Page 82 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #3)

‘You will, one day,’ he said, and it sounded sad.

They were silent for a moment. Alice drank tea.

He cut another slice of bread. Then he said, ‘I got to take a load of logs up to Topheath Farm when I’ve finished luncheon.

With Della and the cart. Want to come with me?

’ Her expression as she looked at him was his answer. ‘You’re not wanted at home?’

‘Nobody wants me anywhere,’ she said. Then added daringly, ‘Except here.’

‘You’re always welcome here,’ he said. ‘While you want to come. That’ll change. Other things’ll come into your life. Other people. And you won’t want to come here any more. But that’s all right. That’s the way things go. Pass that chutney, will you?’

From life and death to pickles. Too much serious talk wasn’t good for you.

He must know as well as she did – better than she did – that she shouldn’t be here at all.

Why did he let her come? Because he liked her?

Because he felt sorry for her? A mixture of the two, probably, she thought.

And it was best they shouldn’t get talking too seriously, or she might say things that were best not said.

The things she really longed to say. And whether he welcomed them or rejected them, it would break something.

It all happened surprisingly quickly. Decius heard of a horse and went to see it, liked it, and arranged for Nina, with Bobby accompanying her for the extra support, to go and try it.

Nina loved it, the sale was arranged, and within a week everything was in place.

A groom was found by recommendation – an odd-looking, short, bow-legged, rubicund man with black hair and a faint Irish accent – and with the help of Deering he cleaned out the stables in readiness.

Another horse was found locally. Fodder and straw were delivered from a nearby farm.

And Wriothesby House took delivery of Jewel, a six-year-old, fifteen-two thoroughbred gelding, black with one white coronet and a small white star, and Nankin, a sixteen-hand gelding of no particular breeding, brown with four white stockings.

Daughters, the groom, said that Nankin was ‘a dacent steady harse,’ and that Jewel was ‘a little beauty, so he is’.

Mr Cowling said, ‘I’m glad it’s black. A black horse looks very smart, especially with you being so fair.’

‘I love him,’ Nina said. ‘Thank you very much. It’s more than I deserve.’

‘Nonsense. I’d give you the moon if I could get hold of it.’

‘Oh, I’d sooner have Jewel, thank you. The moon would be awfully in the way.’

He chuckled. ‘Ah, you like your little jokes. But, now then,’ his expression changed, ‘I want to be serious for a minute.’ He looked at her, not quite sternly, for there was a hint of apprehension in it.

‘I’m not going to order you to ride sidesaddle, but I am going to ask you to.

This other business won’t do, Nina, it really won’t.

To please me, will you promise only to ride side-saddle? ’

Nina was so delighted with her horse, and touched by his generosity, she hadn’t the heart to argue. Bobby would call her weak and be exasperated with her, but – at least for now – she couldn’t and wouldn’t fight him.

‘I promise,’ she said.

On her first ride out on Jewel, she was accompanied by Bobby, and by Clemmie on a hireling. Bobby’s groom Hoday rode behind with Daughters to take care of all three.

‘And he’s taken out a subscription to the hunt for me,’ Nina said. ‘He’s quite thrilled with the idea. I wouldn’t put it past him to have a photographer waiting at the first meet to capture me in full fig.’

Clemmie smiled. ‘He’s a dear! You’re very lucky, Nina.’

‘But it was rather unscrupulous of him to make you promise not to ride across,’ Bobby said. ‘Catching you at a weak moment when you were soft with gratitude.’

‘You can’t call it unscrupulous,’ Nina protested.

Bobby shook her head. ‘You’ll have to work on him. I was counting on the three of us hunting astride this season. Then, with Mrs Anstruther, we’ll make a real impact. You’re with me, aren’t you, Clemmie?’

‘You can’t ask Nina to defy her husband,’ Clemmie said. ‘It’s all right for me, because I’m not married. Mrs Anstruther is a widow, and your husband is very modern-minded.’

‘But it’s not reasonable !’ Bobby proclaimed, frustrated. ‘Riding side-saddle is unnatural and dangerous. The only impact you can make that way is impact with the ground when you come a cropper and break your back.’

‘Oh, don’t,’ Nina protested.

‘Julia Caldwell, November 1899,’ Bobby said relentlessly. ‘Her horse came down jumping a bullfinch on Langdon Hill and she was trapped underneath. She never walked again. She died of pneumonia a few months later. Pimmy Galloway, February 1901—’

‘Enough, Bobby,’ said Clemmie. ‘You don’t need to convince us.’

