Page 76 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #3)
It could not be said that Rachel was pining away.
She did think about Angus a great deal, especially in the moments between getting into bed and falling asleep, when she liked to conjure his face and the feeling of his lips on hers.
But she was young and full of life, and there was so much to do.
There were carriage rides and promenades and boat trips; lunches, teas and dinners; the spa and the opera; card evenings and musical evenings and dancing – lots of dancing.
She tried sea-bathing but didn’t much care for it, and her mother said it was inelegant, so she didn’t try it again.
Instead, aware she looked very good on a horse, she rode in the park, and found she had started a little fashion for it.
Above all, there were lots of idle young men to flatter her, flirt with her, dance with her, and compete to ride beside her.
When they went out in the carriage, they were halting every few yards for some or other gallant to raise his hat and stand chatting, asking their plans for the day, begging for a dance or a place beside her at cards.
It would have taken more determination than Rachel had to remain miserable under such an onslaught.
Since the casino was closed, having been damaged by fire the year before and now under reconstruction, card parties were taking place instead at the various grand villas.
Aunt Vicky, who enjoyed a little light gambling, hosted one every week.
Many of the guests were of her generation and older, but she made sure to invite enough of the young hopefuls too.
Few of them were English, and Rachel’s French and German improved apace.
For Angus to write to her needed some ingenuity.
He could not write openly, of course. He persuaded his younger sister Gussie to write to Alice at Ashmore – luckily they had been notably friendly on previous visits to Kincraig, united by a love of horses – and to enclose a note from himself to Rachel.
Alice would then enclose the note in her letter to Rachel.
The sisters had not been much in the habit of corresponding, but with the dowager away, no-one else thought anything of it.
Giles agreed to have her letters sent to the post with his own without a second thought, barely pausing on his way out of the house to say, ‘Yes, yes, of course. Just put it on the hall table with the others. Oh, and give her my love.’
Rachel had been more than two weeks at the Villa Eugénie before she received the first note from Angus.
It was full of declarations of love, of precious do-you-remembers, and a mixture of hope and despair about the eventual outcome.
Rachel read it every night and every morning, and was able to go out fortified, to meet the challenges of the day with gay smiles and flirtatious eyelashes.
Not being a great hand with the pen, she did not reply immediately: she would have to write something to Alice as a cover, and two letters were harder work than she liked.
So it was over a week before her reply to Angus set off on its tortuous journey.
It didn’t occur to Rachel how long he would have been waiting for reassurance from her by the time it got there.
However, if she had shown eagerness to write back to Alice, her mother would certainly have been suspicious, so perhaps it was just as well.
Linda, freed of her children and immediate money worries, and looking better in greys and lavenders than she had in blacks, was enjoying herself.
She preferred Europeans, with their more formal manners, to Englishmen, and there were several promising older men she thought might do.
Her German was good, from childhood holidays with Aunt Vicky, and she was a good card player.
And being relieved of the anxieties of the past ten years, she was eating more and filling out a little, and losing the hungry-cat look that had so repelled.
To begin with she was concentrating on the Prince of Usingen, who was still hanging around their party.
Since she could see for herself that his attitude towards Rachel was fatherly, she concluded that it must be her he was interested in.
What else could bring him so often to the villa, or have him hurrying to join their group at every gathering?
She responded by attaching herself to him and letting him know, in the subtlest terms, that she would welcome his addresses.
She found him a reserved and awkward sort of lover, and had to do all the encouraging herself, but the more she discovered about his fortune, the more she liked him.
She thought it a very good omen when he invited her to meet his sister and her husband at the villa they had rented; and she noted his thoughtfulness in including her mother, sister, aunt and uncle in the invitation.
For herself, she would not have minded a bit more passion and a bit less propriety to get things moving along, but given her delicate position – her mourning was not widely known, but it would curtail her pleasures if it became so – it was probably just as well that he was moving slowly.
