring his wife to Ashmore on their way home to Henley, provided they would be welcome, and had received a reply inviting them in warm and civil terms.

‘What people say in letters and what you see in their eyes is not always the same thing,’ Dory said. ‘I don’t doubt they’ll put a good face on it.’

He took her hand. ‘I promise you this, if you’re at all uncomfortable we won’t stay.’