Page 18 of The Secrets of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #1)
All three girls had made good marriages.
Victoria, the prettiest, had married the Prince of Wittenstein-Glücksburg, with a winter palace and a summer palace and full access, through the vast network of cousinage that linked them, to all the Continental royal courts.
Caroline, the youngest, had married Sir James Manningtree who, though only a knight, had been extremely wealthy.
She had been widowed young, and had no children, and now lived in a lavish way in a large house in Berkeley Square.
Maud had set her heart on marrying a duke, but when Stainton offered for her, the match had been thought good enough.
The title was an old one – the barony went back to the seventeenth century, the earldom was late eighteenth – and the property was good.
Maud’s Forrest chilliness and disdain for all other human life might have been mitigated by a different husband, Victoire thought – after all, Caroline was a perfectly pleasant and agreeable woman.
But she had to admit that her son Willie had had a self-sufficiency and arrogance that did nothing to soften his wife.
‘They say the children of lovers have a hard time of it,’ Victoire said now to Giles.
‘My William and I were so much in love, I fear we neglected poor Willie. He was left to nannies and tutors, who fed his self-consequence. He grew up thinking he could have whatever he wanted just for the taking. He and Maud – well, they each did their duty, but there was no connection between them. It was as if one lived on the moon and the other on …’ She paused, at a loss for another planetary body.
‘Jupiter?’ Giles offered.
‘Just so. And you children were all far away on earth and might as well have been orphans. My poor Giles! En résumé , your father did just as he pleased always, and I don’t suppose he told your mother anything.’
‘There is,’ Giles said, with delicate hesitancy, ‘the question of her jointure.’
His grandmother understood at once. ‘All spent?’ He nodded.
‘Hmm. Well, if she demands it, something will have to be done. But unless her sister the princess brings up the subject – she always was mercenary, you know – I don’t suppose she will think about it for some time. Is that what is worrying you?’
‘Not only that.’ Giles hesitated again.
‘Giles, don’t be so English! Tell me everything, without disguise. I cannot be shocked. And I am so old, I must have some wisdom. Perhaps I can help you.’
So he told her. She listened attentively, quietly, and he poured out everything.
‘I have been tearing at my hair for a solution,’ he concluded, ‘and the only one that has been suggested is something quite distasteful to me.’
‘To sell the land?’ she ventured.
‘No, I couldn’t do that,’ he said. ‘It would be to betray the family. And in any case, land prices are depressed, and there are mortgages. No, I need a completely fresh source of money.’
‘Then it is clear what you must do,’ she said dispassionately.
‘Is it? Markham says I must marry an heiress.’
‘ Bien s?r . That is exactly what I was going to say.’ She made a sound of impatience. ‘What is it? What is your objection?’
‘To marry a woman for money …’ he began.
‘But you cannot be so delicate! It is a thing well understood. You have a title, an old name, an estate. You find a girl whose father has money and who wants these things for her. What can be wrong? It is a fair bargain on each side. And, believe me, the girl will be of one mind with her papa.’
‘It seems so – cold. So heartless.’
‘Giles, you are not sentimental, I hope? I thought better of you. This is the way the world goes. Love matches are not for the likes of us. We have responsibilities.’
‘You loved my grandfather.’
‘But I would have married him even if I hadn’t.
Caroline loved her James – but after they were married.
To marry for love sounds pretty, but unless there is more to it, it rarely works out well.
Now, put all this nonsense out of your mind, and think like a rational man.
’ She examined his expression, and laughed.
‘ Chéri , don’t look so triste ! We shall find you a nice girl who will not only bring you a fortune but will adore you into the bargain.
Pourquoi non? You are a handsome young man that any girl would want to marry.
Now, we must go and see your aunt Caroline.
She is the one to find out which girls are on the market this year. ’
‘On the market?’ he groaned.
‘Enough! No more complaining. Caroline and I shall put our heads together. I’ll ask her to—’ She was interrupted by a knock at the street door downstairs, such a heavy, impetuous knock it was clearly heard all the way up here.
‘ Oh , tiens! I had forgotten Tommy. He is here. Chéri , I will scribble you a note, and you shall take it round to Caroline at once. We shall not let the grass grow under our feet. Hand me my writing-case.’
She was a quick writer and Chaplin was a slow climber, and she was folding her note and thrusting it into an envelope as the door opened and Chaplin announced, ‘Sir Thomas Burton, my lady.’
Burton was not a tall man, but he had an important figure, a very upright carriage, and rather piercing dark eyes.
