Page 12 of The Secrets of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #1)

At Miss Thornton’s School for Young Ladies in Kensington, Kitty Bayfield sat in the far window-seat of the drawing-room, her knees drawn up and her arms locked round them.

It was the last day of term, and girls had been trotting in and out in ones and twos and groups, but they did not notice her there in the shadow of the curtain.

The house was alive with running footsteps, and down below in the street, under a soft damp sky, the grey of pavement and road had almost disappeared in an excitement of movement and colour.

Carriages and hackney cabs were coming and going, trunks and valises cluttered the pavement, footmen were carrying out bags and parcels, servants and mamas and the occasional papa were collecting their daughters, extracting them from a confusion of hugs and kisses and flying curls, forgotten items, lost gloves and a good many tears. It was the last day of term.

The room was light and modern with big windows and comfortable, chintz-covered furniture.

So different from home, Kitty thought. Bayfield Court in Hampstead was Tudor, with small leaded casements and a warren of dark rooms that always smelt faintly of mould.

There was dark oak panelling and polished wood floors, and the furniture was Jacobean and punitive – hard upright chairs and settles with tapestry covers.

It always made her think of a church: cold, musty, and a temple of rectitude.

It was lonely, above all. She had been lonely all her life.

Her father, Sir John, was a baronet, a well-bred man with impeccable manners.

His one passion was genealogy: he spent hours every day studying in his private room and had published several well-received monographs on the blood-lines of the great houses of England.

Her earliest memories of him were of being taken to his room to say goodnight, feeling awed and apprehensive.

Sir John was not an unkind man, but he had been brought up in a strict and formal age and did not unbend easily.

To Kitty, he was an impressive but forbidding figure: Papa must not be disturbed, Papa demanded this, Papa would not like that, Papa forbade the other.

Kitty’s mother, Catherine Harvey, a jam heiress from Cambridgeshire, had brought a considerable fortune to the marriage.

(Kitty felt a little thrill of connection every time she saw a pot of Harvey’s Jam.

Sadly, Miss Thornton’s school favoured Chivers’.) She had died of complications a few days after Kitty’s birth.

Kitty was named for her, but knew her only from her portrait over the drawing-room fireplace, by Sargent, in a white satin evening gown with a pale pink chiffon stole.

She had a sweet but rather tense expression, and her heavy eyelids made her look as though she’d been about to cry.

Kitty had studied it often, trying to find something in the face that spoke to her.

The first Lady Bayfield had had a heart-shaped face and pointed chin, as did Kitty, and the same smooth, arched eyebrows, but her hair was light golden brown and wavy where Kitty’s was black and curly, and her eyes were hazel where Kitty’s were blue.

Nanny had told her that her mother had gone to a better place.

‘She’s in Paradise and better off out of it, if you ask me,’ Nanny had said sourly.

She was a stout but hard woman, bosoms and stomach rock-like inside uncompromising corsetry.

She was hard of face, hard of hand and, most of all, hard of mind.

She read the Bible a great deal, but the God she spoke of to Kitty was also hard: watchful and critical.

She seemed to view life as a difficult and unpleasant task to be completed before the big Bedtime of death.

Then it would be Paradise – or the Other Place, depending on how you’d done.

‘Will I go to Paradise like Mama when I die?’ Kitty had asked.

‘If you’re good,’ Nanny had answered.

To be good mainly seemed to require Kitty to be quiet, to sit still, and not to dirty her clothes; but there was always an unspoken sense that some other kind of goodness was required, the secret of which was not divulged.

Kitty feared she must always fall short, because she did not know how to do better.

When Kitty was six, Sir John married again.

Nanny disapproved. She explained loftily to Kitty that girls couldn’t inherit titles, so her father needed a son to be baronet after him.

Kitty gathered from the tone that Nanny felt this was merely an excuse for some more frivolous purpose.

‘Half his age,’ she sniffed one evening over her mending.

‘Some flighty piece of fancy-work, leading him by the nose.’

