Page 37 of The Secrets of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #1)
Dinner with the Sandses was indeed simple, and there was no wine.
It was a long time since Richard had sat down to a meal without the lubricant of alcohol.
Not since nursery days, he supposed. They ate around a gateleg table, which had been set up in the centre of the drawing-room, and Miss Sands brought each course up in turn from downstairs: curried eggs with lettuce, stewed veal with mushrooms and peas, and a savoury of herring roes with biscuits.
‘Is this Mrs Gateshill’s cooking?’ he asked.
‘My daughter and I did it together,’ said Mrs Sands.
He was impressed.
‘We were quite accustomed to cooking for ourselves in our last home,’ she explained. ‘But we had a kitchen there.’
There was no sweet or dessert, but by that stage, deep in conversation, he hardly noticed.
Miss Sands, he discovered, was not shy so much as reserved.
There were many subjects on which she had no opinion, and would merely listen, answering, if pressed, in monosyllables, eyes averted.
But on a subject she cared about, she could be eloquent, and would meet his eyes frankly.
As he observed her through the evening, he was astonished again by her beauty, and her long, eloquent fingers in particular fascinated him.
But it was Mrs Sands with whom he had the majority of the conversation.
She told him that she had already given some lessons. ‘Some of my old pupils who haven’t yet found a new teacher – I contacted them as soon as your lovely piano arrived. And two new ones, recommended to me by an acquaintance. It feels good to be independent again.’
They talked about the war, Richard tempted into eloquence by Mrs Sands’s intelligent interest. Since the beginning of April, it had been clear that the Boers had to come to terms. ‘Conditions on the veld are terrible for the women and children,’ he said, ‘and it takes the stuffing out of the fighting men, knowing their families are suffering.’
‘I thought the women and children were put into camps,’ Mrs Sands said. ‘I read a report in The Times …’
‘Yes, we did round them up in the beginning,’ Richard said, ‘but last December Lord Kitchener ordered that they were to be left alone. It means the Boers have to take care of their own, you see. It slows them down. And now we’ve learned to fight like them – living on the veld, making lightning strikes – we’re better at it than them.
We live harder and move faster. We chase them from pillar to post, never letting them rest. They’ve got nowhere left to go and no hope of winning. ’
He did not mention the other thing they had learned from the Boers – not to take prisoners.
In that kind of warfare, holding prisoners used up manpower and hobbled a unit’s effectiveness.
It had become standard practice to shoot them, as the Boers did, though this could never become official policy: it was not the British way.
Just this February there had been a show trial of two officers, Handcock and Morant, for shooting prisoners, and they had been executed as an example, not to the army but to the watching world.
It took its toll, that kind of warfare, and underneath his flippant, devil-may-careity there was a strain and weariness Richard had been at pains to hide – from himself as much as others.
But now all the Boer leaders were in Pretoria where peace talks were going on.
‘So the war is over?’ said Mrs Sands.
‘It will be, when they sign a treaty,’ said Richard. ‘I suspect there’ll have to be a lot of talking first. They do love to jaw, your Boers. But the fighting is over. I’m guessing there’ll be a treaty by the end of the month.’
‘And then we’ll have the Coronation to look forward to,’ said Mrs Sands, changing the subject to his relief. Introspection was not the soldier’s way, and Mrs Sands’s sympathy had brought him closer to it than was comfortable.
‘Strange to think of having a king,’ said Richard. ‘We’re so used to talking about “Queen and country”.’ He sang a phrase, ‘“It’s the soldiers of the Queen, my lads, who’ve been my lads, who’ve been my lads …”’
‘I think he’ll be a good king,’ said Mrs Sands.
‘You’ve met him?’ Richard asked, from something in her tone.
‘I used to hear about him from—’ She stopped abruptly, colouring.
It was the first awkward moment: he knew what she had been going to say. He was forced to remember for the first time that this pleasant woman had been his father’s mistress.
‘My father was a close friend of the Prince of Wales,’ he observed.
Chloe looked from him to her mother and back, apprehensively. Would there be unpleasantness?
