Page 17 of The Secrets of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #1)
‘It has entered a new phase,’ Giles said.
He looked at her, to judge how far she was seeking information, and decided not to try to explain the finer points of guerrilla warfare to her.
She really just wanted information about her brother.
Richard, the lively one, had always been the favourite.
He, Giles, being grave, studious and, moreover, never in favour with their father, had not had the temperament to make fun for his little sisters and win their affection.
‘I expect he’ll have leave soon, and then you’ll see him. ’
Alice had been studying him while he studied her. She said, with an abrupt change of subject, ‘You’re really worried, aren’t you? Is it about the estate?’
He hesitated. What to tell her? ‘Things are in a bit of a muddle,’ he admitted.
‘Are we poor?’
He smiled. ‘Not poor .’
‘Will we have to leave the Castle?’
‘It won’t come to that. Should you mind, then?’
‘It’s home,’ she said simply.
‘You’ll have to leave one day. When you get married.’
‘I shall never get married,’ she said firmly. ‘I should hate it.’
‘Wouldn’t you like to have babies?’ he asked, amused.
‘Absolutely not. We’ve always had to coo over Linda’s when she comes visiting and, honestly, Giles, they were just awful when they were tiny, like horrid little baby mice, all naked and wrinkled.
And they’re not much better now – always crying and making a fuss.
I’d far rather have horses and dogs. Rachel wants to get married – it’s all she talks about – but I heard some of the maids say neither of us will be able to get married if there’s no money left.
Did—’ She looked up at him earnestly. ‘Was Papa very bad?’
‘It’s not like that. Things are complicated. I can’t explain it to you so you’d understand.’
‘I bet I would. I’m good at understanding things,’ she assured him.
He shook his head. ‘Just don’t talk to anyone about Papa being bad, or there not being any money. It’s not the done thing. And it would make my job much more difficult.’
‘I won’t, then. I won’t say anything to anyone except you. But, Giles, if there’s anything I can do to help you … Rachel said you were cross and strict, but I don’t think you are, not really. And I’m good at listening.’
‘I bet you are,’ he said, smiling. ‘But don’t worry about things. They’ll work out. Shall we canter along here? It doesn’t look too muddy.’
Alice’s mind was easily distracted. ‘I’ll race you,’ she said, with an impish grin, and Pharaoh took off, leaving Giles to catch her up, and Josh to tut in disapproval.
Giles’s grandmother Victoire lived in a tall, narrow house in Bruton Street, with a staff of lady’s maid, butler, cook and two housemaids, an establishment that might have been termed modest, except that her cook Durand was Escoffier-trained, and her butler Chaplin was such an archetype of butlerhood that her neighbour, the Earl of Strathmore, had several times tried to poach him.
At the age of seventy, she still had an active social life and rarely went to bed before midnight, so Giles curbed his impatience and did not present himself at her door until almost noon.
As a favoured caller, he was admitted, and shown to her small sitting-room adjoining her bedroom on the second floor, where he found her drinking linden tea, into which she dipped the macaroons her chef was famous for, and reviewing the morning’s crop of invitations and letters.
At his entrance she put all aside and rose to her feet with graceful ease (if it cost her any effort she would never let it show) to step forward and embrace him.
‘Grandmère,’ he said, kissing her scented cheek. ‘You look blooming.’
‘You look tired,’ she said. She patted his cheek. ‘Fagged to death, chéri . One is not surprised. Sit. Chaplin will bring coffee. You will not care for my slops.’
‘You are the best advertisement for them,’ he said. ‘No-one would believe you were a day over forty.’
‘You cannot conceive how much work goes on in the morning, to bring me to look even this good. If Simone ever leaves me, she can get a post as curator of a museum, restoring ancient, cracked vases.’
‘ You are not ancient or cracked.’
‘You, however …’ she returned. ‘Mon pauvre , what did my son leave you, aside from cares? Dragged back from your desert, where I dare say you were on the brink of wonderful discoveries.’ He smiled and shook his head.
‘But I must tell you, by the by, that dry desert air is the worst thing for your complexion. You have not suffered any harm yet, but it is as well you are recalled to soft English dampness, before you begin to resemble your own leather portmanteaux.’
