Page 1 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #3)

As the butler, Moss, walked down the room, everyone could see that there was a letter with a foreign stamp on his silver salver. But everyone was too polite to stare, and carried on eating breakfast as if nothing interesting were happening.

Moss stopped by Kitty, bowed, and murmured.

She took the envelope and, while he paced slowly back, opened it, drew out the sheet and read it.

It was only when she folded it back into the envelope without comment that the patience of her sister-in-law Linda snapped.

She glared at Kitty, and said, ‘Well? I suppose it is from Giles. What does he say?’

‘Dear,’ Linda’s husband, Lord Cordwell, admonished gently.

Even Kitty’s mother-in-law, the dowager countess, not known for tact, drew a sharp breath of disapproval.

Linda shrugged it off. ‘Oh, don’t pretend you don’t all want to know,’ she addressed the room. ‘Kitty! What does he say?’

Kitty didn’t answer at once. Her throat had closed.

She hadn’t expected to hear from her husband.

Even if he had time to write, and had anything he wanted to say to her, she didn’t suppose there were postboxes in the Valley of the Kings.

Her heart had jumped with painful joy when she saw the letter: the disappointment was proportionately great.

‘He says one of the other archaeologists at the dig had to come back to Paris on business, and offered to post letters for everyone there,’ she said at last.

‘Oh, don’t be tiresome,’ Linda said. ‘Is he coming back for Christmas? That’s what we want to know.’

Alice and Rachel both looked up at that point, hope in their faces. But Richard said, ‘It’s the best part of two weeks’ travelling to get back here, and he hasn’t been gone long. It wouldn’t be worth his while.’

Linda gave a snort of disapproval. ‘It’s disgraceful, going off like that. It looks so outré . People will talk if he’s not here for Christmas. But that’s typical of Giles – he thinks of no-one but himself.’

Kitty pushed back her chair abruptly and got up. Linda threw the rest of the rebuke at her departing back. ‘I blame you, Kitty! You’ve had plenty of opportunity to develop a proper influence over him. If you had exerted yourself, we shouldn’t now be in this position.’

‘Please may I have the stamp, Aunty Kitty?’ Linda’s son Arthur pleaded urgently, but had no reply.

The dowager shrivelled Arthur with a look, and said to Linda, ‘I cannot understand why the children should eat with us at breakfast. None of my children was allowed down until they were twelve.’

‘It was Kitty’s idea,’ Linda said sulkily. ‘It’s a modern thing, I suppose.’

‘It’s so that they can learn how to behave at the table,’ Richard said, but the veiled rebuke slid off her. She might notice being hit with a brick, but subtlety was wasted on her.

‘Stuff and nonsense,’ said the dowager to Richard. ‘That is what a nanny is for, to teach them manners. And until they have acquired them, they should remain in the nursery. Why did you not bring their nanny with you?’ she asked Linda.

‘Oh, she left suddenly, just before we came away,’ Linda said, buttering a piece of toast so fiercely it shattered.

The fact was that they couldn’t afford a nanny.

The Cordwell finances were in a perilous state, and Linda was hoping for a lengthy stay at Ashmore Castle to tide them over a thin patch.

Cordwell sighed so penetratingly that Sebastian, who had a shrewd idea how things stood at Holme Manor, felt sorry for him, and sought to distract him. ‘What do you say to taking a gun out this morning, Cordwell? We could walk down to the Carr and see if there are any duck.’

While they were discussing the possibility, Richard slipped out and went looking for Kitty.

In the Peacock Room, which she had taken as her private sitting-room, Kitty was standing at the window, staring out at the grey winter day. The cloud hung low over the woods like mist; nothing moved but rooks, scraps of black blowing above the trees.

On the wall beside the window was the pencil-and-water-colour likeness of Giles that Alice had done, which he had had framed as a present for her.

It showed him three-quarter profile, looking away pensively into the distance.

It was appropriate, she thought: his mind, his heart, would always be somewhere else.

She had shed all her tears in the days after he had left for Egypt to join friends at a dig.

Archaeology was his passion, as she had always known; but it was his parting words that had crushed her.

He had said he felt stifled at home, that he needed to get away.

She feared that she was one of the things he wanted to get away from.

At any rate, she had no power to keep him with her.

She’d had to realise that he did not love her as she loved him.

His wife, his child, his home, his family, together had less pull than the dusty sarcophagi and crumbling bones of long-dead strangers.

