Page 81 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #3)

Alice said, ‘He’s glad to see you.’ She leaned towards him to be jumped down and felt his big, strong hands take her without hesitation – licensed to touch her in this intimate way by long custom.

‘And what about you, Lady Alice?’ he said. Her feet were on the ground, but just for an instant he did not release her. ‘Are you glad to see me?’

Her heart was beating like a caged bird. If only those words meant something! ‘Of course I am, or I wouldn’t have come,’ she said, and heard with amazement how ordinary and prosaic she sounded . I should have been an actress , she thought.

He let her go and was attending to the horse, and Alice’s attention was demanded by his terrier, Dolly, who came bustling up for her share of caresses, and then by a half-grown Cyprian cat, who leaned against her legs and stuck his tail straight up like a poker.

‘Is that one of the kittens?’ she marvelled.

‘They grow up quick,’ he said from under the saddle flap, where he was loosening the girth.

‘Oh, you have ducks!’ she exclaimed, straightening up as a flotilla of five white Aylesburys came waddling from round the side of the house to investigate, heads imperiously high, making sarcastic remarks to each other from the sides of their beaks.

‘Our Seth’s Mary put a clutch under a broody hen for me. I’m partial to a duck’s egg. Long as I can keep the foxes off ’em. Building ’em a house next to the cart shed. Have to shut ’em in the scullery at night until it’s ready.’

‘That must be messy.’

‘’Tis. But better that than heads and feathers all over everywhere and no eggs.’

‘Nature is cruel,’ Alice said, following him as he led Pharaoh over to the stable and tied him to a ring.

He looked at her. ‘Nature is natural. Cruelty doesn’t come into it. It’s humans that are cruel. Humans’ve a choice to behave otherwise.’ She nodded, bathing in his blue eyes. ‘Was just about to have a cup of tea and a bite. Want to join me?’

‘Yes, please,’ she said. She might have been saying ‘yes’ to the Cup of Life. He gave her a curious look, head tilted, then turned away to the cottage. Be more careful , she told herself.

She sat at the table, with the cat on her lap purring like an engine, watching him set out bread and cheese and make the tea.

‘How are you getting on with Great Expectations ?’ she asked.

‘Getting along. That Miss Havisham, she’s a queer one. I reckon she couldn’t have been right in the head even before the wedding. Shutting herself up like that’s not a reasonable way to behave, even with a broken heart.’

‘Don’t you think so? If you loved someone so very much? And you were all alone. Being alone is very hard.’

‘But she’s not alone, is she? She’s got the young lass, and Pip to visit, and the lawyer fellow, and I dare say there’ll be servants in the house.

She’s not alone like, say, old Miss Oadsby down at the Carr.

She’s got no-one at all, never sees a soul from one day to the next.

Never married because she had to take care of her mother, and when her mother died – what?

must be fifteen year since – she was left all alone.

Just her in a damp cottage. No, I don’t reckon Miss Havisham has got much to complain about.

She could buck up if she put her mind to it. ’

‘Funny, I was thinking the same,’ Alice said. ‘Self-indulgent, that’s what I thought. She’s watching herself being tragic, like watching a play.’

He smiled. ‘But here we’re talking about her as if she was a real person. So that Dickens has done a powerful job of inventing her. I can see all the people in the story in my mind’s eye, just as if they were real. That makes him a good writer, doesn’t it?’

‘I’d say so. I love being able to step into a story, like stepping into a house, and just seeing it all around you. If you like Dickens, I’ll bring you another one when you finish. He wrote loads.’

‘As long as you don’t get yourself into trouble, taking them.’

‘I won’t,’ she said.

‘Big goings-on up at the Castle,’ he said.

‘Which ones?’ she said.

‘His lordship’s valet taking over as butler.’

‘Oh. How did you hear about that?’

He smiled as if she should have known. ‘The Castle servants in the churchyard after service, talking about nothing else.’

‘Was it glad talk or the opposite?’ she wanted to know.

‘Bit of glad, bit of surprise, bit of doubtful, but nobody’s unhappy,’ Axe told her. ‘He’s generally liked, is Mr Afton. But they didn’t see it coming, him being only a valet.’

‘Well, but after all, Hook was valet before he became butler.’

‘Ah, but Hook was footman first, and that’s the usual way up the ladder – footman, under-butler, butler. That way you know the job.’ He brought the teapot to the table. ‘Shall I pour?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘Strong, not much milk. I know.’

