Page 69 of The Affairs of Ashmore Castle

‘It felt horrid,’ Nina said. ‘Like the world going soft under your feet.’

‘You’ll know next time,’ Bobby said. ‘Shall we canter up here?’

When they arrived back at Welland Hall, there was someone waiting in the stableyard – a tall, well-built man with sun-whitened fair hair, standing bareheaded in the sunshine, his hands in his pockets.

‘Kipper!’ Bobby cried with delight. She rode Zephyr up to him, and he lifted her down and embraced her. ‘So lovely to see you!’ she cried. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I got back last night, so of course I took the first opportunity of riding over to see you.’

‘How are Ma and Pa?’

‘Flourishing. I heard you had a new protégée.’

‘Silly! She’s a friend. Come and meet her.’

Nina had been helped down by the groom, and having buttoned her habit’s skirt and straightened it, she was ready to be introduced.

‘My brother Kipper,’ Bobby said, as if bestowing the greatest treat.

Nina shook the proffered hand, and looked up with interest into a lazily smiling face and crinkled blue eyes. She could see a resemblance between them, though the brother’s eyes were bluer, and he was more conventionally handsome.

‘She never grows up,’ he said. ‘Still hasn’t the first idea how to make an introduction. I’m Adam Denbigh, how do you do? Kipper, indeed!’

‘That’s how she always refers to you. Why are you called that?’ Nina asked, feeling immediately at ease with him.

‘Because,’ Bobby jumped in, ‘when we were little and our governess told him to draw a fish, he drew a breakfast kipper after eating – just the head and the bones.’

‘I liked the pattern the bones made. Like a ladder. And it was a fish, you can’t argue with that. Still,’ he looked down fondly at his sister, ‘you needn’t always address me as Kipper, particularly in public places.’

‘Very well, Adam,’ she said, as if it were the silliest name she’d ever heard. ‘You always call me Bobby, I may point out.’

‘At least Bobby sounds like a real name,’ he said.

‘Isn’t it your name?’ Nina asked. ‘You never said.’

‘No, it’s a nickname. We all have them,’ said Adam. ‘She and I are a little older than the others, so when we were little, we spent a lot of time together.’

‘I adored him,’ Bobby interpolated.

‘And I was quite fond of you, shrimp. Well, we were down by the river with our governess one day, and I went in to swim. I was about five, I suppose, and you would have been two, or so?’

‘That’s right. Miss Cudstone was sitting with me on the bank. She took her eyes off me for a moment—’

‘—and Bobby got up and toddled towards me, arms outstretched, straight over the edge and into the water.’

‘Goodness!’

‘Poor Cuddy shrieked – she thought her baby would drown,’ Adam went on, ‘but the little devil came up to the surface, spluttering a bit, and just bobbed up and down, completely unafraid. That’s why we call her Bobby – whatever life throws at her, she never drowns, just bobs.’

Nina laughed. ‘Did you get into trouble?’

‘Me?’ said Adam. ‘Not a bit – wasn’t my fault. I hauled her to the bank and shoved her out, and what did she do but turn straight round and try to get back in, saying, “More water!”’

‘I always hated being separated from him,’ Bobby explained. ‘I had no idea what a river was. I must have been quite surprised when it gave way underneath me – like you this morning with Florence, Nina.’

‘Oh – did you have trouble with her?’ Adam asked.

‘She started to go down, but I gave her a whack,’ Bobby answered for her.