Page 98 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle

When it did, he drew her close, folding his arms round her, and she pressed herself against him, feeling safe and loved. He rested his chin on the top of her head and she rested her cheek against his chest, and she could hear his heart beating, strong and steady. She was so happy she could hardly bear it.

Several years later and much too soon, he loosened his grip enough to be able to look down at her and speak.

‘You know they’ll never let us marry,’ he said, and it was hardly a question.

‘Why does it have to be so complicated?’ She asked the question she had thought earlier.

‘I’m going to ask,’ he said. ‘I’ll ask my father and your mother, but I know what they’ll say.’ He paused a moment. ‘Fa wants me to marry Diana Huntley. She’s an important heiress. She’ll have coal mines.’

‘My mother wants me to marry a prince.’

‘So I imagine. But I love you.’

‘I love you, too,’ said Rachel, and when she said it, she knew it was true. There was release in saying the words out loud, as though she’d been holding back a great weight of water against a door. For a moment she felt the rush of joy, of loving and being loved. Then she remembered. ‘It’s hopeless, isn’t it?’ she said – willing him, hopelessly, to say no, it wasn’t.

He said fiercely, ‘We have to think. There must be a way. There must be! I don’t want to marry anyone but you, Rachel. You’re like the other half of me.’

‘I – I feel the same.’ Suddenly, the idea of marrying anyone else but Angus was horrible. Even kissing anyone but him. As to the Thing that an over-zealous German maid had told her about – the Thing that married people did . . . Oh, my Lord, not with anyone but him!

‘We must just hold out,’ he said, pulling her close again. ‘Hold out and wait and see what happens. There must be a way.’

But what if Mama finds someone else for me? The idea of defying her mother filled her with tremulous dread.

He divined her thought. ‘Remember, they can’t make you marry against your will. That’s the law of the land.’

But could she be brave enough to hold out against everything that would be urged against her, forced on her? Her mother’s dominance, her personality . . . ‘Do you really love me?’ she asked, in the smallest voice yet.

He smiled down at her. ‘Oh, Rachel, my dearie dear! Do you doubt it?’

And then in his lips and arms and warm, strong body and steady beating heart, and the sheer thereness of him, she found all the proof she needed.

Kitty felt she had been away for a long time. There had been vague perceptions: she had known at one time that Dr Arbogast was leaning over her; and at another there had been a nurse in white veil. Once, Alice had been sitting by the bed, weeping. She didn’t feel she had actually seen them: she just knew they had been there.

Now she was drifting. It was like being under water: sometimes deep down, sometimes rising close to the surface, where she could hear voices, though not the words they said. She didn’t want to break through into the air – not yet. She couldn’t remember what had happened. She didn’t want to know . . . She let herself drift down deeper.

Sir Gordon was not wholly unsympathetic, but he was firm. ‘It’s out of the question.’

‘Father—’

‘When I told you to pay attention to Miss Huntley, when I told you not to favour your cousin, did you think I was not serious?’

Angus stood before him in formal pose, hands clasped behind his back. By chance it was the same parlour where Rachel had been warned – a small, little-used parlour off the entrance hall, convenient for private conversations. Standing like a soldier, Angus didn’t see the sad beast eyes or the dreary tartan. He fixed his gaze over his father’s shoulder on the sky beyond the window.

‘I did try, sir,’ he said. ‘But I don’t care for Miss Huntley and she doesn’t care for me. My feelings for Rachel are – not easily brushed aside.’

‘I don’t entirely blame you,’ his father responded. ‘She’s a fetching little thing, and if matters had been otherwise . . . But I’m afraid it’s common knowledge that the late Lord Stainton only cheated bankruptcy through death. He left nothing for his younger girls. I gave a hint to Lady Stainton on the subject, though it went against the grain, and she gave me to understand that she would by no means welcome an offer from our side, even if it were to be forth-coming. And it is not. You must make your mind up to that.’

‘But, Father—’

‘No, no. This is not a subject for discussion. You and the girl must allow your elders to know better in this case. Marriage for people of our station – it is not a simple matter of four bare legs in a bed.’

Angus winced at his father’s attempt at unbending. He fixed his own expression on the graver side of solemnity. ‘Father, I feel my honour is engaged.’

But Sir Gordon was not impressed. ‘Whatever you may have said to the girl, it is not binding, not without the permission of your parents and hers. You have taken a fancy to her, I can see that, but these feelings are not uncommon, and they fade, my boy. Trust me, they always fade. Marriage is too important to be concluded on the basis of a passing whim. Now, Sir Philip Huntley and I have discussed the matter fully, carefully, soberly, and we have decided that the match will be beneficial to all parties. And she’s a handsome girl, Angus – it’s not as though I was hitching you to a gargoyle. Handsome and well-bred and, as far as I can tell, good-humoured. You’ll thank me one day.’

‘Have you decided between you on a wedding day? And how many children we’re to have?’

Sir Gordon gave his son a close look, noted the flared nostrils, and decided to ignore the near-impertinence, rather than risk provoking an uproar. ‘We see no reason for a long engagement. Miss Huntley is not a girl just out of the schoolroom.’