Page 75 of The Fortunes of Ashmore Castle

Apart from the sedate rides, they had walked about the garden and into the town, and otherwise mostly sat and read or talked together.

Bobby was hunting three times a week, so vigorously that on the days in between she was almost prostrate, but she had had them to an informal dinner on a non-hunting day, and they had been once to tea with Lady Clemmie.

Nina had invited Clemmie to join their rides, but she had declined charmingly, saying she would be de trop .

They were on their own for most of the first week, Mr Cowling being away on business: his intention to spend more time at home had not accounted for business activity already planned.

Nina had ridden Lepida’s mount, Florence, before, and knew that while gentle and even-paced she did have one fault, which was a liking sometimes to go down and roll when crossing water.

Riding side by side, Nina felt she could intervene if that appeared likely, and her groom, Daughters, said stoutly, ‘Don’t you worry, ma’am – I won’t let anything happen to Miss Morris. ’

He already adored her, fussed over her and checked Florence’s girths a dozen times before each ride.

All the servants loved Lepida. She had a natural grandeur about her that commanded respect, allied to a sweetness of manner that made her approachable – a winning combination.

Nina’s lady’s maid Tina, who was dressing Lepida during her stay, was concerned about how thin she was and reported her anxiety to Mrs Deering who, already shocked at how little Miss Morris ate, concocted wonderful delicacies for every meal to tempt her.

The housemaid, Polly, who went in to light her fire in the morning, thought her an angel.

Lepida did not sleep well and was always awake when Polly arrived, and was very soon possessed of all Polly’s secrets.

And Deering raided the garden, neighbours’ hothouses and even the hedgerows to bring fresh floral offerings for her every day, which he left shyly in the kitchen for Polly to take up to ‘the visiting young lady’, a title he pronounced with a touch of awe.

They had just come out of a wood when they saw, crossing a hillside two fields distant, the hunt streaming away – the low forms of the hounds, the scarlet splashes of the hunt servants, and the main body of the field, already strung out by the differing abilities of the riders.

Bobby would be there among them, Nina thought, trying to work out which of the undistinguishable shapes was her. One of those near the front, for sure.

Lepida mistook her concentration for wistfulness. ‘You’re wishing you were with them, aren’t you?’

Nina turned to smile, and said peacefully, ‘Not at all. I am content exactly where I am.’

Lepida examined her face. ‘You’ve changed, you know,’ she said. ‘I’ve been noticing it ever since I arrived.’

‘Changed how?’

Lepida thought about it, seeking the right words. ‘You just said you’re content. I think that’s it. There was always a restlessness about you, as though you might suddenly burst away, like water from a breached dam.’

‘And you don’t see that any more?’ Nina asked, amused.

‘Something has changed you. And I think you know it. What is it?’

Nina did know, but she was impressed that Lepida had noticed it. She wasn’t sure how to express it, however. And Lepida, however wise and learned she was, was unmarried.

‘I’ve decided to accept my lot,’ she said at last, ‘instead of railing against it.’

Since that night in Portsmouth, Mr Cowling’s difficulties seemed to have disappeared.

He had successfully completed the act many times since then, and the difference in him was noticeable.

The tense, faintly anxious look he had always carried had gone.

He seemed to have grown and filled out – it was absurd to think that, but it was the only way she could describe it to herself – like trodden grass straightening, or a pinched bud opening in unexpected sunshine.

It had made her feel guilty to realise how much he had been affected by what she had considered unimportant, even faintly ridiculous.

And she wondered, guiltily, whether she had added to his difficulties.

She had always withheld herself from him – not obviously, but there had been a core of herself that she had kept back for herself, and she wondered now whether in some way he had always known it.

She had married him, but she had never been his.

He had fulfilled his part of the bargain, but she had kept only the letter of the contract, not the spirit. She had not been fair to him.

Secretly, she had been waiting for her life to change and present her with her hidden desire. But Portsmouth had made her realise that this marriage was not a temporary aberration. It was her life, for the rest of her life.

Lepida was waiting for more explanation, and she said, ‘I kept thinking, ‘Is this all there is?’ I kept thinking that at some point I would be woken from a dream and my real life would begin.’

‘You were very young when you married,’ Lepida observed.

Nina shrugged. ‘Most girls are.’

‘The great pity,’ Lepida went on, ‘is that there is no way to prepare a female for it. They dream of palaces with gilded turrets and knights on white horses. Reality is decisions about mutton or beef, when to get the chimney swept, whether the cook is using too much butter. Reality is a man who’s bad-tempered in the morning and complains if his favourite shirt isn’t ironed just right.

’ She smiled at Nina’s expression. ‘Don’t look so surprised!

I live with my mother and father. I’ve observed them for years.

There isn’t much I don’t know about marriage in our wonderful age. ’

‘Well,’ Nina said, with reservation.

‘Yes, of course, there is the other side of it that no-one will ever talk about,’ Lepida went on. ‘But even I know it is not a sigh and a languishing gaze, but flesh and blood and sweat and smells and pain and discomfort.’

Nina didn’t want to ask her how she knew that. ‘Did you never dream of palaces and sighs?’ she asked.

‘Never,’ said Lepida. ‘It’s the consequence of reading too much. They are right about that, at any rate – educating females only makes for misery. If we are to endure a woman’s lot, better we have nothing between our ears at all.’

‘You don’t believe that,’ Nina exclaimed.

Lepida gave a small quirk of a smile. ‘Yes and no. In reality, women have minds and some of them have enquiring minds, and once you start to think you can’t go back.

So we have to do what we can to make things better.

But part of that is understanding the limitations of what’s possible.

It seems to me that you have reached that understanding by yourself. ’

Nina didn’t answer. But she thought, Yes, I’m married to Mr Cowling, and I must make the best of it .

They rode on. It was a small enough thing, she thought, to make him happy.

It took up very little time. She could not be part of it, but she had to receive him, because he was her husband and it was her duty.

And, because she understood now, she had let him think she was part of it, and that it made her happy too.

The tragedy was that she now knew what the physical act could mean.

In that sense, Lepida was right – better not to know.

But however difficult it made it to adjust to her life as it was, she would not have missed that.

She buried it deep in her mind and tried never to think about it, but it was there, like a distant source of warmth, like the faint luminosity of the sun behind the solid cover of clouds on a winter’s day.