Page 8 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #3)

He watched her from the doorway for a moment, before she registered his presence and stood up in a hurry, dropping two skeins of embroidery silk that had been in her lap.

Sebastian stooped to retrieve them, she tried to forestall him, and in the flurry dropped her darning mushroom too.

Then she desisted, and let him perform the small service for her.

‘Thank you,’ she said, receiving her own again. She spoke almost without moving her lips, and without looking at him.

‘You’ll ruin your eyes, sewing in here. The light isn’t good enough,’ he said.

‘It’s the snow,’ she replied. ‘It makes it dark everywhere.’ The snow had fallen for two days over Christmas, ceased for a day, then begun again.

It had stopped halfway through New Year’s Day, and now it was freezing hard.

Frozen snow stuck to the outside surface of the panes of the small linen-room window, creating an artificial twilight.

Sebastian regarded her bent head with tenderness and pity. ‘You’ve been avoiding me,’ he said.

‘No, sir,’ she said, still looking down.

‘You don’t need to do that,’ he said. More silence. ‘Dory, please look at me.’

Reluctantly she raised her eyes. ‘You don’t need to avoid me,’ he said again. ‘I miss you. I miss having you listen to me play. I miss our conversations.’

Her heart was aching. He had refurbished his whole house to her taste, making a nest for her, and then asked her most honourably to occupy it – to marry him.

He had offered her permanent security of a sort a servant could rarely dream of.

And love as well, and cherishing. But it was the making of the nest that had touched her unbearably.

‘It’s different now,’ she said woodenly.

‘Not for me,’ he said, and moved a step nearer, put out a hand to touch her cheek. She saw the hurt in his eyes as she moved out of reach. ‘Don’t shy away from me,’ he said. ‘I would never force you to do anything you thought was wrong. If you can’t marry me, we can still be friends, can’t we?’

‘No,’ she said miserably. ‘It can’t be like it was.’

‘But we’re the same two people. With the same feelings.’

‘That’s why we can’t be friends. I have to stay away from you – or I’ll have to give my notice, and go away.’

His hand was back by his side. He looked defeated, and suddenly older. ‘I never meant to hurt you,’ he said.

‘You’ve been nothing but kind, and good, and – and I wish with all my heart . . .’ She didn’t finish the sentence.

‘Could you tell me about it?’ he said, after a moment. ‘That day, in Henley, you just dropped a bombshell and went away, and you’ve been avoiding me ever since. Don’t you think . . . ?’

She knew he had been going to say, ‘Don’t you think I deserve an explanation?’ She also knew he had not finished the sentence because at the last minute he didn’t think he did deserve it. He was a man of astonishing modesty. And his modesty laid the onus on her.

‘I’ll tell you about it,’ she said, with a sigh, ‘but you must promise never to tell anyone else. If it ever got out – there are those who would use it against me. That James, for instance, if he should ever find out, he would try . . . You’ll understand better when I tell you.

But my life could be in danger. Please promise me. ’

‘I promise. I don’t understand – but you have my word nothing you say to me will go any further. Please – go on.’ He leaned against the door jamb, folding his arms, to let her know she could take her time, that he would listen patiently for as long as she wanted.

She put her sewing things down on the chair, and stood before him with hands clasped, like a good servant waiting for orders.

‘I got married when I was very young,’ she began at last. ‘I was only sixteen. He was handsome and charming – people always liked him straight off. But underneath . . .’ she paused a moment, then finished, with a small gesture of the hand ‘. . . he was bad all through. Like an apple that looks good on the outside, but when you split it, it’s full of worms.’

She paused again, for so long this time he felt she needed encouragement to go on. ‘Your parents, did they not . . . ?’

‘My mother died when I was ten,’ she said.

‘My father – he was a sick man. I didn’t know, of course.

He’d brought me up since my mother died but .

. . You see, he had a little draper’s shop in Cheyne Walk.

It was hard work. I took Mother’s place and helped him in the shop, but even so .

