Page 77 of The Fortunes of Ashmore Castle

And with the Castle entertaining again, other houses in the neighbourhood had followed suit, so the season was lively, and Kitty was enjoying the consequence of being at the top of everyone’s guest list. For the first time she felt that she really was the countess, that she was accepted in the role she had married into, and was a success.

Little Kitty Bayfield, too stupidly shy to speak a word to her partners at her come-out, was now the chatelaine of Ashmore Castle, mother of two fine little boys, and issuer of invitations that were prized in the neighbourhood.

Aunt Caroline’s letter was full of inconsequential chat – she had grown up in the era when a young lady was taught to make a little matter go a long way – and Kitty read without engaging her full attention, until a new paragraph stopped her dead.

I heard yesterday from my dear brother Fergus, who writes from Venice to say that they will not, after all, be coming to London in December, nor, I am sorry to say, be spending the Christmas Season at Ashmore Castle, as I believe had been discussed, or at least mooted.

The cause of what I know will occasion disappointment to all is, yet, a cause for general rejoicing.

It is not ill health, far less disinclination, but an advice from a medical consultant that travelling at that time would not be advisable, for the most delicate of reasons.

In short, my dear Kitty, I am delighted to tell you that Fergus and Giulia are expecting a child in the spring or early summer. She—

Kitty’s first, guilty little thought was relief, as if being with child placed Giulia further out of Giles’s reach than simply being married.

Absurd! There had been talk of their coming to the Castle at Christmas, and a part of Kitty had dreaded it – dreaded having that luminous, clever, striking woman under the same roof, invoking shared memories with Giles, falling into Italian with him, that damnably romantic language, which flowed so fluently from both their tongues and which no-one else could understand . . .

Kitty had believed Giles when he said he did not care romantically for Giulia.

But – she raised her head to look at him over the breakfast table, absorbed in the newspaper, pretty much unaware of his wife’s existence – there was no saying that his feelings couldn’t change.

He was not in love with Kitty. And if he was not in love with her, didn’t that mean there was a vacancy?

Anecdote said that men of rank and fortune, once they had secured the nursery, more often than not took a mistress.

Giles had never shown any interest in other women, but he no longer visited her bedroom, and men had needs, as her stepmother had warned her.

At some point, in likelihood, he would take a mistress.

He would be discreet. But, loving him as she did, she was sure she would know.

That would be bad enough – so much worse if it was someone she knew.

So she was glad there would be a baby – the first, she hoped, of many – to dim Giulia’s radiance.

She went on reading. Maud was recovered from childbirth and the Usingens and Linda were going to the Wachturm, home of Aunt Vicky and Uncle Bobo near Darmstadt, for the Christmas season.

Darmstadt was the home of Grand Duke Ernie of Hesse, so there would be glittering parties.

Vicky had written, said Aunt Caroline, to say that it was expected to be an especially lively season, being the first since the grand duke had remarried.

He had – shockingly – divorced his first wife, Princess Ducky of Edinburgh, Queen Victoria’s granddaughter and his first cousin, in December 1901.

The only child of the marriage, a daughter, had died of typhoid in November 1903, so to secure the succession Ernie had remarried, in February 1905, to Princess Onor of Solms-Hohensolms-Lich.

Princess Ducky, Aunt Caroline went on chattily to note, had also just remarried, to another cousin, the Russian Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich.

Unfortunately, Ernie’s sister, the tsarina, blamed Ducky for the divorce and had persuaded the tsar to strip Kirill of his titles and exile the couple, so they’d had to go and live in Paris.

Not that that was a terrible disadvantage, things being still very unsettled in Russia, with strikes and violent demonstrations, and a mutiny of the navy in Sebastopol, according to Paul Usingen, who had many Russian relatives . . .

‘You’re very engrossed in that letter,’ Giles’s voice interrupted her. ‘Interesting news?’

She looked up. ‘You can read it later,’ she said. ‘It’s from Aunt Caroline.’

