Page 82 of The Secrets of Ashmore Castle

‘I won’t even be going,’ Richard pointed out.

‘Exactly. He’ll feel sorry for you and agree to anything you ask,’ Linda said triumphantly.

‘Damnation! Crooks!’ Giles bellowed.

Crooks appeared at the dressing-room door, saw the blood, and hastened to grab a towel. ‘You cut yourself, my lord?’

‘What the devil have you done with my razor?’ Giles growled. ‘It’s as blunt as a rusty ploughshare!’

‘I sharpened and set it just as usual, my lord,’ Crooks said, in a quavering voice. Giles examined the towel he had pressed to the cut. ‘The alum block, my lord?’

‘In a moment.’ Giles rinsed off the razor in the bowl, and held it up to the light. ‘God damn it!’ he exclaimed. ‘There’s a nick out of it. Look there! Actually a nick.’ Crooks must have been damned clumsy to spoil the edge like that. Let the strop get too dry – or dropped the razor and then forgotten that he had.

Crooks’s hands were trembling. He looked pale, and damp about the upper lip, as he stammered: ‘I don’t understand how it could have happened, my lord. Never in my whole life … his late lordship … wouldn’t have it happen for the world … setting razors for thirty years—’

Giles cut him off. ‘You had better send it back to Truefitt’s to be reground. Send it straight away, ask them as a favour to me to get it back before the wedding. Is the other one all right?’

‘I will examine it carefully, my lord, but I’m sure it is. I really don’t know how this could have happened—’

‘Yes, yes, that’s enough,’ Giles said.

Crooks shuffled his way out, back into the bedroom where he had been laying out Giles’s clothes. The old fellow didn’t seem to be on top of things, and that was a fact. Of course, his master’s death had been a shock to him. But yesterday a button had come off his waistcoat as he’d tried to do it up, and the day before – or was it the day before that? – a thumb mark on his boot heel. Giles was not a dandy, but in his position you had to take care of your appearance – and you expected a certain level of competence from those who served you. If you couldn’t shave yourself without the damned razor chopping lumps out of you … ! Crooks had been upset, he remembered, that he’d insisted on shaving himself rather than letting Crooks do it. He shuddered at the memory, and imagined himself lying in a welter of blood from a cut throat while the valet dithered and wrung his hands ineffectually …

If only there were a kind way of getting rid of him …

Giles visited Richard again. ‘I’m just on the way to the bridesmaids’ luncheon.’ It had been decided by the two mothers during the visit to the Castle that Giles’s sisters should be bridesmaids as well. Lady Bayfield had suggested it – two Stainton girls would do something to balance out the Sanderton nonentity – and Lady Stainton had agreed to it because the subject interested her too little to resist it.

Giles gave Richard a grim look. ‘It’s the groomsman’s duty really, but you’re hors de combat, and I couldn’t inflict Uncle Stuffy on them.’

Richard gave a feeble grin. ‘Isn’t it traditional for the groomsman to marry one of them? He can’t marry his own nieces, so it’ll have to be Miss Sanderton. Do you think she’ll like him?’

‘Don’t joke about it,’ Giles said stiffly.

Mrs Sands visited. ‘I was so worried about you, I plucked up courage and wrote to your grandmother, seeing she’d been so kind to Chloë, asking if I might visit. She seemed to think it was all right, and gave me a note of introduction for your aunt. And so,’ she laughed nervously, ‘at the end of a long explanation, here I am.’

‘I’m glad you came,’ he said, and made an instinctive movement of his hand towards her. She took it, and he felt a sweet shock in his stomach at the warm smoothness, combined with the strength of a pianist’s fingers. ‘How is Miss Sands?’

‘Chloë is in seventh heaven, having access to a proper grand piano. Your grandmother’s instrument is a very fine one, she says.’

‘Sir Thomas Burton chose it for Grandmère, and he was a pianist before he became a conductor, so he ought to know a good one.’

‘It only adds to the honour, for her to play an instrument he chose. And, I must tell you, your grandmother has taken to leaving pieces of music lying on the lid for her to try. Sheet music is so expensive – it is a wonderful kindness of hers to think of it.’

Richard smiled. ‘Grandmère is as selfish as the day is long. She will have put out the pieces she wants to hear, you can depend on it. It’s the one trait I share with her – complete self-centredness.’

‘I know that’s not true,’ she said, squeezing his hand – then seemed to realise she was holding it, and released it quickly. ‘I was sorry to hear that you won’t be able to go to your brother’s wedding on the twenty-eighth.’

‘How do you know what date it is?’

‘He’s marrying in St George’s, which is the church Chloë and I attend, as you know. We hear the banns read out. And your grandmother said you were expected to be bedridden for three or four weeks more. Is it painful?’ she asked, in a concerned voice.

‘You can’t expect an ex-soldier to admit it,’ he said.

‘There’s such a thing as being too brave,’ she said. She rose. ‘I had better go and let you rest.’

‘But you will come again?’ he asked urgently. ‘Come and chat – nobody’s got time to chat to me with the wedding coming up. Tell me all about your pupils and what you and Miss Sands are doing. Please come.’

‘Well, I will, then, if your aunt doesn’t mind. Is there anything I can bring you? Do you need anything?’