Page 7 of The Secrets of Ashmore Castle

‘What do you mean?’ Webster asked, intrigued.

‘He’s never shown any liking for the Castle, and he’s lived abroad whenever he’s had the chance. He might just close the place up.’ She smiled maliciously. ‘Then you’ll all be out of a position.’

‘So will you,’ Mrs Webster pointed out.

‘Her ladyship needs me. Even if it’s in that nasty Dower House, I’ll keep my job.’

Mrs Webster shrugged. ‘Well, I can always get another place. I’m young enough. And most of the servants will be all right. It’s Mr Moss and Mr Crooks who are most at risk.’

Moss was looking from her to Miss Taylor and back, trying to follow their argument. ‘Surely you don’t think—’

‘Has to be considered,’ Mrs Webster said unkindly.

‘Twenty years!’ Crooks bleated.

*

In the formal dining-room at Holme Manor, in Frome Monkton, Dorset, Linda, Lady Cordwell faced her husband down the length of the table. Even with as many leaves as possible taken out, it was still uncomfortably long for dining à deux, and the room itself was too big, difficult to heat. But the smaller dining-parlour’s ceiling had come down when the roof leaked last winter, and there had been no money yet to repair it, and Lord Cordwell refused to dine in the morning-room, even when it was only the two of them. Which, his lady reflected, was all too often these days – and if you didn’t entertain, you tended to not be invited back. We really must do something about having a dinner-party, she thought. Invite twenty or thirty people. It would be a large expense, but it would be good for reciprocal invitations for months. Dining out at other people’s houses, while saving the equivalent expenditure at home – and winter was the time to do it, when need was greatest – they might be invited to hunting and shooting parties, Saturday-to-Mondays, the house all but shut up for three whole days! If you caught the right party to start with, the invitation train could carry you right through until the Season started.

She’d have expressed all this to Cordwell, but the effort of speaking down the table was too much for anything but short sentences. She addressed herself instead to the minuscule fillet of fish on her plate, with its dab of sauce. Like her mother Lady Stainton, she was not greatly interested in food, but she was always hungry, these days, and knew from her looking-glass that she was getting gaunt. Really, when they were alone, they should go back to nursery food, cheap and filling – big plates of mutton and potatoes followed by rice pudding – but Cordwell clung to the refinements due to a viscount. She had always thought it admirable that he would not lower his standards, but lately she had come to think it more foolish than noble. She had not known – her parents had not known – when she married him how impoverished his estate was. Times were hard, particularly in the West Country, rents had fallen, and returns were low. Gerald Cordwell had been saddled with his father’s debts when he came into his inheritance unexpectedly young. His father had died in a shooting accident – Linda secretly suspected the old viscount might have blown his own brains out in despair at his financial condition, and she wondered sometimes whether Gerald suspected it too. Her dowry had floated the ship off the rocks, but with expenditure stuck at the ‘twenty pounds aught and six’ mark, they were bound to sink again.

And there were two children now to provide for, Arabella and Arthur. It was annoying, Linda thought, that she had got a girl first time round. If Bella had been a boy, she could have stopped at one and saved half the expense.

Gerald was saying something, and she roused herself from her reverie to ask him to repeat it. ‘I said, I wonder if your father will have left you something in his will. Do you know when it will be read?’

‘At the funeral,’ she said. ‘It’s traditional. Always straight after the funeral.’

‘You haven’t had the invitation yet, have you?’ he said, and she was annoyed at the anxiety in his voice.

‘I don’t suppose they can fix it until they know when Giles will be home. They can’t have it without him.’

‘No, I suppose not.’

He sounded so glum that she said, to cheer him up, ‘We can certainly stay at the Castle at least two weeks. I think Mama will expect me to be on hand to support her in her grief. She may even need me for longer – a month, say. And she’ll want to see the children. We’ll take them with us.’

‘A month,’ Cordwell said, brightening. Shut the house for a month! Even the nursery! When they were invited anywhere for a Saturday-to-Monday they always had to leave the children behind, which meant coals and hot water and meals for them and the nursery staff. But if they took them to the Castle, they’d take the nursery staff too, and they’d all be kept at the Castle’s expense. And the other servants could be given a holiday, whether they wanted one or not.

‘You haven’t seen Giles for a long time,’ Cordwell said thoughtfully. ‘You always got on well with him, didn’t you?’

‘Whatever Papa left me in his will won’t depend on Giles,’ she said impatiently.

‘Yes, but there’s the question of future invitations …’

‘Oh, don’t worry, I can handle Giles. I’ll revive childhood memories with him, and make myself indispensable to Mama, and you – well, you only have to be affable. I’m sure Giles liked you when you last saw him.’

‘I can’t remember when that was.’

‘Never mind, people generally like you. And if he takes to the children, we might even persuade him to have them there permanently. It can’t matter to them to have two more. And even when he marries and gets brats of his own, having cousins to play with is always a good thing. I foresee a golden period opening up before us.’

Cordwell could not quite reach her heights of optimism. ‘What about the allowance?’ he asked quietly – so quietly she almost missed the words. When she caught them, she frowned.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

‘I mean, was the allowance in your father’s will?’

‘You know damn well it was an informal arrangement between us,’ she said shortly. ‘He might have had it written into his will, but—’

‘But he didn’t know he was going to die so soon,’ Cordwell finished for her. ‘What if it isn’t?’