Page 54 of The Secrets of Ashmore Castle

‘Nina is so clever,’ Miss Bayfield said.

‘You prefer the impressionists,’ Giles said. ‘I’ve never before met a young woman who had any opinion on them.’

‘We learned a great deal at Miss Thornton’s,’ Miss Bayfield said, and added, with an air of having just discovered it, ‘without really knowing we did.’

‘Did you read poetry?’

‘We had to recite The Pied Piper of Hamelin,’ she said. ‘But I think that was to improve our memories and diction. It isn’t,’ she added in a low voice, ‘a very good poem.’

‘I had to recite “Casabianca” when I was a boy. And Hiawatha.’ She nodded, as if she knew them too. ‘One of the great things about growing up is no longer having to read things one doesn’t like,’ he went on, hoping to amuse her. But she didn’t smile. The other two had moved on from the Sargent, but she seemed to want to stand and look at it. He racked his brain for something to say. ‘What about Shakespeare? I’m sure your Miss Thornton made you read Shakespeare?’

It was like drawing teeth, trying to get conversation out of her.

In front of the next painting, Richard and Nina were talking easily. He glanced back to see how Giles was doing, and sighed. ‘Your friend,’ he remarked, ‘is very shy.’

She frowned, as though it were a criticism. ‘Kitty is the dearest creature. And very clever, only she doesn’t know it. She only wants drawing out.’

‘She’s lucky to have such a loyal friend,’ Richard said, examining her. She was really very lovely, he thought – those eyes! That hair and skin!

She looked at him with a shrewd amusement, as if reading his thoughts. ‘I’m no-one,’ she said abruptly. ‘You shouldn’t be wasting your time on me.’

‘Don’t worry. I’m just the younger brother. No estate. No fortune. We’re not allowed to fall in love.’

‘I’ve sworn not to,’ she confided.

He was amused. ‘Is that a thing you can swear? I thought all you girls believed falling in love was involuntary.’

‘I was brought up by my aunt, and she believes in Higher Thinking. You control everything with your mind, even your emotions – she would say, especially your emotions.’

‘“Tell me where is fancy bred? Or in the heart, or in the head?”’ he quoted, slightly surprising himself. Of course he was grounded in Shakespeare, like any English gentleman, but he couldn’t remember quoting any to a female before.

‘My aunt would say the heart is nothing but an organ that pumps blood,’ said Miss Sanderton, with a gleam in her eye.

‘Your aunt sounds formidable. And you, Miss Sanderton,’ he added seriously, ‘strike me as a very dangerous young woman.’

‘Oh, no,’ she said dismissively. ‘I told you, I’m no-one at all.’

Richard had not been brought up to consider anyone but himself. Selflessness and philanthropy were alien concepts to him. He had simply never been asked to practise them. But he found he had actually enjoyed helping Mrs Sands and her daughter, and liked the sensation of helping Giles by making all the arrangements.

Mrs Sands, he had told the housekeeper, was a respectable widow, who had a claim on the benevolence of the Stainton estate. Mrs Gateshill had listened at first with a tight mouth and the hard eyes of suspicion, but when Richard returned Giles’s key and mentioned that the earl would be too busy ever to call on his protégées, she relaxed a little; and once he mentioned that the rent would be paid by the estate, directly from the bank, she was all co-operation.

So it was Richard who brought Mrs Sands and her daughter the good news, and received the first flood of their gratitude. It was such an agreeable sensation that he decided then and there to help them make the move. Supported by the knowledge that he could apply to Vogel for any expenses incurred in the business, he hired a growler and went to collect them and their luggage in person, and supervised their reception by Mrs Gateshill. By the time he had conducted them over their new home, he felt a proprietary interest in them, and took personal charge of acquiring the piano. Robert Morley & Company was the place to go to, said musical acquaintances, and having left the choice of instrument to Mr Edgar Morley, he had only to make sure he was on hand when it was delivered to feel the full pleasure of successful benefaction.

‘It is so very, very kind of you,’ Mrs Sands said, with tears in her eyes.

In justice, he felt obliged to murmur that the estate was paying.

She said, ‘But I know who has taken the trouble to make it happen. You have exerted yourself on our behalf and we are truly grateful.’

Well, he had exerted himself, that was a fact. He smirked a little. ‘Won’t you try the instrument?’ he asked Miss Sands.

She needed no more encouragement, but sat quickly as though only a thread of politeness had been holding her back. Richard watched in amazement as her fingers ran across the keys so fast he could hardly see them, releasing a flood of sound such as he’d never heard before. He’d had no interest in music until then. He never went to concerts, and though hostesses sometimes held ‘musical soirées’, there was no need for a guest to listen. Flirting and whispered conversation beguiled the performances, and one could always slip out of the room for a smoke if particularly bored. Little girls like his sisters learned to thump out ‘pieces’ on the piano as part of their training for marriage, but he had never heard playing like this. The rippling tune – he had no better word for it than ‘tune’, though he knew it was much more complex than that – poured and tumbled and sparkled like a mountain stream rushing downhill, and only when she abruptly stopped playing did he discover he had actually been holding his breath.

Mrs Sands had been watching him. ‘She is good, isn’t she?’ He groped for a word. ‘Miraculous,’ he said.

She smiled, satisfied. ‘It’s a very nice instrument,’ she said, ‘and we are more grateful than I can say. I shall be able to teach, and Chloë will be able to practise. But I wish you could hear her play on a concert piano – a grand. Then you would really know how good she is.’

He didn’t know what to say. He thought of all the grand pianos he must have walked past in his life, in the great houses of relatives and acquaintances. To him they had been merely large items of furniture, no more significant than a marble-topped console on which he laid his hat; and to judge by the array of silver-framed photographs and bowls of flowers they so often carried, their owners probably thought the same. He wished, suddenly and foolishly, that he could conjure one from its forgotten corner of a drawing-room for Miss Sands to work her magic on. But even if he had the power, there would be no room for it here.