He laughed. ‘It’s good to hear you talk nonsense! I was afraid I would find you—’
‘Plunged in gloom?’
‘You have lost your only son,’ he said seriously.
‘At my age, one expects to lose people. And it is a long time since Willie and I shared any warmth. He was not a man to inspire tendresse . Of course one must feel it, to lose a child at any age, and it was a shock. But I am not broken, my dear. I am more concerned that you should not be.’
He sighed. ‘Things are very difficult. The more I find out, the worse it gets.’
He had received a further shock the previous day.
The enquiries made of Garrard’s about the value of the family jewellery had received an answer: all the important pieces had been copied over the years, and the originals sold.
His mother had been wearing paste and base metal – he didn’t know, and couldn’t ask, whether she knew.
Conversation paused as Chaplin entered with a tray bearing coffee pot and cup, and a plate of Durand’s moulinets , delicious little savoury pastry circles. Giles was particularly partial to them. ‘You must have known I was coming,’ he said.
His grandmother was incurably honest. ‘It is a delight to see you. But, no, Sir Thomas is to take me to luncheon, and he likes a glass of champagne here first. Moulinets are perfect with champagne.’
‘Sir Thomas – is he well?’
Sir Thomas Burton was twenty years her junior, the scion of an industrial family (Burton’s Little Liver Pills were found in every home).
He had been a pianist and studied music at the Conservatoire in Paris, where he had first met Victoire on one of her twice-yearly visits.
Some years later they had met again in London, by which time he had become a conductor, and was using his fortune to stage concerts and operas.
She was by then a widow, but he was married, and the affaire they had embarked on had shocked society.
However, it had been going on for so long now it was spoken of openly.
His wife, Lady Violet, had made ill-health a lifelong hobby, and the unspoken assumption was that she was glad to have the vigorous, irrepressible Sir Thomas taken off her hands.
‘Tommy is always well,’ Grandmère said. ‘He only has too much energy and not enough to do. He talks now of founding his own orchestra, so that he shall never want for someone to conduct.’
‘That sounds like a good idea,’ said Giles. ‘London is thin of musical life.’
‘And thin of concert halls also,’ said Grandmère, severely. ‘The Queen’s is so dreary, and the Albert’s acoustics are so dreadful. He will have to build his own concert hall too, and then he can play in it to his heart’s content.’
‘You make him sound like a child in a sandpit,’ Giles said, smiling.
‘He is very child-like,’ she agreed. ‘He keeps me young. But, Giles, enough of me, tell me how things are with you. Maud is in Germany, I understand. Is that why you have come – to discuss things without her knowledge?’
‘You are very astute,’ he said. ‘The trouble is, I don’t know how much she knows about anything.’
‘Very little, I imagine. She has always been one to look straight ahead and refuse to see what is to either side. You know your father had affaires ?’
‘No,’ Giles said. He had suspected, since seeing his father’s London expenses, but to suspect was not the same as being told in plain words.
He felt absurdly shocked. It was one thing for his grandmother to entertain an elderly lover (a man of fifty, his father’s age, must seem elderly to him, and it was beyond him to imagine that Sir Thomas and his grandmother did anything more now than keep each other company) but for his father to betray his mother in that way was something else. ‘I didn’t know, until now.’
‘No, I suppose you would not,’ Victoire said thoughtfully. ‘Maud’s guiding principle always was “Never complain, never explain.” She is so English.’
Maud was the eldest of the three Forrest girls, daughters of the 8th Earl of Leake.
She was also the plain one, but had never allowed that to affect her in any way.
To be a Forrest was to have reached the pinnacle of civilisation.
The family motto, carved into the ancient, pitted stone lintel over the door of their Northumberland fastness was Manners Mayketh Manne , which they took to mean that you should behave exactly the same to all people – and indeed they did, since a Forrest looked down on absolutely everyone, including the Royal Family (who were, after all, parvenus.) To a Forrest, the Prince of Wales and a coachman were of equal unimportance, and both should be treated with the same chilly courtesy.