The sister turned out to be a mousy, frumpy thing, but Linda graciously encouraged her, staying by her side and chatting to her, asking about her children, and praising Paul’s qualities – doing everything, in fact, to prove to Paul that she would fit into his family.
Her mother, she noted, was more acidulous even than usual, and cast many black looks at her during the evening.
Linda shrugged them off. Her mother was in a temper, she supposed, from having to talk all evening to Paul’s sister’s husband – a stout, moustachioed bore.
Probably she thought Linda ought to have sacrificed herself by taking him on instead.
It was at the casino evening at the Countess de Coligny’s villa that Paul Usingen finally managed to corner Maud in a tiny anteroom between two salons and, drawing her into the shade of some rather outrageous crimson velvet curtains, held her hand in both his and said, ‘ Gn?dige Gr?fin! Endlich! At last I have you alone. I am tortured daily to be near you and not to talk.’
‘We talk every day, Prince,’ she said.
‘But it is not talk of the souls, only of the mouths.’ She flinched a little at the word ‘souls’ and he hurried on, ‘I have waited for you, as you asked me, but now I plead you: do not make me wait for longer. Give me your answer – say you will marry me. Have I not done everything you wished? Made myself pleasant to your family, carried myself with discretion? What more test must I pass? Schone Dame —’
‘I am not beautiful,’ Maud said, trying to pull her hand away, ‘and to hear you say so makes me think you are not of a serious character.’
He looked surprised. ‘But you are beautiful to me! I would not say so otherwise. Please, I do not wish to wait any more. I wish to take you home to Usingen and begin our life together. Whatever you wish shall be yours – horses, carriages, jewels. A great wedding in Limburg Cathedral – the whole world will come. I have proved myself steady, faithful, is it not? Now meine geliebte will reward me, I know.’
He looked at her with such hope that this most unsentimental of women would have found it as hard to reject him as an ordinary person would find it hard to kick a puppy.
And, in truth, she was tired. Bringing out Rachel had worn her to the bone, and so far had not yielded the prize she had counted on.
Usingen was willing to take on Rachel as well as her, and to find her a European noble for a husband.
Rachel was growing flighty, and needed the discipline of a father.
To get her well-married and off her hands was one reason to marry Usingen; to be free of money worries and mistress of her own house again was the other.
And, really, what was there to wait for any more?
He had said his sister wanted to go home at the end of the month.
With her as chaperone, Maud and Rachel could go too.
And Linda – who was growing more annoying by the day – could be sent back to England.
‘Very well,’ she said.
He looked so surprised she almost smiled. ‘Very well? You mean yes? You will marry me?’
‘Yes, I will marry you,’ she said clearly. ‘And as soon as it can be arranged. I thought perhaps Rachel and I could go back with your sister—’
She stopped because Usingen was kissing her hand passionately and murmuring endearments in broken German, and at any moment someone might come through the curtains, and she was not yet hardened enough to be caught dallying in alcoves with strange men.
‘Say nothing of this,’ she said sternly, ‘until I have told my family.’
‘But – but—’
‘I shall not keep you waiting long. You may come to the villa tomorrow at noon.’
She nodded, withdrew her hand too firmly for resistance, and walked away.
Linda found her mother walking in the villa’s garden before breakfast the next morning.
It was a lovely day, the sky pale and clear with the promise of heat later, the air cool and green-smelling.
Maud was trying to settle her agitated mind.
She had said ‘yes’ so easily last night, but marriage was a big step, as was leaving the land of her birth.
She was not regretting her decision, but she needed time to absorb the new ideas.
The last person she wanted to see was Linda.
But Linda wanted to see her, and was as tenacious as ever Maud could be.
‘I’ve come to the conclusion, Mama,’ she said, falling in beside her as she strolled down the green path, ‘that the Prince of Usingen is not in the least interested in Rachel. I don’t think he was ever going to make an offer for her.’
‘Indeed,’ Maud said discouragingly. Not now, not now!
‘So if you were expecting something of the sort, you will be disappointed.’
Maud said nothing.