Page 38 of The Secrets of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #1)

She faltered. It wasn’t just the fun and frolic, but the new friends she had made: the other debutantes, and the jolly fellows they danced and flirted with, and dear Kitty – would she ever see her again when their lives threw apart?

And Lord Stainton – how close they seemed to have grown over these past weeks.

At every social occasion, he seemed to veer straight to her and Kitty and they talked like old friends – about music, books and art, current events, and often about archaeology and ancient civilisations.

She loved the fact that he deemed her worth talking seriously to.

All that would end when the Season did, and she and Kitty were parted, for his world and hers were a universe apart.

She would never see him again, and she was horribly afraid she would miss him.

She came back from her thoughts. ‘There is bound to be an adjustment to go through afterwards,’ Aunt Schofield was saying, ‘but there are great satisfactions to be found in our world too, and you will appreciate them in time.’

‘I know. I do know,’ Nina said, eager to reassure her.

Her aunt patted her hand. ‘Yes, you’re a good girl. Enjoy your jaunt while it lasts.’

*

Dene Park was a grim-looking square mansion with massive columns on the front (‘the purest Georgian architecture in the south of England’, said the guidebook – they had looked it up in preparation).

It was set in a park of lavish summer greenness, dotted with fine old timber and affording the odd glimpse of a deer.

The Saturday-to-Monday featured a more elderly crowd than the girls were used to, for the Wroughtons’ two sons and one daughter were still in the schoolroom.

But they had invited some young people too, for the sake of a niece who was staying with them, who had come out in the year 1900 and had not yet had a suitable offer.

So there would be a ball on the Saturday night, and Nina and Kitty found many of the same crowd they had been mixing with in London.

The King did come, bringing with him a party of four gentlemen, who seemed to the girls very elderly and dull, though they were brushed at first with the glamour of being the King’s friends.

The King himself was tall, stout, grey-bearded, and unnervingly familiar from a thousand illustrations.

He, too, was elderly, but that didn’t matter in a king, especially one who smiled and seemed pleased with everything.

Though the girls did not get very close to him, he had a big, booming voice and they could hear a great deal of what he said.

His party arrived after dinner, having dined at another great house, and had come by motor-car, about which he was very enthusiastic.

‘Forty miles in two hours – not bad, not bad! But the dust is prodigious! I swear we were as white as millers when we arrived. Lucky we had dust coats on, or we’d not have been admitted to the house – eh, Wroughton?’

‘It is generally thought to be the great disadvantage of motor-travel,’ Lord Wroughton said cautiously.

The King clapped him on the shoulder. ‘You’re a horse-lover, I know.

So am I, man. But the motor-car is the transport of the future.

Horses are finished. It had to come. Rothschild was telling me some American feller has calculated that in ten years from now, horse manure in New York will be as high as the second-floor windows! ’

Nina put her fingers over her mouth to hide a giggle, mostly at the suppressed outrage on Lady Wroughton’s face at the introduction of dung as a topic.

Across the crowd, she caught the eye of Lord Stainton, who gave her a sympathetic smirk.

Lady Wroughton repaired the situation by asking in a loud voice if they had His Majesty’s permission to begin the ball.

The music struck up. The King did not dance, but having been conducted to a sofa at one end of the ballroom, he stayed for a while, talking genially to various Wroughton guests, before passing into another room for bridge, which was his passion.

Two of his party went with him, but Prince Ludwig of Fürstenstein and Mr Cowling stayed to dance.

At the first interval, the young ladies were conducted upstairs to the designated bedroom to re-powder their shoulders and fan their overheated faces. Kitty and Nina found a place together on an ottoman out of the way while they waited their turn at the dressing-table.

‘The band is very good, isn’t it?’ Nina said. ‘Here, let me.’ She took Kitty’s fan from her and plied it more effectively.

‘Oh, thank you,’ Kitty said. ‘My corset is so tight, I’m sure it pushes all the blood up into my face.

I wish Mama didn’t insist …’ She didn’t finish the sentence.

Nina knew anyway – that Lady Bayfield was determined her daughter should be the most fashionably dressed of the debutantes, which entailed having the smallest waist.

‘I’m so lucky,’ Nina said. ‘I’ve danced every dance. It’s a very grand ball, isn’t it? What did you think of Prince Ludwig?’