Richard roused himself to speak cheerfully. ‘I imagine he’ll be a jollier monarch than the old Queen, at all events. He does love to laugh. Do you know the story that Frederick Treves, the surgeon, told him?’
‘Do tell,’ Mrs Sands invited.
‘Well, one of our officers in South Africa was shot in the head, and was sent back to England to be treated by Treves. It was such a bad wound that Treves was surprised the man survived the operation. He’d had to remove a large part of his brain, and he told him he might have difficulty in following his profession in future.
The officer said, “Thank God my brain is no longer wanted, sir – I’ve just been transferred to the War Office.
” When Treves told the story to the King, he laughed until he cried. ’
Mrs Sands also laughed; Chloe smiled politely.
To Richard’s amazement, he found himself thinking he would sooner spend the evening with the mother than with the daughter, no matter how beautiful she was, or how talented.
Mrs Sands was still a very handsome woman, besides being intelligent, well-read and witty.
And the understanding warmth of her eyes when she smiled at him made her very attractive …
He was almost sorry when he had to go. ‘An evening engagement,’ he apologised. ‘I wish I might cancel it, but I really can’t.’
Chloe fetched his hat, gloves and cane from the other room.
As he shook hands, he said, ‘I’ve enjoyed this evening so much.
Would you allow me the honour of taking you out to dinner one evening?
I don’t cook,’ he added lightly, ‘so it would have to be a restaurant, but I promise to choose a respectable one.’
Chloe, he noticed, looked grave, and Mrs Sands said hesitantly, ‘You are very kind, but you do not need to have us on your conscience. There is no need for you to trouble yourself with us any further.’
He felt a moment of pique that they could even consider turning him down – him ! But then he made himself remember the sensitivity of their position. ‘I don’t ask out of duty. It would be a great pleasure to entertain you, if you could think it proper. The obligation would all be on my side.’
She said quickly, ‘I’m ashamed to make you beg when you are offering us such a treat. We accept gladly – don’t we, Chloe?’
Chloe thanked him, but he did not feel there was any great warmth in it.
Beautiful, but cold, he thought, as he walked off round Golden Square.
And then he corrected himself – not cold, precisely, but …
What? Living in another world altogether, he decided at last. Only the visible part of her was present. The rest of her was elsewhere.
As May tilted over into June, the Season reached full speed.
Engagements came thick and fast, and Nina was made aware of an essential difference between Kitty and her.
Kitty had started off with a large wardrobe, and Lady Bayfield was still adding to it, while Nina had to wear the same gowns over and over.
She had been dazzled in the beginning by her lovely new things, but now she realised why ‘coming out’ was such an expense.
However logical she meant to be about it, she could not help the occasional pang of envy.
Also Marie, the French maid (at least, she said she was French) whom Lady Bayfield had hired for them, had a way of looking at her …
Kitty, though she never spoke of it, was aware of the situation, and did what she could by lending Nina little things here and there – gloves, sashes, hair ornaments – and would have given her whole dresses, had they not been too small for her taller friend.
And had it not been for fear of her stepmother.
Lady Bayfield was happy to have a distinction maintained between her daughter and the indigent friend.
That was as it should be. She had not appreciated at the beginning how very good-looking Miss Sanderton was …
But when they were invited by the Earl and Countess Wroughton for a Saturday-to-Monday at Dene Park, their country estate in Hertfordshire, Nina wrote with the greatest reluctance to Aunt Schofield asking if it was at all possible for her to have a new evening gown, because the Saturday evening would be very grand indeed.
Lord Wroughton was a close friend of the King, and His Majesty was expected to look in.
Aunt Schofield had expected an application before this.
She knew something of the sartorial demands of the Season.
She took Nina to Derry & Toms and bought her two new day dresses and an evening gown.
‘But this must be the last of it,’ she said, with a sternness she did not entirely feel.
‘I hope you are not being spoiled, Nina. I want you to enjoy yourself, but you know the fashionable world is not your sphere, and never can be.’
Nina, whose expectations were modest, was delighted by the new clothes. ‘I don’t think I’m being spoiled,’ she said. ‘But, oh, I am enjoying it, Auntie. It will be lovely to look back on, when—’