Page 10 of The Secrets of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #1)

An indignant protest arose. But his mother stopped it.

‘Would you have our affairs bruited about the neighbourhood, the subject of common gossip and coarse speculation?’ They looked at her uncomfortably.

‘I will not have my late husband’s actions picked over by ignorant outsiders.

You will keep silent.’ She turned and looked at Giles.

‘And my son will resolve everything. In his own time.’

The slight emphasis on ‘will’ made it sound more like a threat than loyal support.

Giles met her eyes steadily but could not read her: she had a lifetime’s practice in being impenetrable.

But it bothered him – he could not say why – that she had called him ‘my son’ and not Giles, or even Ayton, as she had several times since he’d come back.

Yet what should she have said? ‘The new earl’?

He turned quickly to leave, before there could be any more argument, so quickly that he tripped over one of the dogs – they had crept up close to him again. It yipped, the sound of a trodden paw, and he muttered irritably, ‘Get out of the way, damn you!’

At the door, Alice looked at him with reproach. He met her eyes questioningly. She said, ‘Don’t be horrid to them. They don’t understand, poor things.’

Two girls, two young women, trembling on the brink of adulthood, the future shape of their lives in his hands. He felt the fragile weight of them settle on his soul. Everyone wanted reassurance. Who was to comfort him?

Dory was helping carry things back down – everyone had to help on a major occasion like this.

She was following Rose with a tray of crockery when, approaching the door to the senior servants’ sitting-room, she heard Mrs Webster say, ‘Something’s going on.

I can tell. There’s an Atmosphere. Something was said when they all went into the library. ’

Mr Moss’s voice replied, ‘Well, don’t look at me.’

Rose slowed, listening, and Dory, behind her, kept very quiet.

‘Why didn’t you go in as well? Then we’d know,’ Mrs Webster said.

‘I wasn’t required,’ said Moss, with dignity.

‘You opened the door for them. You should have stepped inside before you closed it.’

‘I can’t intrude myself into private meetings.’

‘Oh, they’d never have noticed you. We’re just furniture to them. You pull out a chair for them and they sit without even seeing who did it.’

Dory heard Rose snort at that.

‘It could be something that affects us,’ Mrs Webster went on. ‘If there’s trouble coming, I want to know.’

‘ I know,’ said Rose, allowing herself to appear in the doorway. Dory hung back, out of sight.

‘You shouldn’t listen to our conversation,’ said Mrs Webster, sharply.

‘You shouldn’t talk when I’m listening, then,’ Rose retorted.

Moss drew in a sharp breath. ‘Impertinence,’ he said.

But Mrs Webster waved down the rebuke. ‘Not now, Mr Moss. How do you know, Rose?’

‘How d’you think?’ Rose said.

‘Lady Cordwell?’

At the Castle, Rose maided Lady Cordwell, who always said there was no point in bringing her own maid when there were Castle servants with nothing to do; but Rose suspected, as did Mrs Webster, that Lady Cordwell didn’t have a maid. Couldn’t afford one? Or too mean? It could be either.

‘She always tells me everything in the end,’ Rose said. ‘She does love to talk.’

‘Don’t gossip about your betters,’ Moss said sternly.

‘Just observing a fact, Mr Moss. She sent for a glass of milk, and when I popped up to her, she told me all about it. But you wouldn’t want to hear gossip, would you?’

Moss hesitated an agonising beat, but then said haughtily, ‘Certainly not. Go along with you.’

Rose grinned and passed on. Dory scuttled after her, and behind her heard Mrs Webster say, ‘I’ll get it out of her later.’

And Moss said, ‘Not on my account.’ But he didn’t sound sure.

Before they reached the scullery, they met Mr Crooks coming the other way with a pair of boots in his hand.

‘Thumb mark on the heel,’ he muttered. ‘Not mine, of course.’

‘Of course not, Mr Crooks,’ Rose said ironically.

Crooks seemed to take this for an invitation to chat.

He lowered his voice. ‘I must say, there’s a very odd atmosphere Upstairs.

I have the feeling that something unusual was said when everyone went out to hear the will read.

You don’t suppose there’s anything wrong, do you?

Oh dear, they can’t have lost it, can they?

I’ve always heard Mr Moresby very highly spoken of.

Though I believe it was young Mr Moresby who came, and we don’t know anything about him.

But still, they’re the best firm in Ashmore, everyone says so. ’

‘Something’s going on,’ Rose said, with an air of enjoying herself, ‘but that’s not it.’