She heard someone come in behind her, and knew from the aroma of the Paris Pearl lotion he used after shaving that it was Richard. He came up behind her and placed a light hand on her shoulder.

‘Poor Pusscat!’ he said. ‘Don’t cry any more. My sister’s an ass, and there’s nothing to be done about her.’

‘I’m not crying,’ Kitty said.

‘But you sound as though you might. There’s nothing to be done about Giles, either, you know.’ She turned to face him, showing her eyes bright but dry. ‘What did he say in the letter, my impossible brother?’

‘That the weather was tolerable, the insects not too troublesome, the dig going well, and they think they are on the brink of exciting discoveries.’

‘Abominable! Married to the prettiest woman in England and not one tender word for her?’

‘Will people really talk when he’s not here for Christmas?’ she asked.

‘Can’t think why they should,’ he said. ‘In his position he can do whatever he wants. Of course, people would generally prefer an earl to go in for the traditional sins: loose women and high-stakes gambling, like my father – who was much admired, by the by. But if old Giles can’t quite rise to full-blooded vice, embracing eccentricity is the next best thing.

The only really shocking thing would be for him to behave with Victorian propriety. ’

‘You’re talking nonsense to cheer me up,’ Kitty said, beginning to smile.

He gave her a look of shining innocence.

‘Not a bit! Look at our dear old King Teddy. Thoroughly naughty before he came to the throne, and everyone loves him for it. They wouldn’t feel the same about him at all if he had comported himself like a respectable bank clerk from Sidcup.

Now, what we must do is dedicate ourselves to the cause of cheering you up.

We should throw the most tremendous Christmas ball. ’

‘A ball? Really?’

‘Really! Let’s see . . . It should be on the Saturday before Christmas. The nineteenth.’

‘But that’s so close – everyone will already be engaged.’

‘They’ll cancel, for a ball at Ashmore Castle,’ he said confidently.

‘We’ll ask a dozen people to stay for it, and give them a shoot on the Sunday.

I’ll arrange that part of it with Adeane and Saddler.

And invite everyone in the neighbourhood for the dancing.

’ He looked around. ‘You must have paper and ink here. Yes, fetch them, then, and we’ll start making lists.

Then you can talk to Mrs Webster while I go and see Adeane. ’

‘I’m so glad I bought new mattresses for all the beds,’ she said, crossing the room to her escritoire.

‘The mattresses are the essential element,’ he assured her. ‘It’s what people will principally come for.’

She smiled. ‘You’re absurd.‘

Mrs Terry had been cook at Ashmore Castle for only seven months.

She had been just plain Ida, the head kitchen-maid, under the previous cook, Mrs Oxlea.

But after Mrs Oxlea’s shocking death, she’d had to take over on an emergency basis.

She had been doing a lot of the work anyway – Mrs Oxlea had been a drinker – and she’d long had ambitions.

When Mrs Webster, the housekeeper, had relayed the mistress’s enquiry as to whether she would like the post permanently, she’d been glad and grateful.

Everyone seemed to think she had done pretty well. But there had not been any major entertaining until now. A ball! And people to stay for it as well! It was a completely new challenge.

Mrs Webster had come straight to see her, before the plan had been officially announced.

The news had reached her in the usual roundabout but effective way: Richard had gone from Kitty to see Uncle Sebastian, who had been in his room.

Sebastian’s valet Crooks had been bumbling about in the background so could hardly help overhearing, and Crooks had lost no time in telling Mrs Webster.

Mrs Webster had no doubts about her own ability to cope, but she realised that Ida would need encouragement. ‘The mistress will send for you, and of course you must pretend it’s all news to you, but it will be a good thing to have your plans ready, so that you can seem calm and confident.’

Ida was not calm and confident yet. ‘A dozen people to stay! Plus the family.’

‘Plus their servants, don’t forget. It’s a lot extra, but Brigid and Aggie can do the cooking for the servants’ hall. Don’t worry about that.’

‘What do people have at a ball? Isn’t there always a supper?’

‘A buffet,’ Mrs Webster said. ‘You can make most of it ahead of time. Lobster and oyster patties, bouchées à la reine, that sort of thing. A glazed ham. A cold sirloin for the gentlemen. Soft rolls—’

‘When will I have time to make those ?’

‘Buy them in,’ Mrs Webster said briskly. ‘Toller’s in the village can supply them, and nobody will know the difference.’

‘If you think it’s all right . . . What else?’