Page 77 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #3)

Goaded, Linda went on, ‘You must be wondering how I can be so sure.’

‘I wonder nothing,’ Maud said truthfully.

‘I’ve been observing him with Rachel these past weeks, and he’s attentive to her, it’s true, but like a father, not like a suitor.’

Maud said harshly, ‘I wish you would not talk so much, Linda. You give me a headache with your constant—’

‘But he is a suitor,’ Linda went on relentlessly. ‘Nothing else would explain his hanging around us so much. And it’s thanks to me.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Maud snapped.

‘ I ’ve taken the trouble to encourage him, to bring him out, and his attentions to me are becoming so marked, I think even you must have noticed them.

Of course, he has to be discreet, since I’m still officially in first mourning, but there’s no disguising his sentiments.

That’s why I felt I should warn you that he won’t be making an offer for Rachel. He is in love with me .’

Maud looked at her daughter at last and, seeing her self-satisfied smile, wanted to slap her, even while at the same time feeling a queer twist of pity.

She felt no responsibility for the way Linda, or any of her children, had turned out – that was what one had nannies and governesses and tutors for – but Linda seemed to her just then like a wounded thing, or perhaps something half formed. Not a whole person.

‘You are quite mistaken,’ she said. Time to put Linda out of her delusion. ‘Paul Usingen has been taking the trouble to get to know you and Rachel as a compliment to me .’

‘Oh, Mother, how can you—’ Linda began, exasperated at such folly.

‘He proposed marriage to me in June. I asked him to wait for my reply. I gave it last night. I agreed to marry him as soon as arrangements can be made.’

Linda stared. ‘ You? ’ she said at last, in disbelief. Maud held her gaze steadily, and her expression turned to disgust. ‘You? But – you’re old ! It’s ridiculous! Getting married at your age? And you’re a widow! Father’s hardly cold in his grave, and you’re going to—’

‘Don’t dare to invoke your father’s name,’ Maud said furiously. ‘As if you ever cared a jot for his opinion on anything!’

‘I care more than you, that’s plain to see! What do you think he’d say about this if he were alive today?’ The absurdity of what she’d just said tripped her up for a moment, but she recovered herself. ‘You’ll make a fool of us all! You’ll make the family a laughing-stock! I won’t have it!’

‘ You won’t have it?’

‘You can’t care for him, anyway – he’s old and ugly. You just want him because he wants me . You always spoil things for me. You could never bear to let me to have anything nice of my own. Well, I won’t let you take him away from me! I won’t!’

Her face threatened to crumple into tears, and Maud slapped it briskly, but at the last moment modified the blow to a light tap.

‘Keep your voice down,’ she commanded calmly.

‘If you become hysterical I shall slap you hard. Now listen to me. The prince has asked me to marry him and I have said yes. It is all agreed. Any feelings you thought he had for you were in your imagination. And if you think it is seemly for a woman less than four months widowed to be publicly throwing herself at another man, you are no daughter of mine. You will behave yourself, or I will have you locked up as irrational.’

Linda gasped as though cold water had been thrown in her face. Locked up? Her mother would do it, too. Her eyes filled with bewilderment. ‘But – but, I thought . . .’

‘No, you didn’t,’ Maud said firmly. ‘Now we will go in to breakfast and I will tell the rest of the family about my betrothal. And if you don’t want people to pity you, you will pretend to be happy about it, and you will behave civilly towards the prince.

We will forget we ever had this conversation. I certainly shall never mention it.’

She turned for the house. Linda trailed after her, but she soon straightened her back. What she mostly felt was anger, and anger was very sustaining to dignity.

Giles put his head round the Peacock Room door and said, ‘I shan’t be in to luncheon.’

Kitty looked up in alarm. ‘You’re not going out?’

‘Didn’t I tell you? I have to see Adeane and Saddler about the poaching.’

‘But can’t you do that another time?’

‘No, because I have to see Bexley this afternoon with the evidence if we’re to make a case.’ Lord Bexley was the local magistrate. ‘Why? What’s the matter?’

‘The person is coming this morning to be interviewed for governess,’ Kitty said.

‘Oh, Lord! I’d forgotten. You can interview her on your own, surely?’

Kitty was dismayed. ‘You said you’d do it with me.’

‘Interviewing servants is your job, not mine. You’re the mistress of the house. I can’t be expected to undertake everything personally. Anyway, it can’t be helped. I have to see Bexley today, because he’s going away tomorrow morning, and I have to see Adeane and Saddler first.’

