Page 36 of The Fortunes of Ashmore Castle

‘Giulia—’

‘You cannot refuse when your aunt summons you to visit her, can you?’

She laughed again, and fortunately for his sanity, the music stopped just then, saving him from finding something to say. He doubted he could have formed a coherent sentence.

In the seclusion of the alcove, Rachel and Angus exchanged hungry embraces and murmured endearments. ‘It’s so wretched that we can only meet like this,’ he mourned. ‘I want to claim you as my own before the world.’

Rachel clung to him. Her eyes were wet. ‘She’s dying. Mama’s dying.’

‘What?’

‘It was the first thing she said when she got out of the carriage. “I’ve come home to die.” She wants to have me married to the Russian before – before the end. But if she – goes first, the prince will finish things. He will be my legal guardian.’

‘But that’s outrageous!’

‘She’s my mother, and she’s dying!’ Rachel cried. ‘I can’t go against her now. How would you feel if it was your m-mother?’

He drew out his handkerchief and gently mopped her tears. ‘My poor darling! It’s dreadful. But it’s your whole life at stake. You can’t let her command you from beyond the grave.’

The word ‘grave’ made her cry even more. ‘I don’t want my mother to die!’ she sobbed.

Angus held her in silence until the tears subsided.

‘What are we to do?’ she hiccuped dismally. ‘It’s hopeless.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ he said. ‘I have a position now, a good one. In a year or two I shall be able to keep you in comfort.’

‘But it will be too late. I’ll be married and living in Russia by then!’

He held her close, and said, ‘If it comes to it, we’ll have to go to Scotland. You’re old enough to marry in Scotland without consent. And once we’re married, they can’t part us.’

She looked up at him, damply, but with hope. ‘Is that true?’

‘Yes. Scottish law and English law are different.’

‘So – we could go now? Tonight!’

‘The difficulty is that you have to live there for twenty-one days before you can marry. And if I disappeared for twenty-one days I’d lose my new position. And then I couldn’t support you.’

She was silent, looking at him trustingly, waiting for him to solve the problem.

‘Look,’ he said at last, ‘we’ll do it if we really have to. I promise you. But let’s wait a bit and see. She might change her mind. If she’s really – you know – she might see things differently. It’s bound to change your view of things, isn’t it? But if it looks as though there’s no other way, we’ll go to Scotland and I’ll just have to find another position – though I doubt I could find another as good. But we’ll manage somehow.’

It was a chilly, damp and blowy evening, and Richard was not pleased to be dragged outside onto the terrace, where no-one else was foolish enough to be lingering. ‘What on earth’s got into you?’ he grumbled.

‘It’s Giulia,’ Giles said.

‘Oh, Lord!’ He fumbled for his cigarette case. ‘Wait until I light a cigarillo . . . All right, carry on.’

Giles told him.

‘Well, that explains a lot,’ Richard said, at the end. ‘A lifelong crush on you makes much more sense. She was madly in love with you, you kissed her and then rejected her. Of course she’s furious. Hurt pride, broken heart, Italian passion heating the brew to boiling point.’

‘But I swear I never encouraged her! I always treated her like a sister, nothing more!’

But he hesitated, remembering the warning given him by Mrs Antrobus in the Valley of the Kings. Surely you must know she’s in love with you, she had said. He had dismissed it as female fantasy. You treat her with a friendliness and a lack of formality that can only encourage her. But they had always talked like that! He had told himself the woman simply didn’t understand. The way you sit and talk with her late into the night, your heads together and your voices lowered . . . Now he remembered Giulia’s recent words: the sky like velvet, the stars like diamonds, your voice caressing me in the darkness . . .

Giles put his hands to his head and groaned. ‘Oh, God, what have I done?’