Page 38 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #3)

At that moment, there was a disturbance further down the ward.

A nurse at a bedside, bending over a patient, called, ‘Sister! Can you come?’ Rapidly screens were drawn round the bed and the sister disappeared inside.

After a moment she and the nurse came out and walked off in different directions, but the screens remained.

Giles, for some reason, was sure that the occupant of the bed had just died.

This was not a good place for Moss, he decided, with the evidence of mortal decay all around.

The sister came back to him to say, ‘Forgive me, my lord, but it would be better to leave the patient to sleep now.’

Giles turned to her, away from Moss, and said quietly, ‘Can he be moved? Would it be better for him to be taken home?’

‘Not at present,’ she said regretfully, reluctant to refuse him anything. ‘We need to keep him sedated for the first two weeks. An episode of this sort is sometimes followed by a second, more serious. If that happened, it would be better if he were here.’

Giles saw the point. ‘After that, then?’

‘If all goes well, he could be moved somewhere else to recuperate. But he will need care from a trained nurse. And it is likely to be a long time before he can resume work – if he ever does.’

Giles nodded. ‘Very well. I’ll just say goodbye.’ He turned back to Moss, who seemed to be drifting off to sleep, leaned close and said quietly, ‘Goodbye for now, Moss. Don’t worry about anything. It will all be taken care of.’

Moss muttered something, and seemed to be drifting deeper. But then his eyes flew open, and he cried in alarm, ‘Ada!’

Giles was turning away. ‘What is it, old fellow?’ he asked, leaning over again.

‘Ada was with me. The housemaid. What happened to her? Where is she?’

‘She was brought home all safe and sound. Don’t worry.’

‘She must have been so scared,’ Moss said, tears gathering again. ‘Tell her – tell her . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘Tell her I’m all right,’ Moss said, with a shuddering sigh. He looked up at Giles drearily, as though all light had gone from the world.

‘I will,’ Giles said.

A few moments later he was back outside in the sunshine, and found himself breathing deeply and with a strange urge to run, like someone let out of prison.

He was suddenly seeing the episode from Moss’s point of view, realising how fragile a servant’s life was.

Illness and old age were an existential threat to someone who had no family, no resources, no financial buffer to fall back on.

Work was everything – not an agreeable pastime but the absolute essential for existence.

If you couldn’t work, there was nowhere to go.

All that waited for you was the workhouse, and death.

‘Oh, the poor man!’ Kitty exclaimed. ‘He must be so worried. You did reassure him, Giles? You told him we would take care of him?’

‘I told him not to worry,’ Giles said. ‘But it looks as though he won’t be able to work again for some time. And he’ll need nursing.’

‘We can hire a trained nurse,’ Kitty said. ‘He’ll be better off at home, at any rate. Hospitals are dreadful places.’

Giles shook his head, remembering. ‘It was depressing, all right. But it looks like being an expensive business, nursing him back to health. And there’s no knowing if he’ll ever be fit enough to take up his old position.’

Kitty looked alarmed. ‘What are you saying? You can’t mean to abandon him, after all these years of service!’ Giles didn’t answer. ‘What about all those old servants who are paid pensions by the estate?’

‘A pension is one thing – it’s a small sum of money, and they look after themselves. Taking full care of him for month after month will be far more expensive.’

‘And what will happen to him if we don’t?’ she asked.

It was a mild enough question, but her eyes were sparkling and her cheeks were flushed with determination.

He was reminded, with a pang, of that moment on their honeymoon when she had turned on him and demanded to be treated with respect.

The difference now was that her hands were cupped protectively over her belly as she spoke.

Still, he wanted to tell her she was prettier than ever, and that being roused suited her.

For a moment he wished she weren’t pregnant, because they were alone in her bedroom and he wanted her.

‘The workhouse, I suppose. I don’t think he has any family.’

‘I don’t think you would actually know, would you?’

He smiled at her, and touched her cheek. She recoiled angrily. ‘No, I don’t know. But don’t bite me, Kitty. I wasn’t proposing to abandon the old fellow. I was simply musing aloud that it will be expensive.’

Kitty waved a hand vaguely towards the window.

‘You talk about expense, after all this ?’ His comprehension quickened by his awareness of her, he understood she meant Rachel’s come-out, the hiring of Pelham House and the extra servants, the ball, the clothes, the carriages, and all the other expenditure of showing her to society.

‘The business of the debut and the Season is not something designed by me,’ he said mildly, his eyes tracing the curve of her taut lips. ‘I don’t seek to justify it.’

She took a step closer, looking up, quivering with intensity. ‘If you don’t take care of Moss, Giles, I shall never speak to you again!’

He laughed, put his arms round her, drew her against him.

‘Little firebrand! Moss shall be taken care of. How jealous I am that you care so much about him! Would you fight that way for me, I wonder?’ And he kissed her.

For an instant she resisted, but then her lips softened and she melted against him, and he felt a surge of sexual desire.

Nothing to be done about it, in her condition.

After a moment he pushed down his feelings and gently disengaged himself from her.

Her face looked flushed and a little dazed.

‘Well, would you?’ he asked, with tender amusement. ‘Fight for me?’

