Page 70 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #3)

Chloe turned to her, becoming brisk. ‘You will have to agree to this, Mother, because I shall be twenty-one in a few weeks and then I’ll be able to do as I please.

But I don’t want to quarrel with you. Please try to understand.

I shall be perfectly safe, I promise you.

And perfectly respectable. And,’ she concluded with the clincher, ‘it’s something I must do.

I have to move on. I can’t do what I need to do living here. ’

‘It seems,’ Molly said stiffly, ‘that I have no choice in the matter.’

‘ Please , Mummy!’ Chloe begged softly, with the childhood word. ‘Give me your blessing.’

And then they were embracing. ‘Oh, my darling child,’ Molly said, muffled in her hair. Then she set her back. ‘If he should so much as look at you—’

Chloe smiled. ‘He won’t. But if he did, I promise you I would come running straight back to you, and let you say, “I told you so.”’

‘ That would not be much comfort.’

‘Oh, I think it would be some , surely? And now I must go – I shall be late for my composition class. Richard, you will stay and comfort Mother, won’t you? She’s bound to want to talk about this for hours yet.’

‘Go, you minx,’ Richard said. ‘I’ll stay as long as I’m wanted.’

She whirled away, all light and movement like sunshine dancing off a river.

When they were alone, Molly said, ‘Oh, Richard!’

‘No, truly, I think she’ll be all right. She’s very level-headed.’

‘He’s Sir Thomas Burton, powerful, rich and famous. And she’s just a penniless child.’

Richard gathered her in his arms, and held her close to comfort her. ‘She’s not a child. She’s as old as her art. I think she could be right that he’s afraid of her. She certainly frightens me.’

She looked up at him and sighed. ‘Ridiculously, I know what you mean. Her talent is something far outside normal parameters. How could I have produced such a – a—’

‘Goddess? You didn’t, perhaps, once step out of time and visit some Arcadian grove to lie with Apollo?’

She laughed, and pushed him away. ‘Foolish! Tell me again, do you really think she’ll be all right?’

‘I really think she’ll be all right. But as there’s nothing you can do about it anyway, it would be foolish to keep worrying, wouldn’t it?’

‘I’m her mother. Worrying is what mothers do.’

‘You’ve never met my mother. She has never worried about any of her five children for a single second. Disapproved of us almost always, been annoyed, angry, exasperated often, but I think her most constant emotion towards us has always been indifference.’

‘Poor Richard,’ she said. ‘You’ve never had the mother’s love that every child ought to have. No wonder you’re—’

She stopped, and he filled in for her lightly.

‘Such a hopeless case? Well, my Mariamne, they say there is always hope while there’s life, so I authorise you to dedicate your life to redeeming me.

And in return, I promise to be an attentive pupil.

’ He stepped close, cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her softly.

Her lips responded for an instant, but then she took his hands and determinedly removed them.

He accepted the rebuff – for now. He asked, ‘What will you do, when Chloe leaves?’

‘What do you mean? What should I do?’

‘Will you stay on here? It’s not the most comfortable of nests. It was never meant to be more than a bachelor’s diggings.’

‘It’s enough for me.’

‘I wish it weren’t,’ Richard said. ‘I wish I had the means to support you.’

‘If wishes were horses . . .’

‘Beggars would sell them to buy a neat little house somewhere and ask the woman they love to marry them.’

It made her laugh. He always had to be sure to leave her smiling, for fear that if he was too serious, she would cut him off. He made light of his deepest feelings, so that she should not have to face her own.

‘This is very unsettling,’ said Giles. ‘You’re sure the pieces are missing?’

‘Well, no, my lord,’ Afton said patiently.

‘I can’t check what’s in the cupboards. Hook has the key to the plate-room, and I can’t ask him for it without a reason.

He keeps it in his bedroom, which now has a lock on the door, so I can’t even take it without his knowing.

The point is that they’re missing from the inventory.

And Hook was the one who wrote it all down. ’

‘But it could still just be a mistake – a transcribing mistake,’ Giles said, in frustration.

Afton said nothing, allowing the thought to develop.

The log was not a hasty scribble, but a careful recording in best copperplate of something being dictated to Hook in Moss’s precise and ponderous delivery.

It was hard to think how he could simply have missed out entire items, unless deliberately.

