Page 70 of The Fortunes of Ashmore Castle

‘Oh, now they are my children, are they?’

‘For Heaven’s sake! I haven’t time for this, Kitty,’ he said tersely. ‘Take your plans.’ He folded the pages together and held them out to her. ‘I’m sorry.’

She took them. ‘Are you?’ she said. ‘Well, I am, too. Very sorry.’ She turned to leave him.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I’m sorry I’ve taken up so much of your valuable time,’ she said, without looking back. She went out, and closed the door quietly behind her.

Giles stared down at his cluttered desk for a moment, and then thumped it with a fist and said, ‘Damn!’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘This is very nice,’ Michael Woodrow said.

The Three Corners Café in the village had a tiny garden, just big enough to take three small round tables, and for the first time that year it was warm enough to sit outside. Usually it was only the summer visitors who took tea in the garden: Rose felt self-conscious. She said, a little stiffly, ‘I suppose it is.’

There were bright tulips in the beds, and the lilac bush was in flower, filling the air with the scent of childhood. The table had a nice white cloth – her housemaid’s eye noted the tiny, neat darn at one corner – and the china was pretty. Michael Woodrow, sitting across the table from her, scrubbed to a shine and wearing a suit, was the most decorative of all. He was a nice-looking man, and he had gone to all this trouble for her. For plain, awkward Rose Hawkins. It made her a little tongue-tied.

‘You’re not cold?’ he tried. ‘We could have sat inside.’

‘No, it’s a nice change,’ she said. ‘I’m indoors all the time.’

‘I suppose you have to be for your work. But I’ve always thought of you as an out-of-doors sort of person. You’re such a good walker.’

‘Am I?’ She was surprised.

‘Whenever I see you going past, you’re always striding out.’

‘I can’t be doing with idling along, wasting time,’ she said, unsure if it was a compliment. ‘I want to get where I’m going.’

‘But there’s a place for idling, too – when you’re just taking the air and enjoying the view.’

‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ she said.

Mrs Henson came out from the kitchen with the teapot and the cake stand, placed them on the table and gave Rose a conspiratorial smirk that quite unsettled her. Rose took up the pot automatically and began to pour. Woodrow examined the cake stand. ‘I don’t suppose those scones are as good as Martha’s,’ he said, ‘but they look nice enough. May I help you to one?’

She nodded, and passed him his tea. He resumed the conversation. ‘Have you never been on a nature walk? We had them sometimes at school.’

‘Not my school. What’s a nature walk?’

‘A teacher took us out into the fields or the woods to see what flowers and insects and birds we could find.’

‘What’s the point of that?’ Rose asked, buttering her scone.

‘Learning the names of things, their habits, how they grow. Sometimes we collected flowers and ferns, or birds’ eggs, or we might find a caterpillar, or catch minnows. It’s called nature study.’

‘Nature?’ She wrinkled her nose.

‘It’s all around us, and we’re part of it,’ he pointed out. ‘Life is richer if you look with eyes that see.’

She was struck by the expression, and thought about it. ‘My mother told us the names of things, when I was little,’ she said. ‘You know what’s a sparrow and what’s a robin redbreast, and what’s a chestnut and what’s an oak. How would you get on if you didn’t?’

‘But there’s pleasure to be had, too. Just walking along, breathing in the scents, watching the birds and butterflies going about their work. Even better if you have an agreeable companion,’ he added.

She met his eyes for a moment, then looked away. ‘My brothers kept some tadpoles in a jam jar once,’ she said. She hadn’t thought about that for years. ‘Most of ’em died, but a few of ’em turned into frogs. It was – interesting,’ she admitted.

‘I had a chrysalis, and watched it hatch to a butterfly. And we used to play with conkers, of course.’