Page 90 of The Secrets of Ashmore Castle

‘Not when it’s your brains,’ she said.

‘You don’t have to be mean,’ he said, hurt. ‘We’re going to be stuck with each other for weeks, we ought to try to get on.’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, yawning. ‘The whole idea of this trip bores me. I might not stick it out.’

‘You what?’

‘I only agreed to go for the free ticket. If I find myself in some place I like, I might skip.’

‘Blimey,’ he said in admiration. Even he hadn’t thought of that. ‘You are a one!’

‘And if you tell anyone …’ she said, with narrowed eyes.

‘I know, you’ll kill me.’

‘And now,’ she reverted to her French accent, ‘I am going to read. So please to shut up!’

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Rachel never received the letter from Victor Lattery. It arrived with the rest of the post, and Moss, sorting through, picked it out with a frown, then put it with her ladyship’s letters. Lady Rachel was not of age, not even out, and for her to be receiving letters her mother did not know about was something Moss did not feel he could be responsible for. Added to which, the hand was plainly not a woman’s.

Lady Stainton opened it at the breakfast table, and fixed Rachel with a basilisk glare. ‘What is this?’ she demanded, throwing the letter down on the table. ‘Have you been corresponding with this person?’

Rachel’s blush was automatic, but it made her look guilty. ‘Who? What?’

Sebastian, in the seat next to Lady Stainton, looked at the signature and said, ‘Victor Lattery? Wasn’t there a daughter of that solicitor in Canons Ashmore married a Lattery? What was her name – Mildred? Tall, pretty girl.’

Rachel’s mouth was dry, but she managed to say, ‘I met him at the Brinklows’ party, Mama. He said he was getting up a bicycle party—’

‘So it seems,’ she snapped. ‘And has the impudence to invite you. Did you encourage him, after I told you not to?’

‘No, Mama. But you didn’t say – you only said – his aunt—’ Rachel faltered.

‘We do not know her,’ Lady Stainton thundered. ‘You will have nothing to do with her or anyone connected to her, and certainly not this – this youth!’ The word might as well have been reprobate.

Sebastian tried to intervene. He didn’t like to see the girls so cowed. ‘Now, Maudie, a bicycle party! It could hardly be more respectable. A group of young people, healthy exercise in the open air—’

She turned on him. ‘Don’t interfere!’ she spat. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. Rachel, go to your room. It’s clear you meant to defy me. You are not to be trusted. You will not leave this house for any reason for a week.’

Rachel, in tears, ran.

Linda, who had been staying since the wedding and hoping for some reason not to go back to Dorset, said, ‘You’re quite right, Mama. Bicycles are so horribly middle-class. Knickerbockers and sketching parties. Not our sort of thing at all.’

Lady Stainton had a glare to spare for her, too, and breakfast was concluded in silence.

Afterwards, Alice went up to the nursery, where Rachel was just coming out of her sobs. She fetched a cold flannel and bathed her swollen face for her. ‘It’s so unfair!’ Rachel cried. ‘I didn’t do anything! I didn’t tell him to write to me.’

‘You didn’t tell him not to,’ Alice pointed out. ‘Oh, never mind, don’t cry any more.’

‘I would have asked permission, if I’d seen the letter.’

‘Well, that’s where you’d have gone wrong. You know Mama says no to everything. Much better not to ask – she never knows where we are, anyway. If anything like that comes up again, just go and don’t tell.’

‘Oh, Alice!’ Rachel was torn between envy and disapproval.

‘It’s not as if you meant to do anything wrong,’ Alice encouraged her. ‘Why don’t you write him a note, and slip it to him on Sunday?’

‘He doesn’t go to our church. They’re Catholics.’