‘What did you tell him, when you asked for the plate book?’ said Giles.

‘I just said you wanted to look at it, my lord. It was not my place to explain your reasons or his to ask. He will have supplied himself with a reason. For instance, you might simply want to know what there is that might be sold.’

Giles thought, I’m surprised there’s anything left after my father’s depredations , but he didn’t say so aloud, of course. ‘I don’t see that we are any further forward,’ he said. He did not need to add, ‘I’m sick of the whole thing,’ because his expression said it for him.

‘If I might presume to suggest, my lord?’

‘Yes, anything!’

‘Silver, particularly old silver, is a different matter from a stamp collection. Dealers keep a record of the pieces that pass through their hands. And the police could put out an enquiry about a particular item.’

‘The police,’ Giles said with dissatisfaction.

‘Not the village bobby, my lord, but someone higher up.’

‘The chief constable?’

‘I’m sure he would be happy to help, my lord.’

Giles nodded. ‘But we still need to know that the pieces are missing.’

‘Any search would alert Hook, if he is guilty, perhaps provoke him into some rash action.’

‘Then we’d know, wouldn’t we?’ Giles said.

On leaving Kincraig, the party went first to Ashmore for Maud, without great enthusiasm, to inspect the new baby and congratulate Kitty.

‘It’s just as well you had a boy,’ she told her briskly.

‘Since you have made such a piece of work of it, you will be glad not to have any more.’ She thought of adding a few words of advice about how Kitty should conduct herself when Giles took a mistress, but decided that was for Kitty’s own mother to address.

To Giles she said, ‘I’m told your wife should be fully recovered by the time the families come back to the country, so you will be able to host the social events that will be expected. The timing, as it turns out, is good.’

‘Why should you think I want to hold social events?’ he asked, faintly amused, slightly affronted.

She raised an eyebrow. ‘It is not about what you want , Stainton. It is what is expected . You have a position to keep up, and since you do not seem to care for Town life, it is more important than ever that you lead the county. You have a son to follow you, now. And I hope that Kitty will make more of a showing, now that she is released from childbearing duties. You cannot always rely on my presence to fill the gap.’

‘Why is that, Mother? Are we not to have the pleasure of entertaining you this autumn?’

She knew it was irony, but it slid off her armour of certainty. ‘My future plans are in a state of flux. And that is all I have to say on the subject.’

Alice was greeted tempestuously by Arabella and Arthur.

She thought them poor, sad things. The vigorous outdoor life of Kincraig and the company of the cousins had helped them across the worst period, and given them colour, but they were unnaturally subdued.

Coming back to the Castle had reminded them of the loss of their father, whom they had loved more than their mother, and the lack of other children promised a dull future in which to mourn him.

Alice offered to take them out riding, and vowed inwardly to speak to Giles about getting them a governess.

She did not want to find herself with them permanently on her hands.

She had no hope that Linda would do anything for them.

She assumed Linda would be staying when the dowager and Rachel went off to France.

She, Giles and Kitty – without speaking of it aloud to each other – were all gloomy at the prospect of having Linda heaving herself angrily about the Castle, complaining about everything, but saw no alternative.

The estate at Frome Monkton was being wound up and the creditors paid off but it was clear there would be nothing left over, so Linda and her children would have nowhere to go.

Ashmore Castle, her childhood home, would have to take them in; and, except for the times when it might be hoped Aunt Caroline would have her in London for a few weeks, she would be theirs for ever.

And since she could not enjoy London gaieties while in mourning, she’d be at the Castle at least until the following June.

But Linda had no intention of being incarcerated at Ashmore. At the very first discussion of the trip to Biarritz, she made it clear that she expected to go too.

‘Aunt Vicky and Uncle Bobo will be expecting me,’ she said. ‘They would take it as a snub if I were not to go.’

‘You are in deep mourning.’ It was Maud who pointed out the obvious. Giles had been feeling a guilty relief at the thought of her departure.

‘I can’t see that that matters, when visiting relatives,’ Linda said briskly. ‘In fact,’ she added, buttering a roll, ‘I don’t think the rules of mourning need to apply when one is abroad, where one is not known.’

‘Aunt Vicky and Uncle Bobo know you,’ Alice pointed out innocently.