Page 19 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle

‘He thinks about you all the time,’ Decius said, and for the first time there was a hint of reproach in his voice. He offered his arm. ‘If I may?’

‘I am taking Mrs Cowling in to supper,’ Adam said.

‘Don’t you think you’ve done enough?’ Decius said quietly. He looked at Nina, his arm insistently crooked. ‘Mrs Cowling?’

She took it obediently and, without looking at Adam, allowed herself to be walked away. At the next landing she stopped and said earnestly, ‘Decius, nothing happened. I promise you.’

‘Didn’t it?’ He looked at her sadly. ‘Life is full of pitfalls. Every journey is beset by highwaymen. You have to be on your guard.’

‘You think Adam Denbigh is a highwayman?’ She wanted to laugh at the idea, but felt much closer to crying.

‘It’s easy to think a person like him is incapable of deep feelings,’ Decius said. She knew he didn’t mean Adam. ‘Perhaps it seems almost a comic idea. But he has a heart that could so easily be broken by you. He loves you, more than he can possibly express.’

Nina took a deep, trembling breath, and said the thing she had never meant to say out loud. ‘But I don’t love him.’

There was a silence in which the words seemed to circle like black, deathly birds, looking for somewhere to settle. Where they landed, leaves would wither, grass would die, darkness would fall. She felt release, relief, and a deep sorrow. There was no going back from here.

Decius looked at her steadily, and in his eyes were understanding, and pity. ‘But you married him.’

‘Yes,’ she said. That was the contract. There was no getting out of it.

Richard entered the library, and found Adeane, the bailiff, and Markham, the agent, waiting for him. Tiger and Isaac, Giles’s dogs, pushed past him and went to do the honours, tails swinging. When Giles was away they usually followed Alice, but she had gone out that morning, so they’d attached themselves to Richard as the next best thing.

‘You’re looking unusually grave this morning, gentlemen,’ Richard said.

‘Bad news, sir,’ said Markham. ‘Ezra Bunce is dead. He passed away last night.’

‘Bunce? That’s Hundon Farm, isn’t it? What did he die of?’

‘Pneumonia, sir. He’d been ailing some time. Got soaked through going out in the snow to see to his cattle, caught a cold and went downhill from there.’

‘Well, I’m sorry to hear it. Do we send something to the widow?’

‘Taken care of, sir,’ said Markham. ‘A note of condolence and a ham will be sent over today. And if you should feel able to attend the funeral, it will be well taken.’

‘Let me know when it is. And I must remember to call in next time I’m passing. What happens to the tenancy? Do I remember a son?’

‘His younger son John, sir,’ Adeane said. ‘The older boy, Tom, and his wife both died of a fever a few years back. They left a little daughter. Bunce and his wife have been bringing her up.’

‘Yes, I remember seeing a little child when we visited the house. What a sad thing.’

‘Yes, sir. It was a tragedy for the Bunces, because Tom was a natural-born farmer and keen to take over, but John – well, his heart’s never been in it. Now he wants to quit and go and get a job in Aylesbury. They’re taking on men at the brewery, and it’s good money.’

‘Shorter hours, too, I imagine,’ Richard said. ‘No getting up at dawn to milk the cows, eh? So who takes over? Mrs Bunce – the widow?’

The men exchanged a glance, and it was Markham who answered. ‘I doubt she’d be able to manage, even if she wanted to. But when I spoke to John this morning he said his mother was to go with him to Aylesbury – and the little girl – and he’d get a place for them all together.’

‘He’s always been a mother’s boy, has John Bunce,’ said Adeane, ‘and he’s very fond of the child. Never wanted to get married himself, so I dare say it makes him a kind of family that he wouldn’t have otherwise.’

‘But it leaves us with a problem,’ Richard said. ‘Or does it? Can you find another tenant?’

Another exchanged look, and Markham said, ‘The difficulty is, sir, that the farm’s in poor shape. Good tenants are hard enough to find at the best of times, but for Hundon’s . . . I’m afraid we shall have to take it back in hand, and improve it before we can let it again.’

Richard’s gaze sharpened. ‘But it is capable of improvement?’

‘Oh, yes, sir,’ said Adeane. ‘It’s good enough land at heart, but it’ll take money. And then it’s a problem of making enough profit from it to be worthwhile. A lot of farms,’ he added gloomily, ‘are being left unworked for that very reason.’

Richard grinned. ‘Well, it seems as though the gods are smiling on me.’