Page 95 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #3)

She looked at him to gauge how serious he was, then separated and handed over a wedge of sheets – not including the ones she had moved to the bottom, he noted.

He went through them slowly, studying her work.

Figure studies, landscapes, some still-life groups, mostly in pencil or charcoal, but some colour-washed.

‘These are very good,’ he said, in surprise.

He had always known she liked drawing, but he hadn’t realised how much she had developed.

There were wonderful dogs and horses in various poses.

The human studies – Uncle Sebastian reading, spectacles slipping to the end of his nose, cigarette between his fingers; a man digging in a vegetable patch, foot on spade and back bowed; Afton polishing silver, faintly smiling at his own thoughts; the back view of a maid hanging up a dress, stretching to reach – they were not only lifelike, but seemed so alive they might have moved and stepped out of the page.

‘You’re very good,’ he said, looking up. ‘I had no idea.’

She shrugged shyly at the compliment. Then she said, ‘I can draw – sometimes I think quite well. But I want to paint. I feel as if I can’t really get any better without some instruction.

There are techniques – there must be – but I don’t know them.

I keep doing the same things again and again, not moving on. It’s frustrating.’

‘These look pretty good to me.’

‘But I want to be better .’ He waited, hoping his silence would invite her to expand. At last she said, ‘I have to get away.’

‘Get away?’

‘I’ve spent all my life here. I want to go somewhere and do something.’

‘You’ll have your Season next year, I suppose.’

‘I don’t want one. And it won’t happen now Mother’s married and gone. She was the only one who cared about that sort of thing, and she never wanted it for me anyway. I wouldn’t have paid for all that dressing-up. I’m not pretty enough.’

‘I think you’re beautiful,’ he said, not just loyally, but because just then it was true.

She waved a hand, cancelling the remark. ‘Oh, all that’s just – it doesn’t matter . It’s not—’ She stopped.

He tried to help her along. ‘Well, then, what do you want to do?’

She looked at him with an urgency and, at the same time, doubt that impressed him with her seriousness. Something had happened to her. He wished he could have had a look at the drawings she didn’t want him to see.

‘I don’t suppose it’s possible. Oh, but, Richard, if it were .

. . Do you think you could talk to Giles, ask him, perhaps tell him it would be all right?

I don’t suppose he cares much what happens to me anyway, but he might think it wouldn’t look right – as though that matters!

But it’s what I want, more than anything in the world. ’

‘You haven’t told me what it is. What do you want to do?’

‘Go to art college. Don’t say anything yet!

There’s a place in London, the Slade School of Fine Art, where women are taught on the same basis as men.

They have wonderful teachers, and people who study there become famous, famous artists!

It’s all completely respectable,’ she said, on a descending note, as though knowing it would be forbidden.

‘Where is this school?’

‘In Bloomsbury. Near the university, and the British Museum. You know University College takes women students?’

‘It hadn’t occurred to me to wonder.’

‘Well, it does, so there’d be lots of other women all around in the area, studying – decent, respectable women. For me to be there wouldn’t be anything odd or outlandish that anyone could point a finger at.’

‘Where would you live?’

‘I could stay with Aunt Caroline, if she’d have me – it’s no distance at all. I could walk, or go on the omnibus, and come home at night so everyone could see it was respectable. Oh, Richard!’

‘You really want to do this?’

‘I’m desperate to go!’ she said, and her face looked fined-down and bleak, as if some unhappiness had stripped away the last of childhood’s plumpness.

‘Well, cheer up, chick,’ he said. ‘If it’s that important to you, I’m sure it can be managed.

I don’t see why Giles should mind in the least – it’s not as though you want to go on the stage.

’ He thought briefly of Chloe, and contrasted the ambitions of the two.

But Chloe was older, of age, and could do as she pleased. Poor little Alice was still a prisoner.

‘Would you ask him for me?’ she asked, a perilous hope in her eyes.

‘We’ll ask him together. And we’ll take your drawings to show him. I don’t suppose he realises how good you’ve got.’

He handed them back, watched her sort out the ones she didn’t want seen and push them casually under the armchair out of sight. Then she got up. ‘Can we do it now?’

‘Why not? They must have brought tea, so he’ll be in a good mood. Come on.’

