Page 109 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle

Chloë smiled. ‘He won’t. But if he did, I promise you I would come running straight back to you, and let you say, “I told you so.”’

‘That would not be much comfort.’

‘Oh, I think it would be some, surely? And now I must go – I shall be late for my composition class. Richard, you will stay and comfort Mother, won’t you? She’s bound to want to talk about this for hours yet.’

‘Go, you minx,’ Richard said. ‘I’ll stay as long as I’m wanted.’

She whirled away, all light and movement like sunshine dancing off a river.

When they were alone, Molly said, ‘Oh, Richard!’

‘No, truly, I think she’ll be all right. She’s very level-headed.’

‘He’s Sir Thomas Burton, powerful, rich and famous. And she’s just a penniless child.’

Richard gathered her in his arms, and held her close to comfort her. ‘She’s not a child. She’s as old as her art. I think she could be right that he’s afraid of her. She certainly frightens me.’

She looked up at him and sighed. ‘Ridiculously, I know what you mean. Her talent is something far outside normal parameters. How could I have produced such a – a—’

‘Goddess? You didn’t, perhaps, once step out of time and visit some Arcadian grove to lie with Apollo?’

She laughed, and pushed him away. ‘Foolish! Tell me again, do you really think she’ll be all right?’

‘I really think she’ll be all right. But as there’s nothing you can do about it anyway, it would be foolish to keep worrying, wouldn’t it?’

‘I’m her mother. Worrying is what mothers do.’

‘You’ve never met my mother. She has never worried about any of her five children for a single second. Disapproved of us almost always, been annoyed, angry, exasperated often, but I think her most constant emotion towards us has always been indifference.’

‘Poor Richard,’ she said. ‘You’ve never had the mother’s love that every child ought to have. No wonder you’re—’

She stopped, and he filled in for her lightly. ‘Such a hopeless case? Well, my Mariamne, they say there is always hope while there’s life, so I authorise you to dedicate your life to redeeming me. And in return, I promise to be an attentive pupil.’ He stepped close, cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her softly. Her lips responded for an instant, but then she took his hands and determinedly removed them.

He accepted the rebuff – for now. He asked, ‘What will you do, when Chloë leaves?’

‘What do you mean? What should I do?’

‘Will you stay on here? It’s not the most comfortable of nests. It was never meant to be more than a bachelor’s diggings.’

‘It’s enough for me.’

‘I wish it weren’t,’ Richard said. ‘I wish I had the means to support you.’

‘If wishes were horses . . .’

‘Beggars would sell them to buy a neat little house somewhere and ask the woman they love to marry them.’

It made her laugh. He always had to be sure to leave her smiling, for fear that if he was too serious, she would cut him off. He made light of his deepest feelings, so that she should not have to face her own.

‘This is very unsettling,’ said Giles. ‘You’re sure the pieces are missing?’

‘Well, no, my lord,’ Afton said patiently. ‘I can’t check what’s in the cupboards. Hook has the key to the plate-room, and I can’t ask him for it without a reason. He keeps it in his bedroom, which now has a lock on the door, so I can’t even take it without his knowing. The point is that they’re missing from the inventory. And Hook was the one who wrote it all down.’

‘But it could still just be a mistake – a transcribing mistake,’ Giles said, in frustration.

Afton said nothing, allowing the thought to develop. The log was not a hasty scribble, but a careful recording in best copperplate of something being dictated to Hook in Moss’s precise and ponderous delivery. It was hard to think how he could simply have missed out entire items, unless deliberately.

‘What did you tell him, when you asked for the plate book?’ said Giles.