His hair was parted in the centre, brushed straight back and, like his large moustache and trimmed beard, was dark and so without grey threads that Giles wondered if he dyed them.
He projected great presence, which Giles supposed was necessary in a conductor, impresario and all-round Great Man, but there was something endearing about the boyish smile he bestowed on Grandmère, and the air of shy eagerness with which he clasped her hand in both of his and stooped to kiss her cheek.
The affaire had been going on for twenty years, he reflected, so there must be love of some kind between them.
‘Tommy, dear, look, Giles is here. You remember Giles? Is it not shocking that I have a great, grown grandson like this?’
Burton shook Giles’s hand cordially and said, ‘You’ve been out east, I believe?’
‘With Carter, sir, at Thebes.’
‘Ah, the temple fellow! Must have been a shock to you, to be recalled in this way. Tragic thing, your father’s accident. My condolences. Fixed in England now, I imagine?’
‘Yes, sir.’
The dark eyes scanned him. ‘A great deal of business, I expect. Sudden deaths cause a great deal of work for everyone. But don’t let it overwhelm you, my boy.
This, too, shall pass, as the philosopher says.
I dare say your life dealing with antiquities has taught you about the fleeting nature of human concerns.
Mine with music, too. Music lasts. Little else does. ’
‘No, sir,’ said Giles.
He didn’t think the words particularly comforting, and presumably Grandmère did not, either, for she said, ‘Tommy, don’t stand there talking nonsense.
Ring the bell for Simone. As you see, I am not dressed yet.
Giles is just leaving. Take that note to your aunt at once,’ she told him, kissing him and pressing it into his hand as she turned away.
‘Tommy, you shall play the piano while I dress. I shall leave the door half open so that I can hear you.’
‘What shall I play?’ Burton asked, looking pleased as he stepped across to the piano.
‘Schumann. You know I love Schumann,’ she said, as she disappeared through the door.
Giles smiled to himself as he took his leave. A pianist herself, Grandmère had always said that of all piano works Schumann’s were the most exacting. She was intending to keep her lover fully occupied until she was ready for him.
Lady Manningtree’s house in Berkeley Square was just round the corner.
When Giles presented himself, his aunt was on her way out to luncheon with Lady Vaine – her carriage was actually at the door – but whatever Grandmère had written was so powerful she instantly had it sent away, and scribbled off a note of excuse to Lady Vaine instead.
Then she placed herself on a settle in the elegant drawing-room, made Giles sit beside her, and said, ‘Now, what is all this? Victoire says you must be persuaded to marry. But, Giles, you must have known you would have to. You must have thought about it.’
‘I haven’t, not really,’ he said ruefully. ‘I supposed that one day I would meet a suitable girl and—’
‘Fall in love? Please do not let me hear anything so vulgar from your lips.’
‘Not exactly, but I supposed that …’ He hesitated. Yes, what had he supposed? ‘… that my marriage would be a matter for me alone to decide. And not for a long time yet, in any case.’
She shook her head. ‘I blame William. Maud, too. Your parents should have seen to it that you were married off as soon as you reached your majority, not waited until you developed fanciful ideas. And then for William to go and get himself killed!’
‘I don’t think it was his idea,’ Giles said mildly.
‘The estate is all to pieces, I gather.’ He nodded.
‘Then, my dear, it is as Victoire says. You must marry an heiress. I will find you someone. She shall be a nice girl whom you will like, and she will like you, and you will trot along very well together.’ A sudden thought came to her, and she shot him a sharp look.
‘You haven’t formed an attachment already? ’
He smiled at the idea. ‘I’ve been in the desert, Aunt Caroline. The only women there are four thousand years old and carved in stone.’
‘Well, that’s a relief.’ She looked suddenly animated.
‘This will be such fun! I was thinking it would be just another Season, but now I shall have an interest! I shall visit all the hostesses and find out who’s coming out, and you shall have your choice.
I’ll make you a list, and you’ll meet them and dance with them—’
‘I am in mourning,’ he pointed out to her.
She paused for a moment, but then flipped her fingers.
‘I don’t think that signifies. The rules are not followed as strictly as they used to be.
And there have always been exceptions in cases of need.
By the time the Season starts you’ll have been in deep mourning for four months.
No-one will think anything of it if you begin to attend respectable balls.
By the end of May six months will be up, and you can marry in June quite properly. ’
‘June!’ he said, dismayed.
She gave him a sympathetic look. ‘No sense in putting it off, my dear. Every month you delay just adds another month’s interest to the debts.’
That, Giles thought, was one way of looking at it.