Page 12 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #3)
There was very little snow in Market Harborough that winter, and the hunting season had gone ahead without let. It also went ahead without Nina, whose husband had forbidden her until the shocking episode of her riding astride had been forgotten.
‘Come the summer . . .’ Mr Cowling had hinted, half apologetically.
Nina was quick to pin him down. ‘You’ll let me ride in the summer?’
‘If the gossip dies down, I’ll buy you a horse and you can go on quiet hacks like a proper genteel lady.’
‘And hunting next winter?’
‘We’ll see.’
It was the best she could hope for. It was galling to see her friend Bobby dressed for the hunt, mounted on one of her fine animals, going off from meets.
Bobby had not yet got up the courage to hunt astride.
Her husband, the mild and gentle Aubrey, had had reservations.
‘I fear the world is not yet ready for the sight of Lady Wharfedale leading the field in trousers,’ he had drawled.
Bobby told Nina that Aubrey so rarely put his foot down one was bound to obey when he did.
She declared herself disappointed, but in truth, she was quite glad of the excuse not to expose herself all alone.
Next winter, she thought, with Nina, and perhaps Lady Clemmie .
. . There was safety in numbers – and effective protest, too.
Despite not hunting, Nina had enjoyed the season.
There were parties, dances and dinners every week, and though Mr Cowling had often been absent on business, he had always encouraged her to accept a solo invitation if it came.
Her wardrobe had kept up with her social engagements: Mr Cowling was always eager for her to order new dresses – in truth, more often than she really wanted them.
He loved her to be decked out in finery, and never came back from a business absence without a present for her: a fine pair of gloves or new silk stockings at the very least. More often it was a bolt of silk to have made up, or a fur piece, or jewellery.
He had a good eye for jewellery, and loved to see her sparkle.
Her collection grew to the point where Mrs Deering, her housekeeper, urged her to ask the master to have a safe installed.
Mr Cowling saw the wisdom of it, and it was done.
Nina’s new friendship with Lady Clemmie Leacock was flourishing.
Clemmie was educated and amusing, and had a keen interest in the advancement of women’s rights.
She held several meetings during the winter, with an invited speaker, often down from London, to talk about the franchise or another current preoccupation.
Mr Cowling encouraged her friendship with Clemmie, whom he saw as a very proper, genteel lady of the old school, just the sort of friend he wanted for his wife, rather than that harum-scarum Bobby Wharfedale.
He never attended Clemmie’s meetings and Nina never mentioned specifically what was discussed.
She suspected he wouldn’t be comfortable with her being exposed to yet more revolutionary ideas.
Still, Nina did feel a little wistful one fine sharp morning when she stood in the market square to watch the Fernie meet. Her terrier, Trump, strained at the leash, his whole body aquiver with excitement at the smells and sounds and movement.
‘I know how you feel,’ Nina told him, giving him a tug, ‘but if I have to behave myself, so must you.’
‘They say talking to oneself is the first sign of madness,’ said a voice just beside her. She turned to see Bobby’s brother, Adam Denbigh, smiling at her wryly. ‘Though I’ve always thought,’ he went on, ‘that it merely shows superior taste.’
‘Adam?’ she exclaimed.
‘Nina?’ he exclaimed back, in the identical tone.
‘I’m surprised to see you,’ she explained hastily. ‘I thought you were hunting. Bobby said you were going out with her.’
‘So I was,’ he said. ‘But my first horse has an overreach, my second horse has a cough, my groom has a cold in the head and is, frankly, quite a disgusting sight, and my valet has discovered a split in the seam of my favourite breeches, which he ought to have noticed when I last took them off, but didn’t.
I am pondering whether or not to dismiss him – but he does have a way with boots.
So, all in all, it became simply too much effort, and Mr Denbigh will not be hunting this morning.
You will see a notice pinned to the gates of Welland Hall, as they do it at Buckingham Palace when the King is unwell. ’
‘I’m sure you could have managed somehow,’ Nina said reproachfully, for it seemed an awful waste when she would have loved to go. ‘Your second-best breeches and a borrowed horse?’
‘Perhaps it was a trifle se couper le nez pour vexer le visage ,’ he said languidly, ‘but, though I fear it will shock you to learn it, Mrs Cowling, even I am not perfect.’
