Page 39 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #3)

‘I must say, Mr Crooks, that it’s a great pleasure having you back here,’ said Mrs May.

She was making pastry in the kitchen of Sebastian’s little house in Henley.

Through the open window from the garden came gentle warm air and the cheerful sound of birds getting on with the pressing business of life.

Crooks, seated to one side of the kitchen by the small table, on which newspaper was decently spread, was cleaning the master’s boots.

Before he could answer, Olive came in from the garden with a trug of potatoes, which she dumped in the sink. ‘Joe sent ’em up,’ she announced. ‘First new ’uns.’

‘They’ll go lovely with that bit of lamb for the master’s dinner,’ said Mrs May. ‘I hope everything’s all right with him, Mr Crooks. We were all quite believing that he was going to bring us home a mistress, after all that refurbishment last year. Have you heard any more about it?’

‘Nothing at all, Mrs May,’ Crooks said, his eyes on the boots.

Mrs May drew breath to speak, then changed her mind. She turned her head towards Olive. ‘Be a dear and go down the cellar, and look over the apples for me. Bring me up half a dozen sound ones. I think I’ll make this into an apple pie.’

‘I was just going to wash the potatoes,’ Olive said.

‘You can do ’em after. Get the apples first, so I know.’

‘I thought you were going to make a mincemeat tart,’ Olive objected.

‘We might as well use up the apples as let ’em go bad. If there’s not enough, it’ll have to be apple and mincemeat, won’t it, but that’s nice too. Don’t stand there arguing – go on, do.’

When Olive had departed, Mrs May turned back to Crooks.

‘There, she’s out of the way. I don’t blame you for being discreet with Olive in the room, because there’s no doubt that girl does talk.

But you can trust me, Mr Crooks – I’m deep as a well.

What happened about the marriage plans? I was sure as sure he was doing up the place to bring home a wife. ’

‘It was never expressed to me in those terms, Mrs May,’ Crooks said. ‘Nothing was ever said in my presence about a wife.’

‘But you thought it too, I know you did.’

‘It was the obvious conclusion to draw,’ he admitted.

‘Why else would he have done out the garden parlour that’s never been used in all my time here?

And done it so nice and light and – feminine , I would call it.

I suppose they must have quarrelled. What a shame!

And him such a sweet-tempered man. I’ve been here twenty years and never had a sharp word from him.

Do you know who the lady was, Mr Crooks? ’

‘No, I do not. As to a quarrel, well, he did seem despondent just after Christmas. He stopped playing the piano for a time, and that wasn’t at all like him.’

‘Ooh dear! That sounds serious. He does love his piano. Is he broken-hearted, d’you think?’ Mrs May asked, greedy for sensation.

Crooks frowned. ‘A gentleman of mature years and regular temper is never overset by life’s vicissitudes.’

‘No. I dare say he’s not,’ Mrs May said blankly, not sure what ‘vicissitudes’ were.

‘But I feel as though things are taking a turn for the better now,’ Crooks went on. ‘While I can’t say he has returned to his former level of cheerfulness, he has an air of purpose about him.’

‘So you think they’ve made it up?’

‘I can only say that I don’t think he is really unhappy.’

‘Oh,’ said Mrs May, disappointed. While she naturally wished the master no ill, she’d have liked him to be sunk in broken-hearted grief – or exuberant with joy.

An air of purpose, whatever that was when it was at home, offered you nothing to get your teeth into.

‘So I wonder why he’s come down here? It’s not his usual time. ’

‘I couldn’t say,’ said Crooks. His master, he thought, had an air of waiting for something: news, or an occurrence.

But that was the merest speculation. He looked up from the left boot and caught Mrs May’s disgruntled expression.

‘I really can’t say,’ he said, with more emphasis. ‘Because I don’t know.’

‘Oh,’ she said. And then, ‘Well, I dare say it will all come out in the wash, one way or the other. And it’s very nice to have company. It can be a bit dull here with just Olive and me, and her sleeping out. What would you say, Mr Crooks, to a hand of cards this evening? Cribbage, if you like.’

‘That would be most agreeable,’ said Crooks.

Molly Sands’s last pupil of the day had cancelled, and Richard had taken her for a walk in Green Park. ‘You don’t get out enough,’ he told her sternly. ‘Sunlight and fresh air are very important for your health.’

She looked at him with level amusement. ‘I’m sure you’ve shunned daylight for most of your life in favour of frowsting indoors and carousing, like every other young man. Alcohol, cigarettes and games of chance – late evenings in smoky rooms – not waking until noon is long past . . .’

‘Now, where did you get that idea?’ he asked, with large indignation.

