Page 139 of The Secrets of Ashmore Castle
Daystar seemed irritable after his fall, and fidgeted about, making it difficult for Rachel to mount – Victor wasn’t very good, in any case, at throwing her up. At last she was in the saddle. He placed a hand on her knee and said, ‘Go carefully, won’t you? Ride slowly. Don’t have another fall.’
‘So – this is goodbye, is it?’ she asked, feeling her throat close.
‘I won’t be able to get away again before Wednesday,’ he said. ‘There’s so much to do, and Aunty will want me to be with her. But, Rachel, I’ll never forget you.’
She couldn’t speak. She rode away without looking back, tears streaming down her face and washing clean tracks in the mud smears.
‘I always said them horses were dirty, dangerous beasts,’ said Daisy, helping Rachel to sit down in the bath.
‘It wasn’t his fault,’ Rachel managed to say. But tears were very close, and Alice stepped in.
‘Could you take her clothes away and do something about them?’ she asked. ‘I’ll help her bathe.’
‘She needs arnica on the bruises as well,’ said Daisy.
‘I’ll do the arnica. And, please, it’d be better if everyone didn’t know.’
‘Oh, they’ll know all right,’ said Daisy. ‘That Pobbo in the stables, he’ll tell Aggie, and it’ll be all over everywhere. Galloping about like a mad thing, I suppose you were. Not ladylike at all.’ But she gathered up the clothes and left, and Rachel was able to dissolve into the tears she had been holding back for so long.
‘I wasn’t galloping,’ she sobbed first. ‘We were walking when he slipped.’
‘Daisy doesn’t know anything about horses,’ Alice said. ‘What happened?’
So she told her. ‘I th-thought he loved me,’ she sobbed at the end. ‘I thought we’d be together for always. I thought we would get m-married!’
‘Oh, Ray,’ Alice said helplessly. ‘I bet he wasn’t worth it. If he’d really loved you he’d have taken you with him.’
‘But I love him!’
‘I don’t suppose Mama would have let you marry him anyway. You know what she’s like.’
‘She’ll never let us marry anyone. We’ll have to stay here for ever and be old m-maids!’
Alice didn’t answer that, thinking it only too likely. She worked the sponge over Rachel’s narrow back with nice, round, comforting movements, while her sister cried the stormy tears of thwarted first love.
James and Speen came out of the church together into a foggy November midday. Crooks was a few steps ahead of them in the crowd. The sight of him reminded Speen, who said, ‘How come you’re still James, anyway? Hasn’t his lordship confirmed your place? Are you his valet or aren’t you?’
‘Course I’m his valet. Who’s been saying contrary?’
‘No-one in particular. Just general speculation.’ Speen shrugged and pushed his hands into his pockets. ‘If I was you, I’d have a word with his lordship. Make him announce it, then you’ll know you’re safe.’
‘Look, I’m safe all right,’ James said firmly. ‘They got a new maid for her ladyship, didn’t they?’
‘Hatto? She’s a queer one,’ Speen retorted. ‘Can’t make her out. But she’s not got the style for a lady’s maid, not a countess’s, anyway. You got to put it on a bit. My opinion, she was never no titled lady’s maid before. Got a middle-class sort of look about her. I bet—’
‘The point is,’ said James irritably, ‘that they got her in to take over from Rose, because Rose was only temporary. All right? Well, then, if I was only temporary, they’d have done the same with me. Done it at the same time. No, his lordship knows he’s got a good ’un. And I saved her ladyship’s life, didn’t I? So I’m safe as houses. He’ll never get rid of me after that.’
The crowd was shuffling forward as they talked, and they saw the white head of Crooks up ahead of them disappear under his hat, then bob away to the right. ‘Where’s he going?’ Speen asked. ‘The brake’s the other way.’
‘Oh, he doesn’t go in the brake. He likes to walk back from church, often as not.’
‘Does he? That’s a bit queer, isn’t it? He don’t look like a walker to me. I’d have said he was soft as soap.’
‘Well, he is in general,’ said James.
‘I never told you what happened in London, did I?’
‘What, then?’
