Page 25 of The Affairs of Ashmore Castle

The bedroom was very large, with a high ceiling, and the bed had enormously tall posts carrying a tester, but the posts were slim and unadorned, and there were no side curtains, so it was not oppressive. There was a dressing-table with a mirror above it and an enormous wardrobe. An armchair by the window – which gave over the gardens – looked as if it had been placed there for taking one’s ease and contemplating nature. On a small table beside it was a vase of tulips, white and red.

‘Beautiful,’ Nina said. ‘It’s early for tulips.’

‘Deering brings them on in the greenhouse, madam,’ Mrs Deering said. ‘We always did have tulips at Wriothesby House. The previous mistress liked them.’

‘I like them too,’ Nina said, and earned herself a smile.

‘Your dressing-room’s through here,’ Mr Cowling said, opening a door on one side, ‘and I’ve got my usual room, which is the next one along. I’ll leave you to get ready for luncheon, my love. Don’t be long.’

In the dressing-room, Nina discovered, there was a washstand, with a ewer of hot water, which, presumably, Tina had just brought. There was also a cheval mirror, a towel horse, a rattan chair – and a commode. Oh, well. You couldn’t expect modern plumbing in a house of this age. But she didn’t mind it so much here, where everything was so beautiful and serene. Left alone, she washed her face and hands, tidied her hair, and went down to luncheon.

Another cable announced that the dowager and Rachel were staying with Vicky and Bobo at the summer palace for Easter. Kitty felt only relief. She was very large, and felt good for nothing but lying on the sofa or taking gentle walks in the garden. She did not feel equal to company.

‘Though I suppose Linda will be coming,’ she said to Giles at dinner one evening, trying not to sound unwelcoming.

‘No,’ said Giles, managing to be equally neutral. ‘They’ve had an invitation to go and stay at Croombe Park – the Willoughbys’ place.’

‘Hard luck on the Willoughbys,’ Richard said. ‘I suppose it was their turn.’ Giles gave him a stern look. Richard returned it with a cynical grin. ‘Oh, what? Don’t pretend you haven’t thought about getting up a rota to spread them more thinly.’ He turned to Kitty. ‘They’ll love it at Croombe Park – interesting old Tudor place, hardly touched since Queen Elizabeth last slept there. All the medieval comforts. So we’ll be all alone here, will we?’ he asked Giles.

Giles hesitated. ‘I did think – if it won’t be too much for you,’ he said to Kitty, ‘of having a couple of my old friends to stay. London people.’

Richard perked up at that, but cautiously. ‘When you say “London people”, are we talking about people of fashion – amusing, debonair, sophisticated? Les gens du monde?’

Only Alice saw Kitty shrink at the idea.

‘I was talking about my archaeology friends,’ Giles said.

‘Oh,’ said Richard, blankly. ‘What fun.’

Alice stifled a giggle.

Giles addressed Kitty. ‘Not a huge crowd,’ he said. ‘I was thinking just Archie Baxter and John and Mabel Portwine. Should you mind it? I’ve been concentrating on the estate so much, I haven’t had any intelligent conversation for – I don’t know how long.’

Uncle Sebastian looked up from the ‘cutlet’ with which he was wrestling – it seemed to have come from some animal with more sinews than the average sheep. ‘I observe they didn’t teach tact at University College. Perhaps you should have gone to Oxford after all.’

‘You know very well what I mean,’ Giles said crossly.

Alice lost control of her giggles. ‘Oh, Giles!’ She snorted. ‘Your face!’

‘Behave yourself,’ Giles snapped at her, ‘or you can go back to eating in the nursery. I’m only concerned with Kitty’s feelings. Would you be equal to some company here from Saturday to Tuesday? Would it be too much for you?’

Kitty was so touched that he was asking her that she said at once, ‘Oh, no! I mean, yes, of course invite them. I should like you to see your friends. You work so hard.’

‘You needn’t worry about having to entertain them,’ Richard told her gravely. ‘They’ll disappear into the library straight after breakfast, and talk about old bones until they turn into fossils themselves. And for a little light diversion on Easter Monday, Giles will take them to stare at a bit of broken wall.’

Nina explored the rest of Wriothesby House alone, while Mr Cowling was occupied with a note that had arrived by hand on Saturday morning.

It was a grand house, and had once been attached to considerable land, which the previous owners had sold off parcel by parcel until there was nothing left to sell but the house. But she could see it would have been fit for a lord, and that they must have entertained in grand style at one time. As well as the huge dining-room and drawing-room on the ground floor, there was a long gallery on the first floor, running along one whole side above the dining-room, where one could have held balls.

All the rooms were panelled, which she thought gave a cosiness to the grandeur: it was not an overpowering house like Dene Park, where she and Kitty had once attended a ball. There were two more small parlours on the ground floor, one of which Mr Cowling was obviously using as a business-room. On the first floor, apart from the bedrooms occupied by her and Mr Cowling, there were three more, one of them a state bedroom, whose even more massive four-poster bed had blue velvet hangings and ostrich feathers sprouting from a gold-painted crown at the apex of the tester.

There were a further six bedrooms on the second floor, none of them now furnished. And there was actually a bathroom, though it was only a little slip of a room, and contained nothing but a high-sided bath on claw-footed legs. Water would have to be brought up in cans from the kitchen. Getting down on her knees, Nina saw that the plug hole sat over a zinc cistern which could be dragged out and emptied – presumably into the same cans, for disposal downstairs. It accounted for why the bath sat on such tall legs.

‘And it’s up here because these are the bachelor rooms,’ she instructed Trump, who was under the bath searching for rabbits, ‘and only gentlemen would be expected to use a bathroom. Ladies bathed in their bedrooms beside the fire. Still, it is a beginning. If there’s one bathroom, there can be others. And there’s certainly enough room. We don’t need eleven bedrooms, do we?’

Trump emerged, a little dusty about the ears, and looked at her enquiringly. She looked back, and he gave a yap.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose I am thinking about it. But it’s no good, is it? He doesn’t like the place.’