Page 46 of The Secrets of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #1)

‘You’ve met her, then?’ Rose asked, for everyone at the dinner table.

‘Not to say met . I’ve seen her. At Dene Park, we were allowed to look down from the gallery at the dancing, and I saw her dancing with his lordship.

He took her in to supper, too.’ He summoned imagination with an effort.

‘I dare say that’s where the damage was done, because the very next morning his lordship asked me how to go about proposing. ’

‘He asked you ?’ James said derisively.

‘James!’ Moss rebuked. ‘Remember Mr Crooks is your superior.’

Cyril muttered something under his breath that sounded like ‘superior ass’ and Wilfrid, the house boy, sniggered.

‘So he’s mad in love with her?’ asked Ellen.

‘ Course he is,’ said Tilda. ‘Must be, else he wouldn’t be marrying her.’

Mrs Webster saw a minefield ahead and changed the direction. ‘An early wedding, I believe?’ she said. ‘So much the better. Long engagements don’t do anyone any good. In London, I suppose?’

‘I believe the Bayfields are keeping the house in Berkeley Street for the wedding.’

‘St George’s, Hanover Square,’ said Miss Taylor, with authority. ‘That’s where Mayfair gentry get married.’

‘I’m sure you’re right, Miss Taylor,’ Crooks said politely, recognising an ally.

‘Pity it can’t take place here,’ said Moss. ‘We haven’t had a wedding here since Lady Linda’s. Now that was a wedding to remember. Everything done just as it ought. The wedding cake was four feet across, the bottom tier. And Lady Linda’s train needed six bridesmaids to hold it up.’

‘I thought Lady Cordwell’d still be in residence when we got back,’ Crooks said. ‘Do you know where she’s gone, Mr Moss?’

‘The Isle of Wight,’ the butler supplied.

Mrs Webster provided more detail. ‘Lord Cordwell managed to get an invitation to a friend’s house on the island. Of course, it’s quiet there now, Cowes Week not being until August. I don’t suppose he’d have got the invitation in August.’

‘It’ll be nice for the children, playing on the beach, sea-bathing and so on,’ said Crooks, doubtfully, ‘though it doesn’t sound like Lady Cordwell’s style.’

‘No, but it’s free,’ Rose said caustically.

Moss asked, ‘Was anything said about the destination for the honeymoon, Mr Crooks? I suppose we daren’t dream they would come here?’

‘Abroad,’ said Crooks, with a touch of gloom. ‘Paris first, then Italy, I believe.’

‘Not Egypt, then?’ said Moss. ‘He won’t be showing his bride the Pyramids?’

This alarming thought hadn’t occurred to Crooks. ‘Not as far as I know. Oh dear, surely he’d have said if that was the plan. Egypt? I don’t see how one could keep up standards there. All that sand – it gets everywhere.’

‘Just like on the Isle of Wight,’ said Rose.

It startled Giles to discover that since he had last seen her, his mother had left off heavy blacks: she’d been wearing them since his return from Thebes, so he’d got used to the sight.

She was still sombrely dressed, in a gown of purple-grey twilled shot silk.

She noticed him looking, and said impatiently, ‘Half-mourning. It’s been six months – and you could hardly get married with me in deep mourning.

Speaking of which, your aunt Caroline says the Bayfield girl is suitable, though her father is only a baronet.

But it’s an old creation. She looked it up in The Baronetage before she put the child on her list. Created in 1661.

The Coronation honours of Charles II.’ She frowned at him. ‘Why are you back here already?’

‘There’s estate business I have to see to.’

‘The decencies must be observed, if we are not to provoke gossip. The marriage will look improperly hasty if everything is not done to form. You must have her and her parents here for a visit.’

‘Here?’

‘As soon as possible,’ Lady Stainton said implacably.

‘I suggest Saturday – best to get it over with as soon as possible. They will come for luncheon, you will show them around during the afternoon, and they’ll stay for dinner and overnight.

You may leave all that to me. They will return the invitation, which we must accept, I’m afraid. What are you doing about a bride gift?’

‘I didn’t know one was required.’

‘You had better find out what sort of thing she likes before the wedding day. Stainton gave me the four Corot souvenirs that used to hang in my dressing-room. You might not remember them – they were sold during the crisis. I never liked them much – rather dreary, I thought them. I’d just as soon have had a dog, but Stainton didn’t ask. ’

The dogs had greeted his return with profound but largely dignified joy. It was his sisters who bounced around him, like excited puppies.

‘Oh, Giles, tell us all about her! Is she pretty?’ Alice cried.

‘Is she nice?’ Rachel demanded.

‘Are you madly in love with her? Does she like horses? When will we see her?’