‘I was a soldier, don’t you remember? Galloping across the veldt under blue South African skies.

Sleeping under the stars with my saddle for a pillow.

Up with the first grey light of dawn to wash in an icy stream.

I could hardly have chosen a healthier life if I’d thought it out for a fortnight. ’

‘You do talk nonsense,’ she said fondly. ‘I must say, though, that it is very pleasant to be out while there’s still daylight.’ She lifted her face to the sun and closed her eyes in pleasure for a moment.

He thought she looked tired, and felt a pang. He longed to snatch her away from her life of toil. ‘If only I had a white horse with me, I would catch you up before me and gallop away with you,’ he said. ‘Take my arm – the path is rough here.’

She took it with a smile of complicity, knowing he just wanted her touch, and they walked on in silence for a while, the silence of people at ease with each other.

After a while she said, ‘How was the dinner last night?’

‘Large and dull,’ he said. ‘I would sooner have had a neat supper with you. I was only asked because my mother needed a single man. That’s all I am these days – a make-weight at the dinner table.’

‘Poor you!’ she sad. ‘Self-pity is so very painful.’

He pinched her arm in retaliation, and said, ‘It was rather strange not to have Moss there, being magnificent in the hall.’

‘Any more news of him?’

‘No, he’s still in the infirmary. Which reminds me, there was a report in the paper the other day about something or other, and they had mis-spelled the word “infirmary” as “infamy”. I thought that rather appropriate.’

‘Is it very dreadful?’

‘Not dreadful, just bleak. But, then, I suppose his bedroom at the Castle is probably not a nest of Oriental luxury. I haven’t been in it, you understand – I speak as a matter of general principle.’

‘I don’t suppose he minds it as you would. One judges from the point of view of what one is used to.’

‘Whatever makes you think I’m used to Oriental luxury?’ He frowned, thinking. ‘The oddest thing about it, you know, is not the heart attack.’

‘It isn’t?’

‘No, he’s a large, florid man, and like all butlers I suspect he does rather well for himself on the master’s wine, especially the port—’

‘Why especially the port?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Tradition, probably. My point is that butlers are supposed to be large, florid men, or how can they be imposing? Now, the footman who was standing in for him last night is not at all butlery – a cadaver of a man, all bones and angles. He—’

‘You were going to tell me the oddest thing about it,’ she reminded him.

‘Oh, yes – the oddest thing was that he went to the zoo on his afternoon off, Moss did, and took one of the housemaids with him.’

‘Do you find the zoo or the housemaid odd?’

‘Both, but the housemaid most of all.’

‘Ah, a romance!’ she said. ‘That’s nice. Is she pretty?’

‘ I don’t think so. Pale and insipid. But he must, or why did he pick her?

She was brought back by a large policeman, apparently, and had a fit of hysterics, but the next day she was completely normal and showed not the slightest sign of being upset.

Nor has she requested leave to visit him.

So if it was a romance, it was one-sided. ’

‘How do you know all this?’ she asked, amused.

‘Oh, a footman came over with a message, and Giles’s new man Afton got it all out of him.

And I got it all out of Afton. Invaluable man, Afton – I like him tremendously.

He’s valeting me as well as Giles while we’re all at Aunt Caroline’s.

’ His smile faded. ‘Speaking of being at Aunt Caroline’s . . .’

‘You’re going home,’ she guessed. ‘To the Castle.’

‘Not immediately, but I am leaving the wicked city,’ he said, making light because he really didn’t want to go. ‘I have to go and see a man about a bull.’

‘Your dairy scheme?’

‘Yes, taking off at last. There’s a fellow near Dunstable that has a fine herd of Shorthorns and he has a pedigreed bull for sale.

There’s a tremendous amount of work to do at home, improving the pastures and getting the buildings up to scratch, but the bull can get on with his side of it in the meanwhile.

And the sooner we get the cows in calf to a good bull, the sooner we’ll have the new generation of heifers to—’ He broke off abruptly.

‘It occurs to me that this is a quite improper conversation to have with a lady.’

‘Perhaps it’s as well then that I’m not a lady.’

‘You mustn’t say that,’ he said seriously. ‘You’re more a lady than any other female I’ve ever met. And if only I were not a wretched pauper and helpless pensioner of my brother, I would set you up in the condition in life you deserve.’

‘If we all got what we deserved, which of us would escape calumny?’ she said lightly. ‘When are you leaving?’

‘Tomorrow, I’m afraid. Can I take you out to supper tonight?’

‘Very well, if you promise not to be sentimental.’

‘I’m never sentimental. Passionate, sometimes—’

‘No passion, either.’