Page 152 of The Fortunes of Ashmore Castle

She smiled faintly. ‘I believe you would. And in the mean time, there is dancing. Though the world ends, we shall dance. Have they invited that girl again, for you, the Miss – what is this her name is?’

‘Miss Rawlins?’ he said innocently.

‘Rowsham,’ she corrected him sternly.

‘And you pretended you couldn’t remember! I don’t know if she will be there. And don’t care, either.’

‘“Don’t care was made to care” – did not your nanny tell you? There will be girls at this ball, and if you don’t ask them to dance, I shall make you dance with me.’

‘Oh, but that would be my pleasure.’

‘I’m so glad you will be here for Christmas Eve,’ Kitty said to Nina. ‘I do think bringing in the tree and dressing it is the best part of Christmas. And the boys are just old enough now to enjoy it.’ Louis was two and a half, and Alec sixteen months. ‘Come up straight away and see them,’ she said, tucking her hand through Nina’s arm.

On the way up the stairs, Nina said, ‘Have you heard any more from Germany? How does – Giles’ she made herself say the name, ‘feel about having a new baby brother?’

‘I think he got over the shock when she first announced she was pregnant. He has a great capacity for burying himself in his work to the exclusion of everything else.’

Nina thought she heard a hint of wistfulness, but though she loved Kitty, she didn’t think she could stand a conversation about her relationship with Giles. Instead, she said, ‘Any news of Linda?’

‘Nothing directly, but Aunt Caroline said Aunt Vicky wrote that Paul’s Cousin Pippi was spending Christmas with them. I don’t know whether Aunt Vicky invited him for Linda’s sake, or whether he invited himself. We hope the latter, because that would mean he was interested in her.’

‘We?’

‘Giles would dearly like to have her married and settled. Otherwise there’s always the risk that she’ll come back and impose herself on him. She was difficult,’ she confessed. ‘But I feel sorry for poor Arabella. She liked it here. She didn’t want to leave.’

‘Children have to go where their parents take them,’ Nina said. ‘I didn’t want to leave India.’

They reached the nursery. Kitty paused with her hand on the doorknob and said, ‘I’m so lucky to have my boys. I often think of poor little Arthur. And my little brother Peter. Children are so easily lost.’

She opened the door. The two little boys were up at once, Louis running, Alexander tottering with new baby gait just behind. Louis had a very strong look of Giles about him; Alec was more ambiguous, though there was something of Kitty about his eyes. Nina felt a pang deep in her stomach – or was it her womb? Next Christmas she would have a baby in her arms.

Kitty, thoroughly engaged with her children, spared several glances for Nina. She had always known her friend was not beguiled by babies, but had hoped for a change. Now she thought she saw it. ‘Oh, Nina, wouldn’t it be wonderful if you had one too?’ she couldn’t help exclaiming. ‘Imagine if our children could grow up together, and be friends the way we are friends.’

‘Yes, it would be wonderful,’ Nina said. There were too many complicated ideas behind that sentence for her to say more.

The ball at Ashridge Park was magnificently staged, with lamps and candles enough to light a village, and pots of shrubs brought in from the famous Ashridge greenhouses, including some of gardenias in flower, which helped to disguise the slightly musty smell inevitable in rooms not often used. In any case, the guests were all too ready to enjoy themselves to notice any deficiencies. Lord and Lady Shacklock, with two sons, Elliot and Brandon, and the two daughters who were out, Cecilia and Agatha, were in the receiving line – Lord Shacklock, tall, dark and saturnine, was scowling, his much younger wife vibrating with excitement. The ball, it might be concluded, was her idea, agreed to reluctantly by him, perhaps in the hope of advancing the marriage prospects of the daughters, who unfortunately favoured their father in looks rather than their mother.

Every important family in the neighbourhood had been invited, along with others from further afield to add elegance to the mix. Lord and Lady Ballantine from Aylesbury were there with a son and daughter and a house guest, who was the son of a marquess. Lord and Lady Ravenscar had come from Wendover, and Miss Rowsham was with them looking hopeful in a new gown. There were even some families down from London: the Lathams with a son and daughter; and, as Alice very quickly noticed, the Faroceans – father, mother, the two sons she had already met, Jervis and Bentham, and a tall young woman she supposed was the sister who was being brought out, Hermione.

That Rachel had spotted them too was evident. She seized Alice’s arm in a fierce grip. Alice saw Bentham’s roving gaze snag on her. He said something to his brother, who was chatting to Louisa Latham, and a moment later they were coming over.

Bentham bowed deeply to Alice, slightly to Rachel, and said, ‘I hoped we were going to meet in London, but you don’t seem to go to the same parties as us.’

‘I don’t go to parties at all, really. Too busy,’ Alice said.

‘But here you are,’ he said, waving a hand around the glittering scene, ‘and I’m suspecting now that you only go to the very grandest of affairs, and I was looking too low down.’

‘The Shacklocks are neighbours. We have to come.’

‘Noblesse oblige,’ Bentham said, with a theatrical sigh. ‘The things one has to do for mere politesse, to oil the wheels of society! You are too good, Lady Alice.’

‘But what are you doing here? That is the more interesting question,’ she said.

‘My father knows Lord Shacklock. And I was up at Oxford with Brandon Shacklock. In fact, I was at school with him, so I’ve known him for ever.’

‘You said you were at Balliol with Oliver Leven,’ she reminded him.

‘So I was. There were three hundred undergraduates at Balliol when I was there. Did you think it was just me and Oliver?’