Page 7 of Rivals at Ashmore Castle

‘And then offering to walk with you this afternoon. So promising! But now this! Have you any idea what you looked like when you arrived back here? Dreadful! You might have been dragged by your heels through a hedge! You were supposed to charm him, Addy, not rush about like a hoyden getting filthy. That is not the way to attract a suitor, I can tell you…’

Miss Rowsham did not answer. There was no point. She let her sister rave, and retreated, as she so often did, into her memories – and one memory in particular…

When the light had begun to fail, Lord Stainton had gathered his people together and insisted that they should go home. They had done enough. There were now plenty of others to continue the rescue. Railway workers from other stations, with tools and expertise, had arrived; extra policemen from neighbouring villages had been called on; and every able-bodied man in Canons Ashmore was doing his bit. At the cottage hospital a retired doctor from up the valley, the local dentist, and the horse doctor Jimmy Handshaw had added their not inconsiderable skills to those of the two resident doctors and the pharmacist to treat the injured.

Giles had arranged with a carter to carry the party up the hill, rather than wait for a carriage to be sent down, so the four of them had ridden back to Ashmore Castle in the back of a Poor’s Dairy milk cart. At one point the cart had jolted violently enough to throw Miss Rowsham against Richard. He had steadied her automatically, and then looked at her as though he had been miles away until that moment. He seemed to examine her face with particularity, as though he had never properly looked at her before – well, she supposed he hadn’t. Why should he have?

He said, ‘You were absolutely splendid today, Miss Rowsham.’

She felt her cheeks warm. ‘We all did what we could,’ she said.

‘But you did so much more than one would expect of a lady. And you were so calm, so efficient,’ he went on. ‘An absolute trooper. I wish I’d had someone like you in my platoon in the Transvaal.’

Oddly, he had shaken her hand. She had hesitated, because her hand was so dirty. But, then, his was dirtier. And before he ended the shake, he had added an extra squeeze.

While her sister’s voice rolled over her unheeded, she thought about that squeeze. It must have meant something. Approbation? Probably. But anything warmer? His look had been admiring, but his words…Her calmness and efficiency. She was a trooper. Not the language of romance. It was not, of course, a romantic situation – Vanessa was right about that. She had felt a warmth and connection with him while they worked together, and afterwards in that handshake. But her common sense told her that acting together in a crisis was bound to generate a feeling of closeness. It was unlikely to endure afterwards when normal life was restored.

At any rate, she had done the right thing up at the station: she had been useful, and that must be her comfort. How much admiration would she have engendered if she had been helpless and feminine, wrung her hands uselessly, and flinched from dirtying her dress? Vanessa, of course, believed that was the way to attract a man – and she had married well, and she and John seemed content. Perhaps she was right, and men did like their women to be dainty and useless. Probably Richard Tallant was no different. He might admire a woman who was ‘a trooper’ but would never fall in love with her. Oh, well, there was nothing she could do about it now.

She allowed herself to listen again to Vanessa, who was saying, ‘…but we must see what we can do about it in London, when the Season starts. Arrange for you to be at the same dinners and balls and so on. In the right setting with a new gown or two, you will look so different he may forget the whole incident. Men are very easily distracted…’

Miss Rowsham drifted away again. She would like to be married – to have her own establishment rather than be spinster companion to Vanessa for the rest of her life – and she thought she would quite like to marry Richard Tallant, who seemed amusing. But she didn’t imagine he would ever offer for her, so there was no point in thinking about it.

The heavy rains after Christmas had caused Rose, the head housemaid, to cancel the walk she had promised to Michael Woodrow, the dairyman at Hundon’s, the home farm. The Christmas Season was always hard work for the servants, and when the guests finally departed the bill for the tiredness accrued was presented. So she had not been sorry not to go.

Besides, the idea of her and Woodrow ‘walking out’ was silly, wasn’t it? She was not a young girl and she had never been pretty: people would think she was chasing him (the words ‘old maid’ hovered about in there somewhere). They would laugh at her. She had a jaundiced view of men, anyway, after her experiences with the old earl – the present earl’s father. He had been – well, let’s just say, not a nice man. She thought Woodrow would probably forget all about it and she wasn’t entirely sorry.

But when the rains stopped and the dry weather set in, she received a note from him. It was brought up to the house by a boy, one of the numerous Cox family (she thought it was Albert, one of the very young ones, anyway – she couldn’t always tell them apart). The note reminded her of her promise, revived the scheme, and asked when her next free afternoon would be.

So she had to decide – the boy was fidgeting from foot to foot waiting to take the reply – whether to turn him down for good, or see him again. She decided, for no very firm reason, almost a mental toss of a coin, to see him again. It would be more interesting than not seeing him, that was all.

‘He said you’d give me a penny for taking it,’ the boy said, as he received her note.

‘Don’t you tell lies, Harry Cox!’ Rose snapped (she recognised him now from the bump on his nose where a dog had bitten him when he was a toddler). She knew Woodrow would have paid for message-and-reply – and he was canny enough not to give the little wretch payment in advance. ‘Take it back or not, it makes me no never-mind. Now clear off!’

The child grinned gappily. ‘You and him walkin’ out? You sweet on him?’

‘None of your cheek! Clear off, before I give you a clout.’

He skipped backwards a step out of range, stuck out his tongue, and strolled off with an indescribable swagger.

Rose went back in, shaking her head over such delinquency at a tender age. Harry Cox couldn’t be more than five, and was already steeped in villainy. We’ll see him hanged at the end if it, she told herself.

When she arrived at Hundon’s, Woodrow was waiting for her at his front door, and she remembered what she had put out of her mind for the last few weeks: how nice-looking he was. Despite her best intentions, she felt a little pang, and made up for it by being as discouraging as possible.

‘I think it’s going to rain,’ she said. ‘We should put off.’

‘It isn’t,’ he said genially, ‘and we shan’t.’ He closed his front door and took his place beside her, walking towards the gate. His herd dogs, Fly and Jess, appeared from nowhere and joined the expedition, glancing up into his face for clues. Was it fun, or work? Would there be cows?

‘How’s your sister?’ Rose asked. ‘Have you seen her?’

‘I visited before Christmas,’ he said. His sister was confined in the Asham Bois insane asylum, having tried to kill him with a kitchen knife. ‘I don’t think she knew who I was.’

‘Are they treating her well?’ Rose had no idea what went on inside an asylum. She had grown up with the horrors adults employed to scare you into good behaviour. If you carry on like that they’ll come and fetch you away to Asham Bois!

‘It seems like a nice place – a bit like a hospital, but brighter. I think there’s a separate ward where they lock up the violent ones. But on Martha’s ward they can go out into the grounds if they want. They do gardening, grow some of their own food. She’s put on weight since she went in.’

‘So you don’t feel bad about it any more?’