The ball had been opened by the Wroughtons’ niece, Lady Jane Harcourt, with the prince, who was the highest ranking of those dancing, but the second dance he had had with Kitty.

‘It was quite an honour to be chosen, wasn’t it?’ Nina said.

‘I suppose so – Mama seemed pleased. But I didn’t like him. He’s so old . And he smells funny.’

‘Tom Massingberd says he’s like a lizard,’ Nina said, quoting one of her partners. ‘So wrinkled – and the way he pokes the tip of his tongue out and quickly licks his lips. Like this.’ She imitated it.

‘Oh, don’t!’ Kitty shuddered. ‘It’s true!’

‘He said Prince Ludwig is all to pieces. He’s had to sell his palace, and he’s going round his royal relatives hoping someone will give him a pension.

’ She didn’t repeat the other thing Massingberd had said – that as well as a pension the prince was looking for a rich wife.

‘Miss Bayfield had better beware,’ he’d said lightly.

‘It would be a shame to see her swallowed up by that horrid old mendicant.’

‘But you had nice partners after that,’ Nina went on.

‘Mr Freehampton and Lord Richborough and Lord Stainton.’ Kitty nodded.

She was more comfortable in company by this stage in the Season, especially as the other debutantes were nicer to her now.

All had their admirers, and as there were enough to go round they did not begrudge Kitty her share.

‘I think you like Mr Freehampton, don’t you? ’ Nina said.

‘Yes – he’s so gentle, and doesn’t speak much. He seems almost sad.’

‘Sad because he’d like to marry you but hasn’t enough money,’ Nina said.

She knew the backgrounds by now of all the young men.

People liked to talk to her: it was the great benefit of not being important.

‘But you’re so nice to everyone, Kitty, I can’t tell if there’s anyone you really fancy.

Are you in love with anyone yet?’ Kitty looked grave and didn’t answer, and she went on, ‘You can tell me. You know I would never repeat it.’

But Kitty shook her head. She had an obscure feeling that it would be unlucky to state her preference aloud.

She couldn’t tell if he liked her, still less if he would make an offer, but at night in bed, in the twilight moments before sleep, it was his face she saw …

Instead of answering, she asked, ‘Who was the man from the King’s party that you danced with? ’

Nina allowed the subject to be changed. ‘Oh, that was Mr Cowling. He’s what they call an industrialist, I think. He’s very rich, and the King is always looking for people to lend him money and invest in his plans.’

‘You seemed to be having a long talk with him.’

‘He was telling me about his business. He makes boots and shoes.’

Nina thought about Mr Cowling. It had been an odd beginning to a conversation for, having asked her to dance, Mr Cowling had led her to the floor, then looked down intently at her feet.

‘Very nice,’ he’d pronounced. ‘Amaranth morocco, lined with roan, with false pearl rosette buttons. Hardings in Sloane Street?’

Nina, astonished, said, ‘Goodness, how did you know?’

He chuckled. ‘You can also buy them from Howell’s in Endell Street, so it was a fifty-fifty chance I’d get it right.’

The music started and they began to dance.

He danced properly, a little stiffly, holding her as though she might explode.

She had grown used to more flexible young men, but adapted herself to him, and examined him covertly from under her eyelashes.

It was hard to guess how old he was – she was not good, in any case, at judging the age of grown-ups.

The King was sixty, she knew, so perhaps he was that age; but unlike the King he wore no beard, which always made a man look younger.

His hair – which was plentiful – was grey, but his face, though rather brown, was firm and not wrinkled.

He might be anything from forty to eighty, she thought with generous inclusion.

‘But tell me, how did you know about my shoes?’ Nina had asked, after a few moments.

‘Why, it’s my business to know,’ he said. He had a flat accent that she thought must be from the north somewhere. ‘I made those slippers of yours, and there’s only two places in London I sell them to.’

‘ You made them?’

‘Not with my own hands,’ he said, ‘though I could if I wanted. That’s how I started, making shoes, in a little village called Wigston that you won’t ever have heard of.

Now I’ve two factories in the city of Leicester and one in Northampton, making all manner of shoes and boots.

Cowling & Kempson, footwear to the gentry. ’

‘I know that name,’ Nina said. ‘I’ve seen it in the shops.’