Tea had been brought into the great hall, and the whole family was seated round the table when Richard and Alice arrived, preceded by the dogs, who raced to Giles, almost knocked over the milk jug with an ecstasy of tails, then sat one at either side of him, leaning suggestively, noses cataloguing what was on the table.

Giles had been telling the good news about their financial solidity. Halfway through the exposition, he thought he should perhaps have waited until Linda wasn’t there. She looked as though she was gathering herself for an appeal, and Richard arrived just in time to forestall her.

His arrival forestalled Kitty, too. She had been on the brink of mentioning her garden plans.

If there was spare money, perhaps Giles would think it could be afforded – or, at least, some of it.

But she could wait, and talk to him tomorrow, or whenever they were alone.

Nothing could be done until the spring, anyway – and if he was going to say no, she’d rather keep her dreams for a bit longer.

Richard passed around Alice’s sketches, and gave everyone time to pore over them. Then, while Alice stared determinedly at her feet, he dropped the bombshell of her request.

Linda was the first to speak. ‘Good heavens, what an idea! A Tallant becoming some kind of Bohemian? We’d never live it down.’

Giles frowned. ‘These drawings are very good – but good enough?’

Kitty said, ‘I think they are.’ Giles looked at her. ‘You know we studied fine art at Miss Thornton’s.’

‘I remember. You surprised me by knowing about impressionism.’

‘Until then, he thought young ladies only liked pictures of kittens, and little girls feeding ducks,’ Richard said, with a teasing look at his brother.

‘Well,’ Kitty went on, ignoring him, ‘for what my opinion is worth, I think Alice has a real talent.’

‘Having a talent doesn’t mean you become a professional,’ Linda said. ‘There’s a difference between taking part in country-house dramatics, and going on the stage.’

‘Painters are not the same as actors,’ Richard said. ‘Great artists are welcome guests in the finest salons. They even get honours. Sir Peter Lely? Sir Thomas Lawrence?’

‘Men, not women,’ Linda said. ‘Women don’t become great artists.’

‘Angelica Kauffman? Elizabeth Siddal?’

‘Oh, Richard, do stop saying names,’ Linda said crossly, not having heard of either of those two. ‘A girl of Alice’s age can’t go to art school. I’m sure they don’t take girls anyway.’

‘The Slade School does,’ Alice said. She addressed Giles, and told him all the things she had told Richard.

He listened quietly, then asked, as Richard had, ‘Is this what you really want?’

‘Yes,’ she said, putting all her force into one word.

‘You don’t want to have a Season, like Rachel?’

‘Please, no!’

‘Well, I dare say art-college fees won’t come to as much as all Rachel’s clothes did, to say nothing of the ball. If you’re sure, then I see no reason why you shouldn’t go.’

She ran to him, put her arms round his neck, and pressed her cheek to his.

‘We’ll have to ask Aunt Caroline if she’ll have you,’ he said.

‘Oh, Giles! I can’t believe it! I can really go?’

‘ I have no objection,’ he said.

‘Mother will never agree,’ Linda said. The temperature cooled.

The joy faded from Alice’s face, but then she squared her shoulders and said, ‘She doesn’t care about me.’

‘She cares about the family name.’

‘But there’s nothing disgraceful about it!’ Alice protested.

Giles intervened. ‘I expect she can be brought round. We’ll look into it. I’ll get Markham to make some enquiries – he’s the man for finding things out. We don’t know yet if they’ll take you, of course.’

‘For a fee, they’d take me ,’ Richard said.

He still wondered about those drawings she didn’t want him to see.

His guess would be that they were of some male figure, and that his youngest sister was suffering from a bad case of unrequited first love.

Going to art school was rather an extreme way of dealing with it, but he couldn’t see that it would do her any harm – and, not being a boy, she couldn’t ’list for a soldier.

Rachel felt so much better now she was in England, as though it gave her some small amount of control over her life.

It was a relief to be away from her mother and the prince – and to be closer to Angus.

He had written of his delight that she was back, and had given his reassurances that he hadn’t changed and that all would be well.

His next letter, however, was more alarming. His father had been putting pressure on him to agree to the marriage with Diana Huntley.

Sir Gordon had summoned Angus to his study and told him that the usual family gathering would take place at Craigend at Christmas, and the guests would include the Huntleys. ‘And I expect you to get on with proposing to Miss Huntley,’ he concluded sternly.

‘But, Father—’