Page 59 of The Fortunes of Ashmore Castle

But it’s your home , Dory thought. I can’t be the reason you have to stay away . She smiled. ‘You’re very kind to me.’

‘Don’t start that again,’ he said, with mock sternness. ‘I’m not kind – you ’re the kind one, to marry an old man and make him happy.’

‘Don’t you start that again! You’re not an old man.’

‘I don’t feel it when I’m with you. Are you happy, my love?’

‘So very happy,’ she said. ‘It’s hard to get used to, after all those years. I keep catching myself out, thinking I ought to be worrying, and then realising I don’t have to any more.’

‘No shadows?’ he asked.

She knew he meant about his part in Jack Hubert’s death.

It was a question he asked now and then because, loving her so much, he sensed, or perhaps just feared, that it still troubled her.

‘No shadows,’ she said, and then, to change the subject, ‘You’ll have to begin playing the piano again when we get home.

You’ve hardly touched one in months. You’ll be getting out of practice. ’

He noticed that she had called it ‘home’. ‘Would you like me to teach you to play?’

She hadn’t expected that. ‘Aren’t I too old to learn?’

‘Not a bit. It’s just a matter of practice. You’ll soon get the hang of it. Then we could play duets.’

‘We do already,’ she said, giving him the look that made him long for bedtime.

The carriage was waiting for them at the station, with two greys harnessed, John Manley and Joe Green on the box.

The porters carried out their valises: just overnight things – their big trunks had been sent straight to Henley.

Joe Green jumped down, opened the carriage door and put down the step.

John Manley was exchanging a greeting with Sebastian. He said, ‘Welcome home, sir.’

‘The horses look well,’ Sebastian said.

‘Thank you, sir.’

Dory thought he was going to ignore her existence as an unfortunate mistake, but then he said, ‘If I might be permitted, sir, to offer my congratulations? And my felicitations to your good lady.’

‘Thank you, Manley,’ Sebastian said. He bent to murmur in her ear, ‘There, you see? Nothing to worry about.’

Dory thought, Coachman is one thing. He doesn’t work in the house. He barely knew me when I was a servant.

With Crooks occupying the forward seat, they could not talk on the ride up to the Castle.

The carriage and horses were well known in the village, and several people stopped to look as it went past. Dory felt absurdly that she should wave, like Queen Alexandra.

They crossed the river by the stone bridge, passed through the gateposts, and then John Manley chirruped to the horses and they threw their weight into the collar for the pull up the hill.

Dory remembered when she had walked up there for the first time, carrying her suitcase, on her way to a new job.

She had been passed by two grooms exercising carriage horses and they had ignored her, as grooms in high-up stables usually ignored lower servants.

And now she was riding behind those same horses, and would be transported to the front door. Life was strange.

As they swung round in front of the house, she saw there was a reception line waiting for them: his lordship and her ladyship and Mr Richard on one side, and on the other Mr Afton, William and Ellen.

Dory knew how great houses worked. The full line-up was only for the master or mistress coming home after an absence, or for royalty.

The servants here now were only the ones required: Mr Afton to open the carriage door, William to carry the luggage, and Ellen because Dory had no lady’s maid of her own, and one would have been assigned to her.

On their long honeymoon holiday, she’d had to get used to being attended by a maid, but a hotel chambermaid, especially one who spoke little English, was a much lower hurdle than an English housemaid with all the proper notions, let alone one she had sat down with in the servants’ hall at mealtimes.

But for now there was the family to navigate. Her ladyship came straight to Dory, offered her hand, and said, with a shy smile, ‘I’m so pleased to welcome you to Ashmore Castle.’

Don’t call her ‘my lady’. Don’t call her ‘my lady’. ‘ Thank you,’ Dory managed to say.

Her ladyship seemed to understand the difficulty. ‘You must call me Kitty – won’t you? How was the journey? Are you terribly tired?’

‘We only came from London today,’ Dory reminded her. ‘But we seem to have been travelling for months.’

‘That’s because you have.’ This was Mr Richard, taking her hand and bowing over it with a parade of gallantry that was intended to amuse. ‘I was at your wedding, remember, so I know exactly how long you’ve been gone. Was Italy glorious?’

‘Yes, but getting too hot by the time we left. Sebastian—’ She caught herself up, embarrassed to have called him by his first name in front of them, then realised that ‘Mr Sebastian’ would have been a far worse faux pas .

‘Sebastian was rather suffering in Rome, and we were glad to head north. The lakes were lovely.’

‘The lakes! How lucky you are. I mean to go myself one day,’ Richard said, with kindly ease.