‘Giles says Afton’s so intelligent he’ll learn the job in no time.’

Axe gave an amused snort. ‘Don’t tell your footmen that. People don’t like to hear their jobs are so easy anyone can learn ’em in five minutes. They like to think a lifetime of experience can’t be replaced.’

‘Well, ours aren’t very experienced, except for William, and he’s too dull to want to be butler. Anyway, Kitty says Mrs Webster will tell Afton anything he needs to know. And he’s served in big houses all his life – he’s bound to know what the duties are.’

‘And there’s no chance of Mr Moss coming back?’

‘No. I think that’s what everyone would have liked, but no.’

‘I see him walking Miss Eddowes to church Sunday, holding the umbrella over her. Seems like he’s got a sweet billet there.

She’s a nice lady. Shame she never married.

She was the prettier one of the two sisters.

’ Axe had been boot-boy in the Eddowes household long ago.

‘And she inherited a good bit from her father, so she could have married anyone. But some folk just aren’t made that way.

Same with horses. Lord Bexley at the Grange – old Lord Bexley, I mean, not the current one – had a prize mare, beautiful creature she was, bay thoroughbred, that he wanted to breed from.

Any foal of hers would have been worth a fortune.

But she wouldn’t let the stallion near her.

Tried her with different studs, but she just wouldn’t have it.

Some females are made that way, for God’s own purposes, whatever they may be. Nothing to be done about it.’

He pushed her mug across to her. She had already cut a piece of cheese, and now laid it carefully on a slice of bread, taking care to line up the edges. ‘I sometimes wonder if perhaps I’m like that,’ she said.

He looked at her bent head, as she was apparently completely absorbed in what was on her plate, and his smile, had she been able to see it, was tender and sad.

‘You? No, not a bit of it,’ he said. She glanced up, then quickly down again, as one snatches a hand away from an unexpectedly hot surface.

‘Give it time,’ he said. ‘Things change sudden, and you’ve no inkling about it beforehand.

Hear what happened up at Shelloes a week past?

Young Danny Gregory was playing on top of the haystack with his brother.

He fell off, landed on a hayfork and one of the tines went into his heart. Killed him straight off.’

‘Oh, how dreadful! I hadn’t heard.’

‘Point is, nobody knew that morning it was going to happen. Life hits you sudden, like lightning – sometimes bad things, sometimes good. And you’re too young, begging your pardon, my lady, to be saying “never” about anything.

Like some pickle with that? Got a jar of our Ruth’s apple chutney, go nice with the cheese. ’

She laughed. ‘From life and death to pickles.’

‘Too much serious talk’s not good for a person.’ He got up and went to the dresser to fetch the chutney. ‘Heard a rumour,’ he said, coming back and sitting down, ‘about your mother going to be married again.’

‘However did you hear that?’

‘Is it supposed to be a secret? Marriage is a public thing.’

‘Well, I think we’re not talking about it yet.’

He gave small, cat-like smile. ‘Someone’s talked, because I heard it in the village.’

‘Who from?’

‘Not saying. It’s true then?’ He studied her a moment. ‘Do you mind it?’

‘Mind? No, of course not,’ she said. He continued to regard her, chewing impassively, watching her think.

‘I think it’s strange,’ she allowed at last, ‘and I don’t know anything about the man, but she must love him, I suppose, because she doesn’t need to get married.

And if it makes her happy – that can only be a good thing, can’t it?

I don’t think she was ever happy before, not while I’ve known her. ’

‘Sounds funny, you saying “not while I’ve known her”, as if she wasn’t anything to do with you.’

Alice didn’t know how to answer that, and said nothing.

She knew what he meant. She had seen the Brinklow children, who had been playmates of her and Rachel, with their parents, and they had all seemed glued together and intertwined.

She saw him preparing another question, and prompted him: ‘What is it?’

‘I heard she was going to be living in Germany with this chap, your mother.’

‘Yes. He’s a German prince. He lives near Frankfurt.’

‘Does that mean you’ll be going to live there as well?’

A quiver of pleasure ran through her, because it sounded as though it mattered to him whether she did or not.

‘I don’t know if she’ll send for me,’ she said, ‘but if she does, I’m going to ask Giles to say I have to stay here. He’s the head of the family, so he can insist if he wants to.’

‘So you don’t want to go?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Don’t want to marry a German prince yourself?’

‘I love Ashmore,’ she said, suddenly passionate. ‘I never want to leave.’