Page 83 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #3)

First they strolled about the small formal garden at the back of the house, where they were joined by Peason, the head gardener.

He eyed Fenchurch suspiciously, and gave his opinion that the slope behind the house was too steep to do anything with, and that there was no point in setting her ladyship up for disappointment.

‘I’ve got my hands full with the kitchen gardens,’ he concluded.

‘And her ladyship wants more glass – grapes, nectarines, melons. Might even manage a pinery, my lady,’ he added beguilingly to Kitty.

‘I haven’t never tasted a ripe pineapple, but they do say it’s a wonder of a fruit. Wouldn’t mind trying my hand at that.’

‘Yes, that would be something special,’ Kitty said.

‘You’re doing a wonderful job, Peason, and I’m especially glad for his lordship’s sake, because he’s such a delicate eater.

Fresh fruit and vegetables make all the difference to him, and to his health.

But I want my pleasure garden as well. It won’t take away from your kitchen gardens, I promise. ’

Peason’s face set in disappointed lines, like a dog watching a door closing, and he stayed silent as Fenchurch asked Kitty what she imagined beyond the little parterre.

‘Do you think it’s too steep?’ she asked meekly.

‘You can garden anywhere, even on a cliff face,’ Fenchurch said. ‘This is not too steep by any means. I think it will lend itself admirably to terracing.’

‘What does that mean exactly?’

He described it with gestures. ‘You dig away some of the hillside to create a level area, with a retaining wall in front and behind to hold the hill in place. And repeat the process upwards as often as you wish.’

‘I would like it to look quite natural, if that’s possible.’

‘Of course. The plots you create can be any shape, and the retaining structures can be hidden by plants, or incorporated into rockeries. All the shapes you create can be curved, meandering, overlapping, so that they fit the contours of the ground. No need at all for straight lines. Same with the planting – the shrubs and flowers in sinuous sweeps, blending with the shape of the plot, just as they do in nature.’

‘Straight lines are necessary for hoeing,’ Peason objected. ‘How can you get the weeds out from between the plants if you don’t have straight lines?’

Fenchurch looked at him indulgently. ‘That’s the beauty of this sort of planting – you don’t have to weed. The plants cover all of the ground, no bare earth.’

Peason shook his head at such folly, and Kitty intervened: ‘Every time I look at this hillside from my window, I imagine what it would be like to have a stream running down it, with little pools and waterfalls, perhaps.’

‘Oh, Lady Stainton, you have made me very happy! Of all things, I love to introduce water to a garden – and with a fall such as this, there are so many possibilities. And,’ he added eagerly, ‘I took the liberty of studying the Ordnance Survey maps of the area, and it seems that you have two natural brooks coming down this hillside, the Shel to the south and the Wade to the north, either or both of which could be diverted to provide the water. It makes it so much easier to have water coming down a hill if you don’t have to pump it up there in the first place. ’

Peason said. ‘And when you’ve dug away half a hillside, sir, where d’you think you’re going to put all that soil?’

He gave his answer to Kitty, his eyes dancing with excitement.

‘I couldn’t help noticing on my way up here from the station that you have a fine downhill slope on the other side of the house.

Two very large terraces, given over to lawn and perhaps a few carefully placed shrubs and trees, would greatly improve the aspect, and provide agreeable places to walk and sit. ’

‘It would be like having a park,’ Kitty said. ‘His lordship’s mother always complains that Ashmore has no park.’

‘And that, my friend,’ Fenchurch said to Peason, ‘is what you do with half a hillside.’

‘Dig it out from the back and pile it up at the front,’ Kitty said. ‘That’s so clever.’

‘Rather in the way they make railway lines,’ said Fenchurch. ‘The earth dug out to make a cutting is piled up to make the next embankment.’

‘Is that so? I never realised!’ Kitty exclaimed.

Peason shook his head again, but this time more in wonder than disapproval. ‘The things you can do nowadays,’ he said. ‘If you’ll excuse me, my lady, sir, I got to tend to my architokes.’ He knuckled his forehead and stumped away.

Fenchurch bade him a civil farewell and, when he was gone, said to Kitty, ‘Strange how many gardeners have difficulty with the word “artichoke”. My father’s gardener, when I was a boy, called them ratchet-cocks. Shall we go and look at the front now?’

‘Were you always interested in gardening?’ Kitty asked, leading the way. He was so easy to talk to, it was like chatting to Nina.

