Page 57 of The Secrets of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #1)
‘Tuesday happens to suit me very well,’ said Crooks.
Actually, he was never wanted at that time of day.
Mr Sebastian didn’t need a great deal of valeting anyway, and until it was time to dress him for dinner, Crooks was pretty much at a loose end.
‘There’ll be too many prying eyes at the Castle – I don’t want you to feel self-conscious.
Suppose I come over to your house, and we’ll see how we get on. Where do you live?’
‘I’ve a cottage over the other side of the Carr, sir. But it isn’t much – not the sort of place for gentry-folk to visit,’ Axe said anxiously.
Crooks smiled. ‘I’m not gentry-folk, you mustn’t think that. I’m just a working man, like you. I shall come on Tuesday – shall we say, half past three? I’ll bring a few books and see what suits you best. We’ll have you reading fluently in no time, I’m sure.’
He smiled, nodded, and walked past, under the lych-gate and away down the street before Axe could raise any difficulties. He felt immensely cheerful. Doing good was always a raiser of the spirits. He sang a little of the Te Deum under his breath as he walked.
There were so many museums and art galleries in Paris – and Giles did them all so thoroughly – that they were sure to last them for the two weeks.
Kitty liked looking at paintings, in moderation, but Giles would stand for a long time before each, and after a few hours her feet and her back started to ache.
Also, when she had said the few things she had to say about art, she was reduced to agreeing with him – not that she wouldn’t have agreed with him anyway, but just saying, ‘Yes,’ to everything made her sound stupid.
After a while, he stopped making comments, and they went round in silence.
One day they took a ride out to Versailles to see where the French kings had lived in such splendour.
The journey was nice, and the park of Versailles was beautiful, but the fountains weren’t running, and though the inside of the palace was very lavish with elaborate plasterwork and gold paint, it wasn’t furnished, unlike palaces at home, so there wasn’t much to see.
She’d have liked to look at the shops, but that was not anything Giles suggested.
Out of consideration to her feet, she’d have enjoyed sitting in one of the parks to watch people stroll by, or having a ride in one of the boats down the Seine, but that wasn’t on offer either.
He took her to the Sainte-Chapelle, which he said was finer than Notre Dame, and it might have been for all she knew, but she’d have preferred to stroll through the wonderful flower-market on the ?le de la Cité, which she glimpsed as they were going in.
Still, she was in the wonderful city of Paris, and she was married to Giles, and she was plainly the luckiest girl in the world.
Le Meurice, where they were staying, was simply gorgeous – more luxurious by half even than Dene Park – and all the staff were very attentive and called her ‘milady’ at every turn, which was awfully nice.
And the nights were wonderful.
Giles had no acquaintance in Paris, and it was the wrong time of year to encounter English visitors there.
It was too hot in July: as with London, people started to go out of the city, and by August it would be deserted and most of the shops shut.
It meant that he and his new wife were pretty much thrown on each other’s company, which was perhaps not the best idea for two people who hardly knew each other and were not madly in love.
But he found ways to occupy their days. The Louvre alone, which contained a fine Etruscan and Roman collection, would have kept him happy.
To begin with he tried to engage Kitty in conversation about the exhibits, but she tended to agree with everything he said, so after a while he desisted, and they walked about in silence.
He was so used to being on his own that when he was fully absorbed with what he was looking at, he tended to forget she was there.
He made sure she saw plenty of paintings, since he could not reasonably expect her to find a fragment of an Etruscan lamp as fascinating as he did, and even took her to Versailles and told her all about the Sun King and Le N?tre and Le Brun.
He thought, on the whole, he was keeping her amused.
The evenings were more difficult: sitting across a table from each other in silence seemed so awkward.
The theatre was no use – neither of them spoke French well enough – but he took her once to the ballet and once to the opera.
She seemed to like the former, but fell asleep during the opera, which he had to admit was very inferior.
All in all, he felt two weeks in Paris was probably too much.
Italy, where he knew people, would be easier.