‘They’re your niece and nephew.’

His brows drew down. ‘Don’t be petulant, Kitty,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t suit you.’ And he withdrew, and closed the door.

Kitty was still shy with strangers, and though she was getting used to taking decisions about the house, it seemed like too great a responsibility to be choosing a governess for Linda’s children.

She admired clever people, but felt inferior to them.

She didn’t even know what questions she ought to ask.

What if she employed someone quite unsuitable?

She would be blamed. Giles would blame her.

Her mother-in-law would blame her. Linda would never let it go.

Her imagination had presented her with someone tall and stern, with a steely mind, who would barely be able to conceal her contempt for Kitty’s weakness.

But when she entered the library, the woman standing by the unlit fireplace was only of medium height, and quite pleasant-faced.

And, on seeing Kitty, she smiled, and the smile seemed to have a hint of nervousness about it.

Only then did it occur to her that the applicant might have been dreading the interview as much as her. Certainly, she had as much to lose.

It cheered her considerably, and enabled her to say in a firm voice, ‘Miss Kettel? I’m Lady Stainton.’

‘How do you do, your ladyship?’ Miss Kettel said, taking Kitty’s offered hand. And, yes, there was a slight tremor in the voice, which heartened Kitty more.

‘Won’t you sit down?’ There were two upholstered settles, facing each other on either side of the fire.

They sat and looked at each other. Miss Kettel seemed to be about forty, with crinkled black hair threaded here and there with grey, and grey eyes behind steel-framed glasses.

Her figure was trim and she was neatly dressed in a two-piece of navy cloth, and a nondescript hat of black felt.

Her face was oval, rather pale, and while you would not have called her plain, exactly, neither was she beautiful.

Ordinary, was the adjective that came to Kitty’s mind.

Everything about her was ordinary. If you passed her in the street, or sat in the same carriage with her in a train, you would not spare her a second glance.

And Kitty, who had always been regarded as beautiful, and had been, besides, an important heiress and had married an earl, felt an unexpected sympathy.

The silence had now gone on too long. Miss Kettel raised an enquiring eyebrow, and Kitty giggled. ‘It’s very foolish,’ she said, ‘but I haven’t the least idea what questions I ought to ask you. I feel quite at a loss.’

Miss Kettel smiled, and her face, and particularly her eyes, were transformed.

‘It is an awkward situation,’ she agreed.

She had a pleasant voice, for which Kitty was grateful.

She already had two harsh-voiced women in the house and didn’t need another.

‘Well, ma’am, you might, perhaps, ask me for my references.

Or you could quiz me about my experience. ’

‘Oh, I know about all that, from the letter the agency sent,’ Kitty said, ‘and you seem quite suitable. I can look at your references later. Shall I tell you about the children? Arabella is nine and Arthur is eight, and I’m afraid they’re terribly ignorant.

They haven’t had a governess before, and no-one has given them any regular schooling, as far as I know. ’

‘As far as you know? Are they not your children, ma’am?’

‘Oh, no – didn’t they explain? They’re the children of my husband’s sister.

She was recently widowed and she and the children have come to live here permanently.

So they need taking in hand. They are nice children,’ she added, ‘but they may not take to schoolroom discipline straight away. They have rather run wild until now.’

‘Who has been looking after them?’

‘Servants, mostly. Though my sister-in-law takes them out riding, and plays with them sometimes.’

‘May I ask when they lost their father?’

‘In June.’

‘Poor little things. They will still be shocked and grieving.’

Kitty liked the fact that she had picked up on that aspect of it.

It seemed to her, now she thought about it, that no-one had really wondered how Arabella and Arthur actually felt .

‘They have been living with a large family of cousins since the unhappy event, and I think the company has cushioned the blow for them,’ she said.

‘In my experience, Lady Stainton,’ said Miss Kettel, ‘children who suffer a bereavement may seem quite unaffected for a time, but the shock eventually reveals itself, often in ways one might not expect. But forewarned is forearmed. Is it possible to meet their mother?’

Kitty felt embarrassed. ‘Oh – no, not at present. She has gone with some of the family to France. But she has never had a great deal to do with them. I don’t think you will find that she has any tendency to interfere in the schoolroom.’

Miss Kettel smiled. ‘You said, “I will find”. Was it a slip of the tongue, or does it mean you have decided to engage me?’