‘I know I don’t. But we all need to keep working to convince the men.

Riding side-saddle is all part of the same thing, the denial of equality, like denying us the vote.

How much longer are we going to wait for simple justice?

Did you know people have been arguing for women’s suffrage for forty years, ever since John Stuart Mill got into Parliament?

Forty years is a lifetime! And I don’t want to wait for another forty – I’d be too old to enjoy it.

At that rate I might not even live to see it. ’

‘Perhaps we should join the NUWSS,’ Clemmie said, and translated for Nina.

‘The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies.

Millicent Fawcett founded it, to draw together all the scattered societies to make one more effective force.

My father knew her mother’s father in London.

She’s a wonderfully strong woman and she has very good connections. ’

‘What do they do?’ Nina asked.

‘Oh, hold meetings and get up petitions to try to get MPs to support the idea. We could even start up our own branch here,’ Clemmie said, in her mild, unemphatic voice.

‘Meetings! Petitions!’ Bobby exclaimed scornfully. ‘How can you change men’s minds that way?’

‘What would you do?’ Nina asked, amused. ‘Throw stones at them?’

‘It’s the best we can do,’ Clemmie said. ‘Great changes always take time. You’re too impatient, Bobby.’

Nina grew bored with the subject and said, ‘Shall we canter along here?’ She heard a shrill bark and looked back. ‘Oh, bother, there’s Trump. I asked them to keep him in the kitchen, but he must have got out somehow and followed me.’

‘If we canter on, he won’t be able to keep up and he’ll go home.’

‘Oh, poor thing! He’ll think I don’t love him.’

‘Dogs don’t think like that,’ Bobby said. ‘He’ll be all right. Let’s see how fast Jewel is. I’ll race you to the Five Beeches.’ And she gave up politics for the moment, in favour of equitation.

Mr Blomfield wrote back to say he deeply regretted that he was so completely engaged in a project he would not be able to come and look at Ashmore until the following spring, but if Lady Stainton would indulge him with her patience he would be delighted to wait upon her then.

Alternatively, his trusted assistant could come immediately and do the initial survey, make notes of her requirements and report back to him.

Kitty was young enough not to want any delay, so she wrote to say an immediate visit by the assistant would oblige her.

He came on a fine day in November, when they were enjoying a goose summer: soft, settled days with gentle warmth at the zenith and mists at either end.

Kitty was surprised to see such a young man: at first glance he looked no older than her, though when she saw him close up she realised that he had one of those boyish, young-looking faces and in fact was probably in his early thirties.

Still, she had thought of all gardeners as being wise and weathered grey-beards, so he was refreshing.

He was tall, with a face that seemed always on the brink of smiling, thick wavy brown hair and very blue eyes.

‘Henry Fenchurch, your ladyship,’ he introduced himself.

‘Mr Blomfield is sorry not to be able to come himself, but I am well acquainted with his ideas and methods. I have assisted him on half a dozen great gardens. I assure you—’

Kitty was quick to put him at ease. ‘Please don’t apologise. I’m very pleased you have come. Will you take some refreshment?’

He smiled, showing excellent teeth. ‘If you will excuse me, I would rather walk round while it’s fine. I’ve learned by hard experience not to take English weather for granted. You have a gardener to show me the ground?’

‘Oh, but I was expecting to show you round myself, so that I can tell you what I want.’

‘So it is really your garden? Your plan entirely?’ He seemed pleased by the idea.

‘No-one else is much interested,’ she confessed. ‘My head gardener loves vegetables and fruits, and my husband is the same – he doesn’t see the point in growing things you can’t eat. But he knows I’ve always wanted gardens here, and he’s happy for me to have them created the way I want them.’

‘Well, then, let’s go and look, and you can tell me your vision,’ Fenchurch said.

‘I don’t know how practical my vision is,’ she said, leading the way out.

‘But that is what I’m here for,’ he said. ‘To understand what your imagination sees, and find a way to create it.’

‘You don’t mind, then?’ she said shyly. ‘I thought great gardeners expected to have a free hand. To make the garden –’

‘– in their own image?’ he anticipated. ‘Well, that is often the case – perhaps usually the case. To paint on an empty canvas is satisfaction in one way. But to interpret someone else’s dream, to pluck it from the empty air and make it real – what a privilege!’

She laughed, feeling strangely at ease with him. ‘I believe you would agree with me whatever I said.’

He smiled back. ‘We’ll see. You may be sending me away with a flea in my ear in half an hour’s time.’

‘I’m sure I won’t.’