Page 33 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #3)

‘We can take smaller amounts to begin with.’ He glanced at his sons who nodded agreement. ‘But it seems to me you’ve got a lot to do before you get even to that point.’

‘We have,’ said Cowling. ‘But it’s good to know you’re ready at this end. The other end,’ he looked at Richard and Giles, ‘is like to be the more difficult.’

When the Elthornes had gone, Richard turned to Cowling and said, ‘I notice you were saying “we” all through. Was that just a diplomatic plural?’

Cowling gave him a fatherly smile. ‘Ah, well, as you said to me, business is business, and I can’t help getting interested in new ideas, when they’re good ones.

I’ll go along with you and hold your hand as far as that goes.

But I won’t part with any brass at this point.

I’d like to hear what you propose about collecting the milk and getting it to the station. ’

‘Well,’ said Richard, with relish, ‘this is what I’m thinking so far.’

Giles listened, watching his brother’s face and marvelling at his enthusiasm.

It was good that languid, sophisticated Richard had at last found something he could be interested in.

Giles would never have expected it to be related to farming.

For himself, he was still not mentally back in England.

When he closed his eyes, it was the Valley of the Kings he saw, not Berkeley Square.

‘How was the ball?’ Nina asked. ‘Was it very splendid?’

She and Kitty were sitting on a bench in Berkeley Square gardens, with Trump lying at their feet, quivering with suppressed excitement. Nina had him on a leash, because he was passionate about chasing pigeons, of which there were multitudes in the gardens.

When she had called on Kitty, she had proposed going out somewhere, but Kitty looked tired, and further said she didn’t like to be seen in public now that her pregnancy was obvious.

So a stroll in the gardens was suggested, and they had walked a little; but when an empty bench in a secluded spot presented itself, Kitty sat down.

Nina’s question seemed to rouse Kitty from absorbing thoughts.

‘Oh – yes, very,’ she said. ‘Everybody important was there – or so my mother-in-law tells me. The King called in, and there were lots of the nobility and foreign royalty. Rachel looked very lovely and of course she danced every dance.’ She sighed a little.

‘She really enjoyed herself: she loves all the attention. I wish I could have felt like her when I came out.’ She glanced at Nina.

‘If you hadn’t been there to encourage me, I should never have got through it. ’

‘You were braver than you gave yourself credit for,’ Nina said. ‘And look at you now! You’ve changed so much – don’t you think so?’

‘I’m not sure. Do we ever really change inside? I know how to face up to things now, that’s the difference. I do enjoy parties at home, when I know everyone – but I still feel frightened when I have to meet very high-up people.’

‘Dearest Kitty, you are high-up people!’ Nina laughed.

Kitty smiled unwillingly. ‘Well, I don’t feel it.’

‘You don’t see what I see,’ Nina said, waving a hand over her. ‘A very smart, fashionable lady, a society lady in a killing hat – a countess, no less. And a mother, too. Are you very thrilled to have another baby coming?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Kitty said, her face lighting for a moment.

‘I adore Louis, and the thought of having another . . . It ought to be another boy, for the family’s sake, but I can’t help feeling it would be nice to have a daughter, too.

I often think how it would have been if my mother had lived, how close we might have been.

’ She shook her head. ‘I can never understand how little my mother-in-law seems to care for her daughters. Alice is such a dear girl, and a good companion.’ Nina was listening sympathetically, her warm dark eyes fixed attentively on Kitty’s face, and Kitty suddenly felt guilty.

‘But you – no sign of a child yet for you?’

‘No,’ Nina said. She hesitated, but not even with Kitty could she discuss such an intimate problem.

Girls went into marriage in absolute ignorance, and talking about it was tabu.

She did not know, of course, how other people’s marriages went, or what was ‘normal’, but she was sure things were not right between her and Mr Cowling in the bedroom.

There had been one time when, in retrospect, she believed the expected thing had taken place, but there had been nothing like it before or since.

Now, on the occasions when he was at home, he rarely came to her bed; and, when there, did nothing more than put his arms round her and fall asleep.

He was always very tired, of course, she reasoned, working so hard and for such long hours; but he loved her – she believed that honestly – and from all that literature had taught her, when a man loved a woman, the physical side followed naturally.

She wished she had an older married friend with whom she could have a frank discussion.

But she certainly could not talk about it with Kitty.