‘You look very handsome in evening dress,’ Molly said. ‘You should always wear it.’

‘Yes, especially when out hunting,’ Richard said. ‘It would shorten my valet’s life considerably, though. He regards a minute smudge on a dress boot as a dagger to the heart – think how he would react to several pounds of moist loam. You, however, look beautiful in anything.’

She looked stern. ‘You cannot have thought what you are saying. A woman spends several hours dressing with the utmost care for an evening at the Queen’s Hall, and you tell her it doesn’t matter in the least, she’d do just as well in her day dress.’

He laughed. ‘You know quite well that’s not what I meant. I suspect you are talking to hide your nerves. Are you nervous, O mother of the soloist?’

‘Of course I am, especially as I haven’t been able to see her for a week. She forbade me to visit – said she couldn’t be distracted from her final preparations.’

‘Oh dear, “final preparations” sound awfully hangman-ish. Along the lines of the last meal and confession to the prison chaplain. Is she scared to death?’

‘Richard!’

‘Sorry! Just trying to distract you. I think I must be nervous too.’

‘Well, you were responsible in the beginning for bringing her to Sir Thomas’s notice.’

‘Yes, it’s all my fault. I’m never sure whether to applaud myself or curse myself for that.’

‘Applaud, on the whole,’ said Molly, serenely.

‘I am feeling a great deal better about it all now. It’s a wonderful opportunity for her to study under him.

And for the rest, she seems very happy. I believe she was right when she said she could keep him at a distance.

I’m sure in my own mind that he is not trying to make her his mistress – hard though it is to believe. ’

‘Hmm,’ said Richard. Of course, not moving in those circles, Molly was not exposed to the gossip, instalments of which he got from his grandmother.

Fortunately the musical world and the world of the ton were not interconnected at a deep level.

Most of the leading hostesses regarded concert music as a very peripheral part of London life – far down the list from opera and ballet, which themselves fell well short of the theatre.

Consequently, musicians were far less interesting and important to the average grande dame than her hat-maker.

But Sir Thomas, of course, was a very well-known public figure, so there had been gossip.

‘Shall we go?’ he said. ‘I have a cab waiting outside.’

‘How extravagant you are.’

‘I didn’t want you to catch cold walking to the rank,’ he said. ‘Can’t have you sneezing during the quiet passages. Especially as we’re in a box, and all eyes will be on us.’

‘In a box?’

‘My grandmother has a box for every concert. I told her I was bringing a guest.’

He had been putting her wrap around her shoulders, and now she pulled back from him, turned, and stared.

‘Richard, no!’ she said angrily. ‘Not on any account! What were you thinking?’

He was taken aback. ‘I was thinking that there’s plenty of room – the box seats eight, and there will only be Aunt Caroline and the Levens besides.’

She was furious. ‘You want me to accept your grandmother’s hospitality, sit in her box and chat with her? I was her son’s mistress! ’

He was taken aback. ‘I’m sure she doesn’t know about that.’

‘ I know about it! And I’d bet she does. How could you even think it would be all right?’

‘If it comes to it, her lover is your daughter’s patron, but that doesn’t seem to trouble you,’ he said, a little petulantly.

‘That’s a different matter entirely, a relationship between artist and patron.

If you can’t see that you’re an idiot. But for me to sit beside your grandmother in a social situation, her guest, obligated to her .

. . How could you be so thoughtless as to suggest it?

Have you no sense of etiquette? Have you no sense at all ? ’

‘Enough of that,’ he said, angry too now. ‘I won’t be spoken to like a child.’

‘Then don’t behave like one!’

They stared at each other in a brittle silence, which became an appalled one. They had never quarrelled before.

He tried to find a firmer ground of reason to stand on.

‘You refine too much on that old relationship. No-one knows about it, and if they knew they wouldn’t care.

Men in that position have always taken mistresses, and he’s dead now anyway—’ She winced at the words, and he cursed his clumsiness.

‘I’m sorry. But the point is, it’s over and done with.

’ She didn’t answer. ‘You have to go to Chloe’s concert.

Look, you don’t have to sit in the box. I’ll go to the ticket office when we get there and buy two stalls seats.

I’ll make some excuse to Grandmère. Please don’t go on being angry with me, or it’ll spoil the evening.

’ He touched her arm tentatively. ‘It’s Chloe’s evening. We mustn’t forget that.’

She turned to him with a sigh. ‘Don’t wheedle.’

‘But it’s what I’m good at,’ he urged.