Page 92 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle

The shearing process fascinated him, seeing the trim shape of the ewe appearing from inside the thick muffling of the fleece. Released, she would bound off with frantic energy to the far end of the barn to join the other naked ladies. They looked like a completely different species.

The noise was deafening. The half-grown lambs were all waiting outside, yelling ‘in fifty different sharps and flats’ for their mothers, while the ewes shouted back in desperate bellows. When all were done, there would be the moment, which he loved to see, when the barn doors were opened, the ewes raced out and the lambs rushed forward, and flood met flood, like two mighty rivers converging in boiling chaos. Then, in an astonishingly short time, the families paired off, all agitation ceased, and mothers and young trotted away together in ovine tranquillity, as if nothing had happened. How they found each other so quickly in such a turmoil was one of the miracles of nature.

When he rode back into the stable yard, and handed over Vipsania to Archer, he noticed the carriage waiting to be pushed into the coachhouse. ‘Has somebody been out?’ he asked.

‘No, my lord – it’s Lord Leake, not long arrived. Telegram came just after you left, asking for his train to be met.’

Giles hurried in by the side door. Encountering a maid crossing the hall he said, ‘I must wash and change quickly. Tell Afton to come up with hot water immediately.’

Afton, as he helped him change, had no more information, but that Lord Leake had appeared in good spirits, not as if there was any emergency going on.

As Giles was about to leave, he said, ‘You won’t need me again until the dressing-bell, will you, my lord?’

‘No,’ Giles said, offhand, but paused in the doorway to look back. ‘Something wrong? You’ve never asked me that before.’

‘Nothing wrong, my lord – just a little scheme I have in hand.’

Giles examined him. ‘You look mischievous. You had better not tell me anything about it.’

‘I wasn’t planning to, my lord,’ Afton said, with a disarming grin.

When Giles entered the drawing-room Uncle Stuffy was standing before the fireplace, chatting pleasantly – about court matters, from the few words he overheard. His mother and Linda were on one sofa, Kitty, Alice and Richard on another. The dogs rushed up to Giles with ecstatic greetings, and Stuffy looked across and said, ‘Ah, Giles! There you are.’

‘Uncle. I wasn’t expecting you. Nothing wrong, I hope?’

‘No, no – why should there be? Thought I’d pop down and escort m’sister – she doesn’t like travelling alone.’

‘Escort her?’

‘Back to Town,’ the dowager elucidated. ‘To collect Rachel.’ ‘And thence to Scotland. It’s time to be heading north. The trout, the trout are calling!’ he added whimsically. ‘I hope you’ll all be coming to Kincraig this summer? It will make a nice family reunion. Long time since we were all together.’

‘I shan’t be travelling in August,’ Giles pointed out patiently, and since his mother and uncle didn’t seem to get the reference, he went on, ‘My wife is expecting our child in August. Had you forgotten?’

‘Oh. Ah. Yes,’ Stuffy said, and gave Kitty a shy smile. ‘Forgive an old bachelor – not in the habit. Sort of thing that slips one’s mind.’

‘So has London finally lost its allure?’ Giles asked.

‘There are no more important engagements,’ Maud answered impatiently, ‘and it is time Rachel rested. It has been a draining Season for her.’

‘Yes, but I was actually asking my uncle,’ Giles said.

‘Me? Oh – I take your meaning. You are making a jest about Miss Lombardi, I suppose?’ He chuckled. ‘Yes, the loveliest creature I’ve beheld in – well, as many years as I can remember. She’s gone home, back to Italy.’

‘Nobody told me,’ Giles objected.

‘I didn’t know you needed tellin’,’ said Stuffy. ‘Bound to go sooner or later, and that couple – your friends, Giles, Mr and Mrs Portwine – were goin’ in that direction and undertook to escort her. Couldn’t have a fragrant young lady like her travelling all that way alone. They were takin’ the train to Venice and said it was no hardship to travel a few miles further and deliver her to the door. Had half a mind to go myself,’ he added, ‘and see what condition my house is in, but it’s too late in the summer for Venice. Can’t think what the Portwines will do there, unless they stay on one of the islands. However, London, as you so succinctly put it, has lost its allure, so it’s northward-ho for me. Now, Giles, if you ain’t comin’ for the trout, you’ll be down for the grouse, surely?’

‘My wife, Uncle? The baby?’ he reminded him patiently.

‘Of course, of course. Head like a sieve. Well, later on, perhaps, when you’re up to the journey,’ Stuffy said, with a bow to Kitty. ‘Always welcome, you know that. Open house at Kincraig.’

Alice took the opportunity to ask about the cousins and, since Linda didn’t seem to have anything to say, about Arabella and Arthur. Giles let the conversation drift away from him, and contemplated Giulia’s leaving of London without a word to him, and whether it meant she was still angry with him, and whether, if she was, that was a good thing, or a bad thing. At least, he thought, Uncle Stuffy wasn’t exhibiting any unusual signs of grief over her departure, so his fancy had evidently been passing, as fleeting as it had been odd.

He was roused from his thoughts by the realisation that Kitty was looking at him, and he turned his head towards her and raised an enquiring eyebrow. But she looked away, her lips tight and her cheeks pink, and his heart sank a little as he decided he could guess the subject of her thoughts. A good thing, then, that Giulia had gone, if even the mention of her name could upset Kitty. But he felt a little wounded all the same that there had been no goodbye. Theirs had been a long friendship.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Afton had built up a useful reputation below stairs for being chatty and approachable, so when he drifted up beside a servant and asked in general terms about their colleagues, no-one saw anything to suspect, or any reason not to gossip – which was what they liked doing anyway.