‘Yes, I am shocked,’ Nina said, enjoying Adam’s nonsense (and he was not the harder to talk to for being extremely handsome). ‘But it shows a nobility in you, to come to the meet when you can’t hunt.’
‘I could say the same of you.’
‘I was walking Trump anyway, so I thought I might as well come this way as another.’
The hunt was moving off now, and they were silent a moment, watching, until the last horses and the foot-followers had disappeared down the street. Then Adam said, ‘It’s a cold day to be standing about. May I escort you to the Copper Kettle for a restorative cup of cocoa?’
Cocoa became instantly the thing Nina wanted most in the world; but she hesitated.
Adam smiled knowingly, watching her expression.
‘You are wondering whether it’s quite proper for a married lady to visit a café with a single gentleman, even if he is the acme of respectability and the brother of her best friend to boot.
Or – wait! – perhaps you just don’t like me enough?
’ He buried his head in his hands. ‘The humiliation! Oh, my wounded feelings!’
She knew he was joking, but still she hastened to reassure him. ‘Of course I like you! But I was wondering if Mr Cowling . . . You see, he is very careful about appearances.’
‘“And he does disapprove of you, Mr Denbigh,”’ he supplied, imitating her tone.
It was true: her husband thought Adam Denbigh rackety. She blushed. ‘Not at all,’ she muttered.
‘My dear child, a married man is suspicious of any unmarried man who comes within twenty feet of his wife, no matter how honourable his intentions. Be he as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, he shall not escape calumny.’
‘I’m sure you are all those things, but isn’t it wrong to disobey your husband?’ she said.
‘It depends on whether his orders are wrong in the first place.’
It was a shocking thing to hear said aloud, even if Nina had thought it about the ban on her riding.
There had been hints in Lady Clemmie’s meetings of something along the same lines: what right did men have to dictate to women what they might or might not do?
It had not been said in so many words, but there had been an unspoken undercurrent.
And the answer, of course, seemed to be that since women could not earn their own living, but were dependent on the man who kept them, they must obey.
However much they sometimes disliked it.
‘You mustn’t say such things to me, Mr Denbigh,’ she said.
He repented. ‘No, I mustn’t. I apologise.
’ He sounded sincere, though she still looked at him doubtfully.
‘Well, let us stand out here in the cold and talk. No-one can suspect any wrong-doing when we are subjecting ourselves to this cutting wind. They will see how unattractive I look with a red nose and you will be quite safe from gossip.’
She laughed unwillingly. ‘Your nose isn’t red. But it is too cold to stand still. I shall walk home, and you can accompany me to the gate if you like.’
He fell in beside her. ‘You are still coming to our ball this evening? Bobby says Mr Cowling is away but you will come alone.’
‘He’s had to go to Leicester to visit his factories, and won’t be back for a few days, but he did tell me I should go. He doesn’t want me to miss all the fun.’
‘And you dine there first,’ he said. ‘I think Bobby has paired us for dinner – oh, the inestimable value of the unattached man! I could dine out every day of the week, you know, just for the purpose of making numbers even.’
‘I don’t believe for a moment that Bobby cares about even numbers.’
‘Well, on the whole, you’re right, she doesn’t. But every now and then an impulse comes over her to be elegant. At all events, I shall take you in to dinner, and talk to you agreeably – though not too agreeably, given that all eyes will be upon us—’
‘Fool! Of course they won’t!’
‘That’s better. I prefer “fool” to “Mr Denbigh”. But “Adam” is best of all. Makes it sound as if we were in the nursery together, and nothing could be more innocent than that.’
‘If we’d been in the nursery together I should call you “Kipper”.’
‘Only Bobby calls me that. My other sisters call me “Oh, Adam!” in tones of disapproval and despair. But to resume – I shall take you in to dinner, and may I hope for the honour of the first dance?’
‘With pleasure,’ Nina said. ‘I don’t suppose anyone else will ask me.’
He sighed. ‘You do know how to wound a man’s vanity, don’t you?’
‘What have I said? What should I have said?’
‘That although you will be besieged by requests from every man in the room, you will spurn them all to dance with me.’
‘Fool!’ she said again, laughing.