Page 13 of The Secrets of Ashmore Castle

Now there was a clamour. Every sentence seemed to begin with the words, ‘But what about—?’

He held up his hand for silence. ‘I need to study the previous will to discover what provisions were named in it. I must also take time to learn the condition of the estate and where the various assets are disposed. I suspect all this will take me some time.’ His mother’s eyes were boring into him. Did she know? Or suspect?

There was more murmuring. Linda took half a step forward and said determinedly, ‘But, Giles, you must—’

He interrupted her. ‘I must understand fully before I act. Anything else would be irresponsible. And that is all I have to say to you today.’

The clamour broke out again, everyone wanting him to answer their question. His little sisters, at the back of the throng and nearest the door, were watching him silently, passively, as though none of this had anything to do with them. But it did, of course, didn’t it? They ought to have dowries. His father ought to have set money aside for them. It was not a legal requirement, like his mother’s jointure, but it was a moral requirement. Another responsibility his father had shrugged off onto him.

Something else occurred to him. He lifted his hand again, and the talking stopped. ‘There is one more thing. This matter must not be spoken about beyond these four walls. You must not discuss it with anyone not present in this room.’

An indignant protest arose. But his mother stopped it. ‘Would you have our affairs bruited about the neighbourhood, the subject of common gossip and coarse speculation?’ They looked at her uncomfortably. ‘I will not have my late husband’s actions picked over by ignorant outsiders. You will keep silent.’ She turned and looked at Giles. ‘And my son will resolve everything. In his own time.’

The slight emphasis on ‘will’ made it sound more like a threat than loyal support. Giles met her eyes steadily but could not read her: she had a lifetime’s practice in being impenetrable. But it bothered him – he could not say why – that she had called him ‘my son’ and not Giles, or even Ayton, as she had several times since he’d come back. Yet what should she have said? ‘The new earl’?

He turned quickly to leave, before there could be any more argument, so quickly that he tripped over one of the dogs – they had crept up close to him again. It yipped, the sound of a trodden paw, and he muttered irritably, ‘Get out of the way, damn you!’

At the door, Alice looked at him with reproach. He met her eyes questioningly. She said, ‘Don’t be horrid to them. They don’t understand, poor things.’

Two girls, two young women, trembling on the brink of adulthood, the future shape of their lives in his hands. He felt the fragile weight of them settle on his soul. Everyone wanted reassurance. Who was to comfort him?

Dory was helping carry things back down – everyone had to help on a major occasion like this. She was following Rose with a tray of crockery when, approaching the door to the senior servants’ sitting-room, she heard Mrs Webster say, ‘Something’s going on. I can tell. There’s an Atmosphere. Something was said when they all went into the library.’

Mr Moss’s voice replied, ‘Well, don’t look at me.’

Rose slowed, listening, and Dory, behind her, kept very quiet.

‘Why didn’t you go in as well? Then we’d know,’ Mrs Webster said.

‘I wasn’t required,’ said Moss, with dignity.

‘You opened the door for them. You should have stepped inside before you closed it.’

‘I can’t intrude myself into private meetings.’

‘Oh, they’d never have noticed you. We’re just furniture to them. You pull out a chair for them and they sit without even seeing who did it.’

Dory heard Rose snort at that.

‘It could be something that affects us,’ Mrs Webster went on. ‘If there’s trouble coming, I want to know.’

‘I know,’ said Rose, allowing herself to appear in the doorway. Dory hung back, out of sight.

‘You shouldn’t listen to our conversation,’ said Mrs Webster, sharply.

‘You shouldn’t talk when I’m listening, then,’ Rose retorted.

Moss drew in a sharp breath. ‘Impertinence,’ he said.

But Mrs Webster waved down the rebuke. ‘Not now, Mr Moss. How do you know, Rose?’

‘How d’you think?’ Rose said.

‘Lady Cordwell?’

At the Castle, Rose maided Lady Cordwell, who always said there was no point in bringing her own maid when there were Castle servants with nothing to do; but Rose suspected, as did Mrs Webster, that Lady Cordwell didn’t have a maid. Couldn’t afford one? Or too mean? It could be either.

‘She always tells me everything in the end,’ Rose said. ‘She does love to talk.’