‘You know something?’ Crooks asked hungrily.

‘I’m saying nothing,’ Rose replied. ‘Come on, Dory. Lots more to do yet.’ They went on, leaving Crooks looking more anxious than ever.

Each day Giles shut himself in the library with strict instructions that no-one was to disturb him unless sent for.

He spoke to the agent, Markham; the bailiff, Adeane; the head gamekeeper, Saddler; the head man, Giddins.

The banker, Vogel of Martin’s Bank, came with accounts and ledgers and a furrowed brow.

Giles interviewed Moss and Mrs Webster. But most of all, he spoke to Moresby.

He breakfasted alone and early, took no luncheon, and did not appear in the evening until dinner was actually announced. At the table he sat grimly silent, and excused himself as soon as the dessert was put on. At least it meant he could keep out of the way of his relatives.

One day, however, Linda waylaid him. Tired of hoping for an interview, she hovered near the library door and caught him on his way back from the closet, jumping out from an alcove in front of him.

‘I’ve got to talk to you, Giles,’ she said. She actually stretched out her arms to block his way.

‘Not now, Linda. Let me by.’

She stared him down. His mother was a great starer, from beneath half-lowered eyelids, with a cool menace. Linda had inherited the power, but her stare was wide open, her eyes like twin gimlets boring straight into one’s head, hot and painful.

‘You must listen, Giles. You can’t keep avoiding your responsibilities by locking yourself in the library.’

Giles winced. ‘It’s my responsibilities that keep me locked in the library … Oh, what’s the use? What is it, Linda? What do you want?’

‘My allowance, that’s all,’ she said. ‘Papa paid me an allowance. I want to know if it was in his will.’

‘I told you, there was nothing in the will except the one clause, leaving everything to me. Do you think I’m lying?’

‘I suppose not—’

‘You suppose ?’

‘Oh, don’t change the subject,’ Linda said impatiently. ‘Just answer me: are you going to pay my allowance?’

‘ Why was he paying you an allowance? Surely it’s for Cordwell to keep you.’

Her eyes shifted away for an instant. ‘Times are hard. Especially in the West Country. You have no idea … God, I hate that place!’ It burst out of her. ‘Damp and cold and crumbling round my ears. Nothing for miles around but fields. Green, green, green everywhere you look!’

He felt an unwelcome pang of sympathy, though he knew she was longing for shops and pavements and theatres and bright lights, while he was pining for the desert.

Still, it made him answer more kindly than he might otherwise have.

‘Linda, I can’t help you at the moment. I’m still learning about the estate, trying to sort out—’ He almost said ‘the muddle’ but stopped himself in time.

‘You’ll have to wait, like everyone else.

And now, let me by.’ He grew impatient. ‘The longer you keep me from the books, the longer you’ll have to wait for an answer. ’

She let him by, reluctantly. As he opened the library door she called after him, ‘I’m your sister , Giles! Remember that. Your sister !’

He thought she’d been going to say ‘your only sister’ but remembered just in time the existence of the two quiet girls whom everyone seemed to forget so easily.

There was so much to learn. Books and books and books, talk and talk and talk. The room filling with cigarette smoke, ledgers, accounts, and earnest men trying to make him understand matters that were simple and obvious to them. And outside, the low grey skies and the endless weeping rain.

The dogs lay at his feet and sighed. He took them out for brisk walks very early in the morning and late at night.

They were not comfortable walks: dark, and cold, and frequently wet.

The dogs didn’t care, and after the first day, Giles had too much on his mind to notice.

Old Frewing, the hall porter, had a lamp ready for him and never so much as tutted when he brought in mud or kept the old man from his bed.

Frewing had a fair idea of how things stood.

’Twas surprising what folks’d say right in front of you when you was hall porter, just as if you wasn’t there.

And he’d been at the Castle all his life, since starting as a water boy aged eight.

He’d seen his late lordship grow up, seen him come into his inheritance too young …

Oh, he knew a thing or two, did Frewing; but it wasn’t his place to talk about it.

He gave the young master a kindly nod when he passed, and silently wished him luck.

He was too young as well. Wouldn’t be in his shoes, Frewing always thought.

Giles returned the nod politely each time, but it was automatic politeness.

He didn’t really see the old man. His mind was firmly elsewhere.

Between them, Markham and Adeane had got him to understand that the problem was twofold, general and specific.

Generally, there was an agricultural slump, prices were down, depressed by a flood of cheap imported foods.

Specifically, the estate hadn’t been looked after as it should have been.