Page 1 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle

CHAPTER ONE

December 1903

As the butler, Moss, walked down the room, everyone could see that there was a letter with a foreign stamp on his silver salver. But everyone was too polite to stare, and carried on eating breakfast as if nothing interesting were happening.

Moss stopped by Kitty, bowed, and murmured. She took the envelope and, while he paced slowly back, opened it, drew out the sheet and read it. It was only when she folded it back into the envelope without comment that the patience of her sister-in-law Linda snapped. She glared at Kitty, and said, ‘Well? I suppose it is from Giles. What does he say?’

‘Dear,’ Linda’s husband, Lord Cordwell, admonished gently.

Even Kitty’s mother-in-law, the dowager countess, not known for tact, drew a sharp breath of disapproval.

Linda shrugged it off. ‘Oh, don’t pretend you don’t all want to know,’ she addressed the room. ‘Kitty! What does he say?’

Kitty didn’t answer at once. Her throat had closed. She hadn’t expected to hear from her husband. Even if he had time to write, and had anything he wanted to say to her, she didn’t suppose there were postboxes in the Valley of the Kings. Her heart had jumped with painful joy when she saw the letter: the disappointment was proportionately great.

‘He says one of the other archaeologists at the dig had to come back to Paris on business, and offered to post letters for everyone there,’ she said at last.

‘Oh, don’t be tiresome,’ Linda said. ‘Is he coming back for Christmas? That’s what we want to know.’

Alice and Rachel both looked up at that point, hope in their faces. But Richard said, ‘It’s the best part of two weeks’ travelling to get back here, and he hasn’t been gone long. It wouldn’t be worth his while.’

Linda gave a snort of disapproval. ‘It’s disgraceful, going off like that. It looks so outré. People will talk if he’s not here for Christmas. But that’s typical of Giles – he thinks of no-one but himself.’

Kitty pushed back her chair abruptly and got up. Linda threw the rest of the rebuke at her departing back. ‘I blame you, Kitty! You’ve had plenty of opportunity to develop a proper influence over him. If you had exerted yourself, we shouldn’t now be in this position.’

‘Please may I have the stamp, Aunty Kitty?’ Linda’s son Arthur pleaded urgently, but had no reply.

The dowager shrivelled Arthur with a look, and said to Linda, ‘I cannot understand why the children should eat with us at breakfast. None of my children was allowed down until they were twelve.’

‘It was Kitty’s idea,’ Linda said sulkily. ‘It’s a modern thing, I suppose.’

‘It’s so that they can learn how to behave at the table,’ Richard said, but the veiled rebuke slid off her. She might notice being hit with a brick, but subtlety was wasted on her.

‘Stuff and nonsense,’ said the dowager to Richard. ‘That is what a nanny is for, to teach them manners. And until they have acquired them, they should remain in the nursery. Why did you not bring their nanny with you?’ she asked Linda.

‘Oh, she left suddenly, just before we came away,’ Linda said, buttering a piece of toast so fiercely it shattered. The fact was that they couldn’t afford a nanny. The Cordwell finances were in a perilous state, and Linda was hoping for a lengthy stay at Ashmore Castle to tide them over a thin patch.

Cordwell sighed so penetratingly that Sebastian, who had a shrewd idea how things stood at Holme Manor, felt sorry for him, and sought to distract him. ‘What do you say to taking a gun out this morning, Cordwell? We could walk down to the Carr and see if there are any duck.’

While they were discussing the possibility, Richard slipped out and went looking for Kitty.

In the Peacock Room, which she had taken as her private sitting-room, Kitty was standing at the window, staring out at the grey winter day. The cloud hung low over the woods like mist; nothing moved but rooks, scraps of black blowing above the trees.

On the wall beside the window was the pencil-and-water-colour likeness of Giles that Alice had done, which he had had framed as a present for her. It showed him three-quarter profile, looking away pensively into the distance. It was appropriate, she thought: his mind, his heart, would always be somewhere else.

She had shed all her tears in the days after he had left for Egypt to join friends at a dig. Archaeology was his passion, as she had always known; but it was his parting words that had crushed her. He had said he felt stifled at home, that he needed to get away. She feared that she was one of the things he wanted to get away from. At any rate, she had no power to keep him with her. She’d had to realise that he did not love her as she loved him. His wife, his child, his home, his family, together had less pull than the dusty sarcophagi and crumbling bones of long-dead strangers.

She heard someone come in behind her, and knew from the aroma of the Paris Pearl lotion he used after shaving that it was Richard. He came up behind her and placed a light hand on her shoulder.

‘Poor Pusscat!’ he said. ‘Don’t cry any more. My sister’s an ass, and there’s nothing to be done about her.’

‘I’m not crying,’ Kitty said.

‘But you sound as though you might. There’s nothing to be done about Giles, either, you know.’ She turned to face him, showing her eyes bright but dry. ‘What did he say in the letter, my impossible brother?’

‘That the weather was tolerable, the insects not too troublesome, the dig going well, and they think they are on the brink of exciting discoveries.’

‘Abominable! Married to the prettiest woman in England and not one tender word for her?’