‘You know I would.’

‘For your information, I always intended taking care of the old boy,’ he said. ‘Go to bed now. I’ll talk to my mother tomorrow.’

He left her and went away to his own room, reflecting that at no point had she mentioned that all the money in discussion came originally from her.

Nor had she mentioned her condition. He smiled to himself, thinking that, somehow or other, Kitty had learned a code.

She did not use feminine tactics. She seldom fought, but when she did, she fought fair.

He went early to Portman Square to catch his mother before the debutante machine started up, and was admitted to her bedroom, where she was in her dressing-gown, sitting at the table in the window partaking of tea and toast and going through the day’s letters and invitations..

Succinctly, he told her about Moss’s condition.

‘It is a nuisance,’ she said. ‘I have the dinner on Wednesday. Well, we shall manage. I can hire another man from the agency just for one evening.’ She went back to her post. ‘Lady Vane – a soirée , no less! She seeks to distinguish herself with the use of the French language. If she means a card evening, she should say so.’

Giles smiled to himself, and said, ‘You do not ask me what arrangements need to be made for Moss’s recuperation. You are not concerned about his future?’

She looked up. ‘He is your butler. What have I to do with it?’

He studied her for a moment, and under his gaze a slight colour came to her cheeks. ‘Can it really be that you are detaching yourself from our daily affairs?’ he mused. ‘That you no longer regard yourself as the mistress of Ashmore Castle?’

‘You are a married man, Stainton,’ she snapped. ‘You are too old for childish games.’

‘If that is the case,’ he went on, as if she hadn’t spoken, ‘it would mean that you finally accept the reality of Father’s death. Are you planning a new life away from us?’

‘Don’t be impertinent,’ she said, her colour deepening.

He continued to examine her. ‘There’s something different about you this morning, Mother,’ he said. ‘I can’t decide what.’

‘Nonsense,’ she said. But she looked away first.

He prepared to leave. ‘In case you are interested, in spite of your protestations, I do intend to take care of Moss, though his recovery may be a long one. I was thinking it might be better to move him to a nursing-home. He needs complete rest, the doctor says, and he probably wouldn’t relax at the Castle, watching someone else do his job, and thinking how he would do it differently. ’

‘A nursing-home?’ she exclaimed. ‘For a servant? You are a fool. But if you wish to throw your money about in that ostentatious and unnecessary manner, it is none of my business. Go away, now,’ she added hastily. ‘I have to dress.’

He suspected she had been afraid he might be about to mention in counter-argument the throwing about of money over Rachel’s debut. He went, reflecting that it was the first time she had called him Stainton, his father’s title. Something was going on.

In the hall, it was James who brought his hat and cane to him, and fixed his glittering, hungry eyes on him.

‘Might I ask, my lord, how Mr Moss is?’

‘He had a heart attack, but the doctors think he will recover, though it will be a long process.’

James moved to the door as if to open it for him, but he stood with his hand on the knob, effectively holding Giles prisoner. ‘So he won’t be able to return to his job for a long time, my lord – if ever?’

Giles was not going to have this argument for a third time, least of all with a servant. ‘Thank you, James,’ he said pointedly.

‘My lord, I can do the job. I’ve done it all at various times. I’m the senior footman, I’m the most experienced. You don’t want a stranger coming in, my lord, who doesn’t know the Castle or how we do things. Make me butler, my lord! I’m the right man for it. I won’t let you down.’

Giles didn’t like James, his cadaverous thinness, his devouring eyes.

There was just something about him . . .

And he should have dismissed him when he refused to go to Egypt with him.

He had only kept him on because he thought the humiliation of demotion would be more of a punishment.

But there was something in what he said.

Certainly, his manner as a servant to visitors was unimpeachable, and a strange new butler might cause friction below stairs, wanting to change things.

‘I’ll think about it,’ he said shortly.

‘Thank you, my lord! But to keep things working smooth, it’d avoid any inconvenience for you , my lord, if you were just to appoint me now. You don’t want to be having to think about domestic matters, my lord. Let me take all that off your mind, my lord. Make me butler.’

Those were valid points, but Giles wasn’t going to be badgered by a servant, least of all one he didn’t like. It probably would be James in the end, but he wasn’t going to satisfy him now. ‘The door, James,’ he said.

James lowered his eyes, opened the door obsequiously, closed it behind him.

Inwardly, he rejoiced. He felt sure the job was his.

If me lord wasn’t going to give it to him, he’d have said so.

James was under no illusion that Lord Stainton liked him, but everybody knew how disruptive it was to bring in an outside butler.

People held on to their butlers, and one who was out of work was likely to be out of work for a reason.

He dismissed the idea that Moss might get better and come back – he was an old man, and with compromised health would never be up to it again.

Even if they appointed James on a temporary basis, he would make the job so much his own they would never get him out.

His ambition was within his reach at last.

As soon as he had time off, he would go round the wine merchants and let them know how the land lay.

One of a butler’s perks was the commission traders would pay to get the business, and the wine merchant’s was the biggest and best. It was a wonderful bit of luck that he was in London just at this moment.

And the new Lord Stainton knew nothing about wine – not like the old lord – so he would have power worth paying for.