. . He was so tired at the end of the day, too tired to talk.

I was just a child still. I didn’t know he was dying.

I think, now, that he wanted to be sure I was settled before he went, with someone to take care of me.

Otherwise, perhaps he’d have seen through Jack. ’

‘He forced you to marry?’ Sebastian asked in concern.

‘He would never have done that. I wanted to marry – I was mad in love, the way only a girl of sixteen can be. But if Dad hadn’t been dying, I think he’d have made me wait, got to know Jack better.

And he’d have seen through him in the end.

He was a shrewd man, my father, in his health.

But he was sick and weary, and afraid for me, and Jack .

. . he seemed so plausible.’ She was staring at her hands, as her fingers pleated a fold of her apron over and over.

Now she looked up. ‘I had a dowry, you see. Dad had saved five hundred pounds. That’s what Jack was after.

Two months after the wedding, Dad was dead, and I was a prisoner. ’

She seemed not to want to go on. But she looked past Sebastian, at nothing, frowning, her lips tight, her fingers moving, pleating the fabric with the rhythm of her thoughts. He waited, and at last said, ‘Tell me about him. This – Jack.’

‘To the customers, he was the gay, handsome man I’d fallen in love with.

He could charm the birds out of the trees.

Carriage folk came to us, and they loved him.

He was respectful and jolly with the gentlemen, and just a little flirty with the ladies.

He was a tailor by trade, and he knew his work.

He took over the shop next door, and expanded the drapery business into tailoring and repairs.

I learned to do the fine work on ladies’ garments.

I worked in the back – he didn’t want me serving in the shop. He hired girls to serve.’

He was beginning to see where this was going. ‘These girls?’ he began.

She looked up. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said bitterly. ‘A succession of them. They were all mad for him, of course. They were used, cast off and replaced. And I was the prisoner in the back, stitching away, never to be seen, never allowed out, never—’ She stopped.

‘Did he – hurt you?’

‘Not – like that. Not at first. But he paraded his women in front of me, insulted me. He let me know I was not as important to him as they were. I was just the skivvy. Later, when I was a bit older and tried to stand up for myself, that was when I got the back of his hand.’

Sebastian drew a sharp breath, but she went on as if she hadn’t heard.

‘It was the humiliation as much as the pain. I’d never been struck in my life, never.

My father didn’t believe in it. Now I was helpless before a man who despised me and showed it.

I had no friends, no family. No-one to turn to.

I wasn’t allowed to speak to anyone. I never left the house.

We lived in the rooms behind the shop, and at night, the doors were locked and he kept the key in his pocket.

One time I tried to escape out of an upstairs window, and he caught me and beat me.

He said if I tried it again he would kill me.

He said if I managed to get out, he would hunt me down and kill me.

I believed him. If you’d known him – there was no end to his malice. ’

‘You could have gone to the police?’ Sebastian said uncertainly.

She looked at him bitterly. ‘You don’t know, do you?

You don’t know policemen. If a man beats his wife, he’s just keeping her in order, the way a man ought to do.

Women are like dogs – useful, as long as you keep them under control.

They would never side with a woman against her husband.

If I’d gone to the police they’d have delivered me straight back to him with a grin and a wink, and told him to teach me a lesson. ’

‘Oh, God,’ he said softly.

She hunched her shoulders a little, in something that was almost but not quite a shrug.

‘I was young, and life is strong in the young, and I survived. But men like him don’t stay the same, they get worse, and he did.

I think he’d have killed me in the end. But he started to drink more and more, and that was my hope.

When he was drunk, he beat me, but eventually he would fall heavily asleep.

One night he fell into such a stupor I was able to get the key out of his pocket without waking him. ’

‘You got out?’

‘I ran. I was terrified. I didn’t know where to go or what to do. I dared not get picked up by the police. I couldn’t go to the workhouse for relief because they’d report me to the peelers. I had to hide myself away. I knew he’d come after me, so I hid by day and moved about by night.’

‘What did you do? How did you live?’