‘I’ve seen her. She’s pretty,’ said the housemaid, who had just come in with a pile of linen.

‘Handsome is as handsome does,’ Nanny said sourly. ‘We shall have all sorts of shenanigans, you mark my words.’

Kitty, on the other side of the room with a book and not supposed to be listening, liked the idea that she would have a new mother who was young and pretty.

And shenanigans was what Nanny called things she didn’t approve of, like singing, dancing and laughing.

When the barrel-organ man stopped in the street outside their house she would complain about his ‘blamey shenanigans’ and ring for the footman to send him away.

Kitty thought some shenanigans around the house would be rather nice.

And perhaps a stepmother would love her, as her own mother had never had a chance to do.

Jayne D’Arcy duly made her appearance, and at first sight she seemed more likely to please Nanny than Kitty: a tall, thin lady, elegant and smart, but with a pointed nose and thin mouth, and a sharp voice that demanded obedience.

Her brisk footsteps, rattling on the bare boards, could be heard approaching from a distance – a useful warning.

She took the house in hand, shook it up and remade it to her own requirements, new furniture, new hangings, new routines, a new cook, more footmen.

A great deal more cleaning went on than under the previous, mistress-less regime, and a smell of lavender wax partly obscured the odour of mould.

Kitty heard her declare, when the changes were in place, that Bayfield Court was now an establishment worthy of a baronet and his lady.

They became very social, entertaining or dining out most days of the week, going to plays and concerts in London, going away for Saturday-to-Mondays.

The new Lady Bayfield never came up to the nursery – which pleased Nanny, who did not like ‘interference’ – but Kitty was summoned into the presence every evening to be inspected.

The inspections were brief, and Kitty sadly learned that there would be no more smiles and embraces from this mother than from the previous one.

Kitty was instructed to call her ‘Mama’, and was quite willing to do so, but she seemed more like Nanny’s watchful and critical God, always on the look-out for anything about Kitty that might ‘disappoint your father’.

But she did do one thing for her stepdaughter: when Kitty was seven, there was a period of prolonged, suppressed excitement in the house, with everyone exchanging knowing looks.

When Kitty asked what was happening she was told, ‘Nothing that concerns little girls.’ This turned out to be untrue, because one morning Nanny woke her early and dressed her in grim silence, then told her to come and meet her new brother.

Peter, Sir John named him, after his own father.

Kitty was just the right age to believe that Peter was a present meant especially for her.

She adored him from the moment she first hung over his crib, enchanted by his little face and tiny fingers.

She had always been fond of her dolls – a child has to love something – but now she had a living, breathing one.

Lady Bayfield handed him over to the nursery staff, and took herself off to resume her social life, satisfied to have him brought to her once a day, clean and beautifully dressed.

Kitty heard her say once that babies were ugly things, and that he would be more interesting when he was older.

It surprised her: from the beginning he was a pretty baby, never red and crumpled, but smooth and luminous as a pearl.

Her father talked a great deal about Peter’s future: what school he would go to (Eton), what club his father would nominate him for (White’s), what tailor he would patronise (Poole’s).

There was talk of cricket, rowing, a grand tour.

Papa sounded very happy when he spoke of these things, and his voice was warmer than Kitty had ever heard it.

But he also never went near the nursery.

When once she mentioned it tentatively to Nanny, Nanny replied that men were not given to noticing their sons until they went into trousers.

So she continued to believe that Peter was her baby.

It was she who steadied his first steps, marvelled at his first words, taught him to handle spoon and pusher, told him the names of things, taught him games.

In return, he adored her. His face lit at the sight of her.

He watched the door for her if she went out of the room.

And as soon as he could get up on his hind legs he staggered after her everywhere, crying, ‘Kitty-Kitty-Kitty!’ And when he was tucked into bed, it was she who read him a story until he fell asleep, his hand wrapped around one of her fingers.

When he was four, and Kitty was eleven, he caught diphtheria and died.