Page 121 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle

‘It was to me,’ Alice said. ‘One doesn’t think of one’s mother as being someone who could get married.’

‘But it’s a good thing? You aren’t upset about it? I mean, on your father’s behalf?’

‘Oh, no.’ She paused, assembling her thought. ‘I didn’t really know Papa very well. He was just a name – like the King. And somehow I never thought of them being married anyway, my mother and father, not the way you and Giles are married. They were just – the earl and countess. As if it was a job. Do you understand what I mean?’

Kitty nodded. ‘Was Rachel upset? You had a letter from her.’

‘Surprised, I think. And relieved – she thought the prince was courting her, and she’s jolly glad he wasn’t, because she didn’t want to marry him one bit.’

‘It must be strange for her. She’s been in the middle of it all. Did she never think the prince was courting your mother?’

‘Apparently not,’ Alice said. But she had not thought her sister particularly noticing. Ever since she’d started her come-out, she’d had nothing but clothes and dancing and flirting on her mind. ‘She is upset, though,’ she went on, ‘not because of Mother getting married, but because she has to go with them to Germany, and the prince has promised to find her a husband there, which would mean she’d probably never come back. He knows some Russian archdukes, you know – she might even end up there.’

‘That would be exciting,’ Kitty offered doubtfully.

‘But she doesn’t want to go to Russia. She wants to come home.’ She couldn’t tell Kitty about Angus, because that would be breaking a confidence. ‘But I dare say she’ll get used to the idea,’ she went on. Rachel had always had her mind fixed on a high marriage, and Alice didn’t think her recent romance with Angus would survive the lure of coronets and ermine. Especially if Rachel and Angus were parted for a long time. Rachel was not the sort of girl to hold out against sustained pressure, especially if it were of the pleasurable sort. She thought poor Angus was doomed to disappointment.

‘I shouldn’t like to have to live abroad all my life,’ Kitty said, looking around at the green hills and woods, and the roof and chimneys of the Castle just coming into view below, and thought of her two little sons. ‘I have everything I want here.’

‘I shouldn’t mind travelling,’ Alice said, ‘but I’d always want to come home. Not that there’s much chance of my travelling – except to Usingen. I suppose I’ll have to go over there for the wedding. I just hope the prince doesn’t want to keep me there like Rachel and get me married off. Which would please my mother no end, of course. She’d practically given up on me, which was a relief, but if the prince can scrape me off on some local landgrave . . .’

‘She wouldn’t make you marry against your will,’ Kitty said.

‘You don’t know my mother. I must try and make Giles promise to say I have to come back straight after the wedding. Kitty, will you ask him, too? Say you need me here, that you can’t do without me.’

‘I’ll say all of that, if you think it will help,’ Kitty said. ‘And I would miss you dreadfully, though I shouldn’t stand in the way if you were going to a good marriage, with a husband you loved.’

‘That won’t happen. I’m going to be here for ever, being aunt to your children. So please tell Giles to order me home.’

‘I will, I promise.’ She looked sidelong at her sister-in-law, and saw how much Alice had grown up in the past year. Her face was a young woman’s rather than a girl’s – and just now, as she rode deep in thought, unaware she was being studied, it was a sad face. What troubles Alice could have she didn’t know, but she was very fond of her, so she said hesitantly, ‘Wouldn’t you like to get married?’

Alice didn’t answer for a long time. At last she said, ‘To the right person, yes, I would. But it will never happen.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘I do,’ Alice said calmly. ‘And I’d sooner die than be married to anyone else. So here I stay.’

Anyone else? Did that mean she was in love with someone? Someone unsuitable? Kitty wanted to say: ‘Marrying the man you love doesn’t always work out like a fairy-tale.’ Although, in her case, she would sooner have the crumbs from Giles’s table than a feast from anyone else’s. Poor Alice evidently believed there would not even be crumbs. She wondered who the man was. She couldn’t ask . . .

Alice was saying something, and she came back from her thoughts. It was about the dinner party they were giving on Saturday evening. Kitty’s parents were coming to visit for the Saturday-to-Monday, to see the new baby, and there would be guests in to dinner on Saturday to meet them.

‘What was Giles fussing about?’ Alice was saying. ‘Something about wine.’

‘Oh, because we don’t have a butler, and Moss always chose the wines – proposed them, at any rate, not that Giles ever disagreed, because Moss knew every bottle in the cellar and Giles has no idea what’s there.’

‘He can always look at the cellar book,’ Alice said sensibly. ‘That’s what it’s there for.’

Kitty smiled. ‘No, it’s there for the butler to look at.’

‘He should ask Afton to look at it and choose the wines,’ Alice suggested. ‘He’s served in lots of great houses and I’m sure he must know a thing or two. And he seems such a sensible, intelligent person.’

She could not praise Afton too highly for Kitty. ‘He’s wonderful with Louis. And he knows a lot about gardens and plants, too. I had such an interesting conversation with him up in the nursery the other day.’

Alice laughed. ‘My idea of Afton is that he knows a lot about anything you happen to be discussing at the time.’

‘You think it’s a trick?’ Kitty said doubtfully.

‘No, I think it’s a talent. Shall we trot a little? I’m getting cold.’