‘No, no sign of that,’ she said. ‘Never mind me, though – tell me about you. Are you feeling well?’

‘Yes, very well. I was a little out of sorts in the early months, but that’s passed now.’

‘I thought you were looking tired.’

‘Oh, that’s . . .’ Kitty hesitated. But this was Nina, who had been there from the beginning. ‘I’ve something on my mind.’

‘Tell me, then,’ Nina said.

Kitty hesitated again, then plunged in. ‘It’s Giles,’ she said.

‘I suppose I’m being foolish – I hope I am – but I can’t seem to help it.

’ In stilted sentences that gradually became more fluent, she told Nina about Giulia Lombardi – how on their honeymoon he had paid her more attention than he paid Kitty, how he delighted in her company, how they talked together for hours in a mixture of English and Italian.

‘And – well – in the end I shouted at him—’

‘You?’ Nina said in astonishment. ‘At Giles ?’

‘It wasn’t like me,’ Kitty admitted ‘But I was jealous. In the end I couldn’t bear it any longer.’

‘My brave Kitty! But what did he say?’

‘That he didn’t care for her that way. That she was like a sister to him. That I was his wife and I had no reason to be jealous. And I believed him. But now she’s back.’

‘Back?’

‘I’ve discovered that she was in Egypt on the dig with him the whole time. Four months out there, working together, living in the same camp. I keep imagining them eating supper under the stars, talking deep into the night, looking into each other’s eyes . . . She’s very beautiful, you know.’

‘But, Kitty, you are beautiful!’

‘Not really,’ she said.

‘But you are ! How can you say that?’ Kitty shook her head. ‘Anyway, Giles is back home now—’

‘But she came to London,’ Kitty said. ‘She’s in London now. And he invited her to the ball.’

Nina was silent a moment. Then, ‘What does Giles say?’

‘The same, that she’s like a sister to him.’

‘Don’t you believe him?’

‘I want to. I do with my mind but – my heart is burning! I’m so jealous. Am I stupid to be jealous? But I feel so unattractive now, like this.’ She gestured towards her burgeoning figure. ‘And she’s not only beautiful, she’s clever, and you know how he’s always loved clever women.’

Nina could only be grateful that Kitty was staring down at herself so didn’t see her momentary expression.

Oh, yes, Giles loved clever women. He had loved her.

Guilt seared her. She had married Mr Cowling in part to be safe from her unconquerable feelings for Kitty’s husband, feelings that must be for ever suppressed, hidden and abhorred.

The irony was not lost on her, of Kitty being jealous of Giulia Lombardi, while she, Nina, was envious of everything Kitty had. But she must answer, reassure, support Kitty, who above all must not suffer.

‘I don’t think you have any reason to be jealous,’ she said, and found, as she said it, that she believed it.

Was she, Nina, jealous of Giulia? No. And how did that come about?

She knew him at a deep level. He was not a man to run after another woman.

He was not a man to be distracted by a trivial passing fancy.

‘He has twice told you she is like a sister to him,’ she said, ‘and I really don’t think he would lie about something like that. ’

‘He might not understand his own feelings,’ Kitty said, in a small voice.

‘He’s known her since she was a child, according to what you’ve told me,’ Nina said. ‘It would be natural for him to feel about her as he does about Rachel, say, or Alice.’

‘He is very fond of Alice,’ Kitty said, with faint hope.

‘I think he’s old enough to know his own mind. If he had fallen in love, he’d know it,’ Nina said, holding back her sadness.

Kitty sighed. ‘But I still feel . . . Oh, if you could see her, Nina! She’s everything I’d like to be: confident, bold, clever, well-read, full of words. She can talk for hours about learned subjects, where I only have the weather and household matters. How can I compete with her?’

‘You don’t have to,’ Nina said, laying a hand over hers. ‘You’re his wife, and the mother of his children. Nothing can change that.’ Nothing, indeed!

In the silence that followed, they both pursued their own thoughts, idly watching the sparrows dust-bathing in a patch of sunshine a little way off.

Trump had gone to sleep, and was making little puffing noises through his lips as he chased pigeons in his dreams. The trees were coming into full leaf, and as the breeze disturbed them the light dappled and fluttered over the people strolling by, nursemaids pushing prams, elderly gentlemen taking a constitutional, busy folk making a short-cut across the square.

‘I’ll be going back down to Ashmore soon,’ Kitty said at last.

‘You’re not being driven away by—’