Page 19 of The Secrets of Ashmore Castle

They went to live with Major Sanderton’s older sister, who had married an academic, but was now widowed, and had room in her tall, narrow red house in Draycott Place for the wife and child of a brother of whom, in her understated way, she was very fond.

Antonia’s health improved a little, but she was missing her husband dreadfully. Nina fared better, missing him too, and missing India, which was all she knew, but she had an enquiring mind and boundless energy and quickly found things to please her. And she soon learned to use her aunt as a source of both information and diversion.

Aunt Schofield had no children and had never wanted them. As well educated as her brother – unusually so for her time – she had married into academia and relished the life of the mind and the intellectual opportunities furnished by her sympathetic husband. He had been considerably older than her, and from the beginning they had both realised she was likely to be long a widow. She had a pension and the leasehold of the house, and with a circle of bluestocking friends, she had not anticipated any difficulty in occupying those years. She had never minded solitude – indeed, rather preferred it – but she did not shrink from her duty to her brother and his family. And the large brown eyes of her little niece, turned up to her in the flattering assumption that ‘Aunt’ knew the answer to every question, were endearing.

After the initial rally, Antonia’s health declined again, and only a year after her return to England she died. While Kitty had lost her mother before ever knowing her, Nina had lost warmth and love and intimacy, the sort of mothering Kitty had always craved.

‘Aunt Schofield wrote to Papa that she would take care of me for as long as necessary,’ Nina had told Kitty. ‘I don’t suppose she imagined it would be for ever.’

The major got leave at last, and started the long journey home. But he contracted a fever in the Suez Canal, and died before the ship reached Marseille. When Nina had told her this part of the story, Kitty had been silent, unable to express how awful she thought it must have been for Nina to become an orphan.

From what Nina had gathered about Kitty’s family, she felt her friend had always been an orphan, despite having two parents. She at least had known love, and still did, though Aunt Schofield’s was not expressed in caresses. She was brisk and practical with a sharp intellect, and she showed her love by tending Nina’s mind, like a prize garden. She undertook Nina’s education, gave her books that never normally came a girl’s way, and involved her various academic friends in the scheme: Nina had teaching from some of the best in each discipline. Some of her aunt’s character rubbed off on her: she was practical, sensible, not given to complaining or brooding. The loss of her dear parents left a dark place inside her, but she shut the door on it and always looked resolutely forward.

She was surprised when her aunt interrupted a lesson one day to say, typically without preamble, ‘I am going to send you to school, Nina.’

Nina frowned. ‘But why? They just polish girls up to get married. I’m going to be a teacher.’

Mrs Schofield was unmoved. ‘Nevertheless, you shall go. You spend too much time with old people.’ She raised a hand to stop Nina protesting. ‘You need to make friends of your own age. But I have chosen a school where I believe you will have many opportunities to extend your education.’

Nina was doubtful, but she was always willing to try a new experience, and supposed it might be fun. ‘Will I be boarding?’ she asked.

‘That is an important part of the experience. But you will come home for holidays, of course.’

Nina thought, It will only be for a few weeks at a time. I’m sure I can put up with that. And, as it happened, she had met Kitty on the first day and taken her under her wing. So she had a friend and a project – bringing Kitty out of her shell – and since her aunt’s dictum was ‘Never miss the opportunity to learn something new’, she threw herself into school life and found she enjoyed it. She was sorry it was over.

Kitty asked now, with trepidation, ‘What do you suppose is going to happen to us?’

Nina said, ‘I know exactly what will happen to you. You’ll have a splendid come-out, you’ll be the belle of the Season, you’ll fall in love and marry your handsome prince.’

Kitty didn’t speak. She longed for love and marriage, though the idea scared her too.

‘Miss Thornton says we’re lucky to be finishing now instead of December last year,’ Nina went on, ‘because court mourning cast a shadow over the Season. But next year’s Season will be brilliant.’

The old Queen, Victoria, had died in January. Everyone had been very sad – it was like your own grandmother dying – and though court mourning had been over at the end of April, the mood had continued to be dampened for some time. It was not helped by the continuing bad news about the war. When the main towns in South Africa had been captured in 1900, everyone had thought the war was as good as finished, but it was still dragging painfully on with no end in sight. The newspapers complained bitterly that a quarter of a million disciplined British soldiers seemed unable to conquer just twenty thousand unruly Boers.

But despite the war, everyone was looking forward to a new era beginning with the new year. People said things would be much livelier, because King Teddy would be a very different kind of monarch from old Queen Vicky. Rules would be relaxed. He liked to eat and drink; he encouraged conversation at dinner; he attended the races and the theatre; he dined at subjects’ houses. He even included commoners among his closest friends.

Nina didn’t quite understand how the tastes of someone as remote as the King or Queen could affect lowly people like them, but Miss Thornton said the country always took on the character of its monarch.

At any rate, it would affect Kitty, whose father was a baronet and, she gathered, very wealthy, and would bring her out in the first style.

But Kitty sighed. ‘I dread coming out. I’m not like you. I hate people looking at me. And having to talk to men!’

Nina was amused. ‘You won’t need to. All you’ll have to do is smile. The men will do all the talking. Miss Thornton says one can be either pretty or charming – one needn’t be both.’

‘You’re both. You’re much prettier than me.’

Nina knew that she was blessed with good looks. Her features were classically handsome – a straight nose and firm chin – and her brown eyes made an unusual contrast with thick fair hair the colour of harvest wheat. But she had no vanity about it. Her aunt valued only the things of the mind, and it had rubbed off on Nina. And from her school days, she had learned that though prettiness did matter for females, when it came to marriage other things mattered more: money, and family.

‘You know I won’t have a proper come-out like you,’ she said lightly. ‘We’re not high society. And I’ve no fortune.’

‘But won’t you have any dancing, or parties, or anything?’

‘Aunt Schofield might take me to a public ball or two, but the people she knows don’t have daughters to bring out, and that’s how one gets invitations.’

‘I’ll ask Mama to ask you to mine.’

‘Thank you, darling, but I don’t suppose she’d want me there. Don’t worry about me – I don’t need to come out. I’m going to be a teacher.’