‘I might forgo the pleasure,’ he said. ‘She never uses one word where ten will do.’

Kitty thought that was rather a skill than a fault, when you had pages to cover.

‘You can give me a digest,’ Giles went on.

So she said, ‘Giulia’s having a baby.’

He walked up the hill, slashing at dead cow parsley stems with his stick.

The dogs dashed about, lost in their own rich world of smells, remembering him now and then, running up to check that he was all right, then away again.

It was a mild, damp November day, with an uninteresting sky of unbroken grey, like dish-rags, and the sort of intermittent fine prickle that couldn’t decide whether to be rain or not.

It gathered on the dogs’ thick winter coats in a silver mist. The air smelt of leaf-mould and wet grass.

He was enough of a farmer by now to think absently as he trudged, That tree looks as though it’s been struck by lightning: the split branch ought to be trimmed .

. . Damage to the hedge there – probably the hunt.

That whole stretch ought to be re-laid .

. . The cows should come off that field, it’s too wet, they’re cutting it up .

. . Marbeck’s sheep on the turnip field: looking healthy . . .

At the top he turned along the crest, and stopped to take in the view.

Tiger came and leaned against his leg; grey Isaac was snuffling madly in a clump of dried thistle stalks, which might or might not be masking a rabbit-hole.

That made him think of the rabbit activity at the motte.

He had had the hole boarded over and a barrier of hurdles put round it to stop anyone going too close.

There simply had not been time yet to explore it further – and the weather was against him now.

He thought of his friends and the light-hearted talk of an excavation.

The place had cost poor little Arthur his life.

If he’d arranged for the boy to go away to school, it never would have happened.

Perhaps it was just as well he’d had no time for excavation: it might have looked heartless.

Next year, perhaps, in summer, the tragedy would be far enough in the past . . .

His thoughts reverted to Kitty’s letter. Giulia pregnant? Well, of course it was to be expected. She was young, and Uncle was only – what? – forty-two. She was his aunt by marriage; the child would be his cousin.

But it was not because of Giulia that he had escaped on this solitary walk.

It was because Kitty had looked at him for a guilty reaction.

Nothing inside him cared about Giulia, but the look had reminded him of where his guilt truly lay.

He had done wrong by Kitty, though she didn’t know it.

And it was all the worse because he could not regret it.

If he could go back, he knew he would do the same thing again.

Nina! She glowed in his mind like a light in a window on a dark night.

In these cases, he supposed, one must always ask why .

Why this person and not another? Why this one person, and no other?

There was no explanation. He loved her, he wanted her, and no-one and nothing else could fill her space.

He ached with wanting her, simply her presence.

How fortunate were they who could be with the one person, see them, talk to them, touch them?

Hold them in their arms through the night, as he did Nina, for that one, irreplaceable, unrepeatable, utterly sustaining night.

To be with her was everything he needed, it was the very sustenance of life, it was everything he wanted and could not have.

He lifted his face to the prickling rain and felt his throat stiffen with the howl he could not let out.

He wanted to shout with all his strength and have it echo off the sky.

But he was not quite so far gone as to do it, not even on his own land.

No, he was confined, circumscribed by the rules and laws and customs and manners of the country and the society and the class he was born into.

Gentlemen did not shout. They did not make a fuss.

They did not abandon their wives and run off with someone else’s.

Tiger made a small sound, looking up at him, sensing his tension, and he forced himself to relax.

He put down a hand to the dog and felt it licked consolingly.

He had so much, he was lucky beyond the lot of most men.

He had a loving wife, two little sons he adored, an estate to run, a purpose in life and enough money to pursue it.

Lucky, lucky, lucky man. He stared around at the horizon, the line of the hills and treetops that blurred into the misty sky like a watercolour.

She was somewhere out there, perhaps thinking of him.

She lived in the same day, under the same sky, in the same world, and that was all he could have.

‘Can we make this one time pay for everything?’ she had said.

Can it be enough? No. But it was all they would ever have.