Page 125 of The Fortunes of Ashmore Castle

He was uncomfortable with her sympathy. ‘You weren’t meant to.’ She was looking at him penetratingly, stripping away layers. ‘Please don’t pity me.’

‘I do not,’ she said at last. ‘One ought to feel a great love once, or one is not truly alive. Well, well. We are the wounded, we two, n’est-ce pas? Life will go on, mon cher, but differently, and we will adapt.’

He shook his head. ‘I shall never love again.’

She did not argue with him, but continued with her own thoughts. Eventually she roused herself to say, ‘He came to see me, you know. At the end.’

‘Vraiment?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said, with a spark of anger. ‘He came to say goodbye to me. Can you imagine it? To say goodbye – to me! – as if it was merely a congé visit, a commonplace courtesy, like leaving one’s card when one quits Town. After all we had been to each other!’ There was a colour of indignation now in her cheeks.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘She has changed him, that one. And not for the better.’ There was a silence, and then she roused herself to say, ‘Tell me some news to distract me. What of your mother?’

‘Still at the Usingerhof. She wrote to Aunt Vicky, who wrote to me. They were to have gone to Venice to see Uncle Fergus, but she is still convalescent.’

‘That does not surprise me,’ said Grandmère. ‘A baby, at her age? What of your sister?’

‘Which one?’

‘N’importe.’

Richard smiled at that. ‘Well, Rachel is having a fine time, I believe.’

‘Yes, we heard something of her frolics, Caroline and I, when we were in France. Vicky means only to be kind, I believe, but Maud is hoping the silly child will fall in love and break her engagement to the unsatisfactory man.’

‘Is that a bad thing? Except for the unsatisfactory man, of course.’

‘But will she fall in love with someone suitable? And will he offer for her without a dowry? There are too many imponderables.’

‘Better the bird in the hand? Well, you may be right.’

‘I am always right. And you, what goes on with you? Why did you not go to Scotland?’

‘I have been looking for a house, and I have found one. I came to tell you. In Bolton Street, so I shall be handy to come and visit you. Just a little place, but neat and convenient.’

‘What need have you of a house?’

‘To stay in when I come to London, which will be more often in future. I don’t want to keep bothering Aunt Caroline.’ The rooms Molly had occupied had been given up. He had seen to that. There were too many memories there.

‘She does not mind being bothered. Which you know. So it must be that you wish for a house to be private in. Which means you are contemplating some grivoiserie.’

‘Grandmère! As if I would! There are other reasons for wanting to be private, you know.’

‘Such as nursing a broken heart – yes, I know. But that is not good for you. You are a young man, you must go out and attack life. Ever onwards and upwards!’

‘You exhaust me,’ Richard said, smiling. ‘Can a fellow not have a moment to lick his wounds?’

‘Certainly not,’ said Grandmère.

Nina arrived at the familiar house in Stafford Street to find everything in disarray, the air full of dust, the incontinent sound of hammering, and sundry extraneous persons blocking the passages and doing incomprehensible things to the walls.

‘Oh, my dear! Come in,’ said Isabel Morris, ‘but do be careful where you step. There are nails and snips of wire and I don’t know what underfoot. We are having the electric light put in. Mawes is upstairs somewhere, making a nuisance of himself. It was all his idea, of course. He is such a one for new-fangled inventions!’

‘Shall I be in the way?’ Nina said. ‘You know Lepida and I are going to the lecture later, and I thought we could have a comfortable chat beforehand. But I can go away and come back.’

‘No, no, do stay, if you don’t mind the mess. But, my dear, Lepida won’t be going to the lecture. She is laid down on the chaise longue in her room, quite prostrate. I’m so angry with Mawes that the men have come today to do the electricity, when she’s so poorly, but he says they are quite booked up, and if they don’t come today it will be a month or six weeks until they can come again.’