What reconciled him to the whole business – apart from the knowledge that, even as they wandered about the glaring streets, his agent and banker were putting her dowry to work, paying off his debts – what reconciled him to his marriage was their nights together.
He could not have imagined that it would be so wonderful.
From a nervous beginning he had grown in confidence, discovering with her and through her an experience so exquisite, so overwhelming, that he could hardly get enough of it.
He felt gratitude towards Kitty, and great tenderness.
He had dreaded it so much, but she had made it so easy!
During the day, she was the shy, almost timid girl he had known in London, obedient as a child to an adult’s commands, but at night, in bed, in the dark, she was the willing collaborator in this journey into a land of undiluted sensation.
She seemed to like it as much as he did, to be ready, eager, as often as he wanted her.
In the dark, he called her his ‘little pagan’, and she laughed delightedly.
By day, she would hardly meet his eye. It was like being married to two different people.
As he walked about galleries and examined exhibits, with his silent, obedient wife at his side, he often thought about the night to come, and it was as if he had a secret mistress – he felt almost guilty, as though he was being unfaithful.
Sometimes he asked her, ‘Are you happy?’
And she always said, ‘Yes.’ By day she said it unemphatically, as if he had asked her nothing more than if she would like more coffee. By night she said, ‘Oh, yes !’ And his feelings would surge up and fill him with warmth.
It was very odd.
Nina suspected her aunt had manipulated her into friendship with Lepida Morris, but as she found that she liked her, it didn’t matter.
Lepida was tall and thin, with the sort of sensible face that people often described as ‘horse-like’, though why that should be derogatory Nina had never understood, horses being, to her, the most beautiful creatures on earth.
Actually, she thought Lepida looked more like the hare she was named after, having very large eyes and a slight deficiency of chin.
Either way, she was not unattractive, though no man would call her beautiful.
She was very fair of skin, with mouse-brown hair, a long neck and long, expressive fingers.
She was twenty-six, but Nina’s education made the difference in age between them seem less.
Together they visited the drawing-rooms of wealthy ladies and asked for donations.
This was the part Nina didn’t like, though Lepida seemed unembarrassed by it.
‘I’ve done it so often,’ she said. ‘You grow hardened in time.’ It always involved explaining the scheme in detail, and in particular why it was needed and what good it would do.
Many potential donors were instinctively averse to doing things for people who were not actually incapacitated; some others still divided the poor into the deserving and the undeserving, and suspected that most poor people fell into the latter category or they wouldn’t be poor in the first place.
The library, the girls explained again and again, would put people in the way of an education that would help them to help themselves, to lift themselves out of ignorance and thence out of poverty.
After one or two visits, they were always in need of tea.
In a tea-shop in Sloane Square, Lepida said, ‘I have the schedule here of the evening lectures at the British Museum this autumn. I wondered if you’d like to have a look. I always go to one or two, and perhaps you’d be interested in coming with me. It’s always more fun if one goes with a friend.’
Sipping her tea, Nina looked through the schedule, and one subject leaped out at her. ‘Egyptology! Now, that would be interesting.’
Lepida looked. ‘Oh, yes, Margaret Murray’s lectures. I was quite interested in that myself.’
‘A woman giving lectures?’ Nina marvelled.
‘She studied at University College London,’ said Lepida. ‘They’re much more open-minded about women’s education than the old Oxford and Cambridge colleges. The University of London started awarding degrees to women twenty years ago.’
‘Did you never want to study at university?’ Nina asked.
‘I thought about it, and Papa wouldn’t have been against it, but I decided it wouldn’t really be for me. I don’t have the right sort of mind. Mother says I’m curious, but lazy. And I couldn’t see the point in doing all that hard work to gain a degree if I wasn’t going to do anything with it.’
‘You could teach.’ Nina said.
‘I should simply hate that,’ said Lepida. ‘Lazy, you see.’
‘I don’t think you’re lazy. Look at all the work you’re doing for the library.’