Page 21 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle

If Giles didn’t come back, what would she do? She would have to make a life for herself without him, just as she would if she were a widow. Well, there were plenty of materials to hand. The house, her gardens, the raising of her son. She wondered if management of the estate would fall to her. She imagined interviewing agents and bankers, talking about crop rotation and investments, making decisions. The manufacture and sale of jam had made her a considerable heiress and the profits were supporting Ashmore and its revival, but she had never had to understand how it all worked. Still, if necessary, she would learn. She was not a clever person, but she’d had a good education at school under Miss Thornton, and she believed she could understand things as well as anyone if they were explained carefully. Mr Cowling, who had taken so gladly to the jam trade on their behalf, would help. He was clever about business, and though she had been rather afraid of him when she first met him, she felt now that she could face him and ask for help.

She felt quite stimulated by the thought of taking charge. She had been tired lately, and rather out of sorts, but a new wave of energy went through her as she stared out at the rapidly emerging world. If Giles did not come back, she would manage the jam business and the estate. She would show them, she thought – without a clear idea of who ‘they’ were. She would do it for Louis, so that he would inherit a thriving estate, and never have to marry someone he didn’t love for their money.

And she would run the house as well. She would be a great lady, like her mother-in-law, and a noted hostess. She would be the true Mistress of Ashmore Castle, and no-one would ever compare her scathingly with her predecessors, or shake their heads and call her middle-class.

For a moment Kitty viewed with satisfaction the future she had mapped out, but then she sighed, and her shoulders sank. It was all very well if she were a widow, but she wasn’t. She was still in love with Giles. She would always wait for him to come back, and hope that when he did, he would stay, and that they would be happy. She was too young to give up her dream of ‘happy ever after’.

She was jerked from her reverie by her maid, Hatto, coming in. ‘May I speak to you, my lady?’

She pulled herself together. ‘Of course. What is it?’

Hatto seemed embarrassed. ‘Well, my lady, it seems to me that – er – we haven’t seen a certain visitor lately.’

‘We haven’t had any visitors,’ Kitty said, puzzled. ‘We’ve been snowed in. But I do mean to start entertaining again as soon as possible.’

‘No, my lady, you misunderstand. I didn’t mean that sort of visitor.’ Kitty stared impatiently. Hatto tried again. ‘I meant that it seems to me something hasn’t happened that should have happened.’

Still Kitty stared. ‘What? What hasn’t happened?’

‘That time of the month, my lady, hasn’t been that time of the month,’ Hatto said desperately. ‘Not for ages, not since before Christmas, if I don’t mistake.’

‘Oh,’ said Kitty, enlightened at last. She thought back. ‘I think you’re right,’ she said slowly. Her cheeks were a little pink. It was an embarrassing thing to talk about, even with one’s maid, who helped one into and out of the bath.

Hatto met her eyes. ‘Is it possible, my lady, that you could be . . .’ a long pause ‘. . . with child?’

Kitty’s thoughts rushed to that night, a week before Giles had left, when he had come to her room. He had come only to tell her he was going away, but she had kept him there, played the wanton and drawn him to her bed, and they had made love with a fire and a passion that had taken her back to their early days together. But it had not been enough to keep him. ‘I’m suffocating!’ he’d cried. And a week later he’d been gone.

She thought of the absence of the ‘little visitor’. A lady’s maid had to prepare the bindings, so it was something she would notice. She thought, too, of her recent tiredness and of feeling out of sorts. Yes, it all fitted. She was pregnant. There was a moment of elation and excitement at the thought. And then her spirits sagged. So she would not be going hunting this season after all. She would spend another year tied to the house by her expanding body. And when she finally had the baby, would Giles even be here?

All these thoughts tumbled through her mind in the fraction of a second. To the waiting Hatto, she said only, ‘Yes. I think I am.’

Hatto waited for more, unsure how her mistress felt about it. She alone had witnessed her tears after the master left. Probably only she knew that the mistress feared he wasn’t coming back.

‘It’s good news, isn’t it, my lady?’ she ventured at last, to break the silence. ‘A brother for little Lord Ayton?’

Kitty pulled herself together. ‘Yes, it’s good news,’ she said. She thought about how much she adored Louis, and imagined holding a second child in her arms in that magical moment just after birth, when you finally met the intimate stranger you had carried unseen for so many months. It was good news, and this child must never have a shadow cast over its life. It must never think it was less than wholeheartedly wanted.

‘It’s very good news. But don’t tell anyone else for the moment.’

‘Oh, of course not, my lady. Not until you say.’

‘I need to think about it a little first. Just for a day or two.’

‘His lordship will be so happy, my lady, he’s—’ She almost said, ‘He’s bound to come back when he knows.’ Better sense stopped her making such an error. But Kitty knew what the unsaid words would have been, and Hatto knew she knew.

CHAPTER FIVE

The unlocked water rushed down the hill, scouring under hedges and tangles of bramble, pounding through ditches, teasing out debris that had been hidden and held all winter and carrying it away.

Moss was agitated to receive another visit from PC Holyoak. It wasn’t that he had anything against the young man – who was very polite – or against the police in general: as an upright citizen he supported His Majesty’s Constabulary in their necessary work. But he felt it reflected badly on the house for a constable to be seen there more than once in a decade.

The reason for the official visit, it emerged, was more upsetting even than he had feared. It was not that one of the servants was in trouble for petty theft or drunkenness in the village. ‘We have discovered a body,’ said Holyoak.

Moss’s trembling fingers reached behind him to locate his chair and he sat down rather hard. ‘A dead body?’

Holyoak was patient. He was accustomed to dealing with the public, their slowness and their ridiculous questions. ‘Indeed, sir, quite dead and much decomposed.’ Moss flinched at the word, but Holyoak carried on with no variation in tone. ‘It was discovered lying under water in Ashmore Carr, but we have reason to believe that it had not been there long. From the position in which it was lying and the recent movement of floodwater, we think it was washed down from higher up the hill.’

‘But – but why are you telling me this?’ Moss said, bewildered.