He was so nice, and Kitty ( Kitty !) was kind, but now his lordship had finished with Sebastian and was ready to greet her.

He didn’t smile, but then she knew from hearing the other servants talk that smiling was not his way.

He was the serious one where Richard was the joker, and everyone was a little wary of him.

He shook her hand and said, ‘Welcome to the Castle. Come in and have some tea.’

There was nothing in what he said or the way he said it to upset her. But he didn’t ask her to call him Giles. And it was just as well because she never, never could have.

‘Well, I’m not curtsying to her,’ Daisy announced to the table, round which the servants had gathered for their tea – thick slices of bread, and a vast fruit cake. ‘Not a servant who’s sat at this very table.’ She liked the sound of that, and repeated it. ‘At this very table!’

Mrs Webster was quick to squash her. ‘Nobody’s asking you to curtsy to her. So don’t talk nonsense, and pass the bread down.’

Daisy automatically passed the plate, but carried on with her complaint.

‘She’s only a sewing maid when all’s said and done.

’ She was resentful because she had expected to be asked to maid Dory, since she had maided the two young ladies, and had been intending to refuse.

This glorious act of rebellion would have conferred distinction and have been talked of in the servants’ hall with hushed admiration for weeks.

But Mrs Webster had asked Ellen instead.

‘I never trusted her,’ Daisy went on. ‘The way she used to hang about the small drawing-room when Mr Sebastian was playing the piano. She had her eye on him right from the start, the sly—’

‘Be quiet, Daisy,’ Mrs Webster stopped her before the word ‘baggage’ could tumble from her lips. ‘That’s quite enough from you. If that’s the quality of your opinions you had better keep them to yourself.’

Daisy looked black, and took a savage bite out of her slice of bread.

Cyril said, ‘But what Daisy says: why should we wait on her when she’s just a servant?’

Afton spoke up. ‘Mrs Sebastian Tallant is entitled to every courtesy we offer to a guest in this house, and anyone who thinks differently can come straight to me after tea and give me his notice.’

Mrs Webster built on that. ‘Quite right, Mr Afton. Furthermore, the wife of a member of the family is entitled to an extra level of consideration, and don’t you forget it.’

Ellen said, ‘I don’t mind maiding her. I’ve done guests before, and I bet there were some rum characters among ’em. They’re not all saints. It don’t matter to me. The work’s the same, whoever you do it for.’

‘Well, I don’t agree,’ said Daisy. ‘It’s – it’s demeaning, that’s what it is, when they’re not real ladies.’

‘Mr Sebastian wouldn’t marry anyone that wasn’t a real lady,’ Ellen said. ‘It’s what’s inside that counts.’

‘That’s the proper attitude,’ Mrs Webster said.

Ellen gave a satisfied smirk over her bread-and-jam.

Mabel, slow of thinking as of speaking, caught up. ‘I think it’s romantic. It’s just like one of them stories, when the chimney-sweep turns out to be a prince in disguise, who’s trying to find out if a woman can truly love him when he’s not wearing his crown and that.’

There was a pause as people untangled the syntax.

Then Rose said, ‘You’re an utter fool. Mr Sebastian isn’t in disguise.’

‘Well, but you know what I mean,’ Mabel said, bewildered herself now.

‘I think she was always a cut above us,’ said Milly. ‘I mean, she liked that high-up music Mr Sebastian played.’

‘I like music,’ said Wilfrid, cheekily. ‘D’you think I could get a posh lady to marry me?’

‘No-one will marry you until you learn to scrub your nails before you sit down at the table,’ said Afton. ‘Go and do it now, you heathen.’

The reluctant scraping of Wilfrid’s chair accompanied his departure; and the pause extended as Mr Crooks came in, and everyone had to inspect the next thing they were going to say for appropriateness.

Afton indicated the seat beside him. ‘Did you find everything to your satisfaction, Mr Crooks?’

‘Thank you, yes,’ Crooks said, sitting down.

‘It’s a shame you’re only staying one night,’ Mrs Webster said, from the other end.

‘My master and mistress are eager to get home,’ he said.

‘Well, perhaps they’ll favour us with a longer visit later in the year.’

‘I have no information about that.’ Crooks looked around the table, at the staring eyes and the averted eyes, and noted the unusual silence. ‘What were you all talking about when I came in?’ he asked.

No-one could remember. Then Rose said, ‘Music, wasn’t it?’

There was a pause, before Sam said bravely, ‘I like music all right if it’s something you can jig about to. Like that barrel organ that went through the village last week – did you hear it?’