‘On Saturday,’ Giles answered. ‘Mama is to invite them all here. Yes, she’s pretty. She’s very shy. And I don’t know if she likes horses. But,’ he dredged up from the meeting in Lord Leven’s house, ‘she knows a lot about paintings, so you’ll have something to talk about.’

‘Does she paint?’ Alice asked.

‘I really don’t know,’ he had to admit. Alice gave him an odd look, but Rachel hurried on with the next, more important question.

‘Are we going to be bridesmaids?’

‘I think it’s for her to decide, isn’t it?’ Giles said. ‘She may already have chosen friends or relatives of her own.’

‘Her sisters?’

‘She doesn’t have any sisters, as far as I know.’

‘Oh, good,’ Alice said. ‘I mean, sad for her, but we’ll be her sisters once she’s married, and she’s bound to ask us to be bridesmaids if she hasn’t any of her own.’ She giggled suddenly. ‘To think of you being married!’

‘Why is that funny?’ Giles asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘You just don’t seem like a husband .’ And she giggled even more at the word.

James came upon Crooks in the boot-room, contentedly polishing his lordship’s dress boots. He leaned in the doorway and watched him until Crooks’s content dissolved under the scrutiny and he threw him a nervous glance.

‘Difficult times ahead for you, Mr Crooks,’ James said, oozing sympathy.

‘What? Why?’ Crooks felt a prickle of fear. James had that effect on him.

‘Well, this honeymoon for a start. Like you said, how can you keep up standards in foreign parts?’

‘Oh! But I believe Paris is quite civilised,’ he said nervously.

‘Civilised?’ James hooted. ‘The French? They don’t even have proper privies, not like England. Dreadful smells – and the diseases that go with ’em.’

‘Really? I thought—’

‘And Italy’s worse, not to mention all those banditti roaming the streets, cutting people’s throats.’

‘Surely one is safe inside the hotels,’ Crooks said.

James shrugged. ‘In London you would be. But these foreign hotel clerks … I’ve heard they take bribes from the criminals to turn a blind eye while they ransack the guests’ rooms. And if anyone should disturb them at their wicked crimes, or happen to be in the room when they burst in, well, dead men tell no tales.

’ He passed a finger across his throat in dreadful mime.

Crooks paled, but he said bravely, ‘I’m sure the best hotels must be safe, or one would hear about it.’

‘One does, all the time,’ James said solemnly. ‘There was a piece in the paper only last week.’

‘ I didn’t see it.’

‘But you don’t read that newspaper, do you?

Only his lordship’s Times . And then there’s the food.

That greasy foreign stuff, and you with your delicate digestion!

I pity you, Mr Crooks, really I do. Insolent porters, dirty sheets, fleas, food that’s close to poison …

So much to put up with, and at your age.

But you’ve always been one to do your duty, no matter what it costs you. ’

He pushed himself upright and stalked away, leaving Crooks staring blankly at the space where he had been, the evening boot forgotten in his hand.

‘What is the matter with you, Nina? You’ve been answering in monosyllables. Your mind is clearly elsewhere.’ Aunt Schofield had been trying to engage Nina in conversation ever since she arrived, and finally lost patience at the end of luncheon.

Nina roused herself. ‘Oh, I’m wondering how Kitty is getting on, that’s all.’ She had come back to Draycott Place to see her aunt while Kitty and her parents paid the visit to Ashmore Castle. The house seemed cramped after Berkeley Street, and too quiet.

‘ Is that all? You don’t seem in spirits.’ Nina didn’t answer, fiddling with her butter knife. Aunt Schofield sighed. ‘I hope you haven’t been spoiled by your experiences.’

‘How is the library scheme coming along?’ Nina asked, with an effort.

‘That’s what I have been talking about for the last half-hour,’ said Aunt Schofield.

After lunch she got straight down to inviting some of her friends for dinner.

In the course of a lively evening of brisk, academic conversation, she was relieved to see Nina perk up and join in.

She sees now what she’s been missing , Aunt Schofield thought.

She’ll have had no talk so satisfying these last weeks .

But on Sunday morning she seemed down again, and breakfasted in moody silence.

‘You had better not go back to the Bayfields,’ Aunt Schofield said at last. ‘I see your stay with them has made you dissatisfied. I was afraid of it when I agreed to let you come out with Kitty, but I had thought you sensible enough to come through unscathed.’

For an instant Nina looked up, and Aunt Schofield recoiled before the misery in her eyes.

This is not just dissatisfaction , she thought.

Then Nina looked away, and said, with an obvious effort to sound normal, ‘I’m not spoiled, truly I’m not!

And I know it’s not my world. I don’t want it to be, really.

I enjoyed dinner last night so much. But I promised Kitty I would support her at her wedding.

Please let me go back, just until then. It’s only a few more weeks. ’