Page 40 of Rivals at Ashmore Castle

‘And you will attend the wedding. It is my particular wish, and that of the prince and everyone concerned. I insist upon it, Giles, mark me. You will be there.’

Giles lifted a surrendering hand. ‘Of course, we’ll be delighted to come, won’t we, Kitty? Wouldn’t miss it for the world. To see old Linda turned off respectably will be the highlight of the year.’ He gave his mother a canny look. ‘But you could have told us that by letter, and saved yourself the inconvenience of travelling all this way. Is there some other reason for your visit?’

Maud seemed to come to a decision. ‘Yes, there is. I have spent the greater part of my life at Ashmore Castle. It has been my home. However, my life now is elsewhere and it is unlikely that I shall be here again often, if at all. I wish Usingen to understand when I refer to it in the future. Tomorrow we shall drive about the neighbourhood and I shall show him some of the places that hold memories for me. The weather seems set fair so we shall take the landau, and you will accompany us, Kitty. You may order the carriage for eleven.’

She had turned her face towards Kitty, and Kitty was startled for a moment before she realised that the expression on it was a smile. The princess believed she was bestowing an honour on Kitty by inviting her. It made her sorry, even while she was relieved, to have to turn her down.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, but I can’t come. I have an appointment at eleven tomorrow,’ she said.

‘Appointment? Nonsense!’ said the princess. ‘What on earth can you have to do that requires an appointment?’ Her withering tone derided the term. ‘Whatever it is, you will cancel it or change the date.’

Kitty had no wish to fight. ‘I can, I suppose,’ she said, and added unwarily, ‘I don’t suppose Miss Eddowes will mind.’

The smile froze into something quite unnerving. ‘What did you say?’

Kitty did not repeat the name. She said nervously. ‘She wants to talk to me about something charitable she hopes I will help with. I said she could come here at eleven tomorrow but I can send a note to put her off.’

There was no doubting now the princess’s displeasure. ‘How dare you ask her here? You don’t know what you are meddling with.’

‘But—’

‘No!’ Maud thundered. ‘I will not have that woman in my house!’

Kitty hated more than anything to be ‘told off’, but she had a little more steel in her backbone these days. Timidly, but with determination, she said, ‘It is not your house any more, Mother-in-law. It’s mine, and I think I have the right to invite anyone I choose—’

‘Yours?’ the princess said furiously. ‘Ashmore Castle belongs to the Staintons. You are merely tolerated here. Your business is to keep it in fit condition for the next generation to inherit – for my grandson!’

That her grandson was Kitty’s son did not seem to have occurred to the princess.

Giles had been silent so far, caring nothing for his mother’s tempers and forgetting that Kitty was not so robust. But he saw tears come to her eyes, which she was bravely blinking back, and realised he should have intervened earlier. ‘Mother,’ he began firmly.

Without looking at him, Maud held up a hand, palm towards him, like a highwayman stopping a carriage, and continued what she had been saying to Kitty. ‘You are not a Stainton,’ she concluded, with contempt.

‘Neither were you,’ Kitty retorted, astonished by her own daring. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.

Maud gave her a withering look. ‘I come from a noble house, a family more venerable even than the Staintons. I brought honour and an ancient blood to Ashmore. Do you dare to compare yourself with me? You are an interloper, an upstart.’

‘That’s enough, Mother,’ Giles said.

Usingen, bewildered, trying to follow the rapid exchanges like someone seeing a tennis match for the first time, stuttered, ‘Is it perhaps…? What is…? Let us not…’

No-one looked at him. ‘You are not to talk to my wife like that,’ Giles went on.

Maud turned a bitter look on him. ‘You brought her here. You!’ She rose to her feet so violently Frederick only just had time, leaping forward, to catch the chair and prevent it falling over. ‘I shall leave this house at once,’ Maud said fiercely, ‘and I shall not return. Send for the carriage. Usingen, come.’

The prince followed her, looking miserable. He turned at the door to make a deep and probably apologetic bow to Kitty, and then to Giles, opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. His English deserted him in moments of high emotion. And, besides, what could he possibly say?

Rose managed to intercept Miss Taylor, the princess’s waiting-woman, as she followed Frederick, who was carrying two bags, towards the back stairs.

‘What’s going on?’ she asked urgently, falling in beside her. Miss Taylor, staring grimly ahead, didn’t answer. Rose, glancing at Frederick’s impassive back and aware that his ears would be standing out on stalks, lowered her voice. ‘Come on, Mary,’ she urged, ‘it’s me. We’ve been through a lot together. What was all the row about? Are you really leaving?’

‘My lady has been barbarously treated,’ Miss Taylor said, between tight lips. ‘She could not stay after that.’

‘Somebody,’ Rose jerked her head towards Frederick, ‘said that her highness called her ladyship an upstart. So who’s treating who bar-ber-us? There’s something else to it, I know. Tell me, go on!’

Taylor slewed her eyes sideways at her and away again, thought for a moment, then – so low Rose had to lean in to catch the words – said, ‘She never wanted a row. She wanted to be nice. She doesn’t think she’ll be coming back, you see. It’s a sort of farewell visit.’

‘Well, it’s that now, all right,’ Rose remarked. ‘But if she was trying to be nice, why’d she go off like a rocket at her ladyship like that?’