Page 2 of Rivals at Ashmore Castle

She had not danced every dance at the balls she attended, but neither had she sat out much. And the young man who had eventually asked for her hand, Mr Summerhill, had been an ordinary nice boy, lifted above the average only by being her ordinary nice boy. His death from diphtheria shortly before they were to have married had shocked her, but five years later she could hardly remember his face. She had mourned him the correct amount, but (she often thought) what they had felt for each other must surely have been just the middling sort of attachment to be expected from two people so very young.

Perhaps other girls had grand passions, and she was the odd one out. What about Romeo and Juliet? They had been very young. It seemed strange to her now, at this distance, to think of tying yourself for life to someone when you were barely more than a child. However, that was how the world went. If you missed your chance, you found yourself at twenty-three regarded as practically middle-aged, and definitely on the shelf.

What was not apparent to the outside world was that the neat, unexciting Miss Rowsham led a rich inner life. She had always read a great deal, and after finishing a novel would often rewrite the story in her mind with herself as protagonist. In this way she’d had many adventures and fallen in love many times. And throughout her ordinary day, an inner dialogue would be carrying on inside her head, which, had anyone been able to hear it, would have had her expelled from polite society. Her inner voice was very critical – though it criticised her as much as everyone else, so perhaps she was not a bad person. That she so often blushed in company was put down to shyness, but it was actually because her own thoughts so often disconcerted her.

She was resigned to never marrying, but her elder sister Vanessa, Lady Ravenscar, had raised her own status so splendidly from banker’s daughter to viscountess, she would not give up on her. Adeline was aware that Richard Tallant was the man Vanessa had fixed on: an earl’s son, and though he was a second son and already had two nephews so was unlikely ever to come into the title, he was well-connected, and an attractive man into the bargain. It was the whole reason they were at Ashmore Castle for a Saturday-to-Monday in the dead time just after Twelfth Night. They had been invited to arrive on the Friday so that they could hunt on the Saturday, with Lord Stainton kindly offering to mount them, and Vanessa was pleased because she thought Adeline looked well on a horse.

Adeline liked Richard and found him amusing, but he was no fool and it embarrassed her that he might suspect her of throwing her cap at him. It made her tongue-tied, afraid of saying anything that might sound come-on-ish. Her inner voice told her that he must wonder why on earth anyone would expect him to offer for a girl past her first flush and with nothing to say for herself.

At least, though, she would enjoy the hunting. It was impossible to have coherent inner thoughts while scrambling madly over the country on a horse. It was a shame that the weather was so bad: it poured all day, and they were all soaked to the skin.

Richard had no particular views about Miss Rowsham: she blended for him into the great multitude of females who weren’t Molly Sands, the woman who had captured his heart, and broken it by refusing to marry him. She had been his late father’s mistress for a while back in the day, and believed it was therefore Biblically forbidden for her to mate with Richard. He understood but rejected her scruples, but there had been no moving her, and now she was in America with her daughter Chloë, a talented pianist, the protégée and soon to be the wife of impresario and conductor Sir Thomas Burton. They were all going to make a life over there; Richard was abandoned and bereft.

His heart therefore was not available to be given to Miss Rowsham, though that was obviously Lady Ravenscar’s wish and perhaps Kitty’s too. Miss Rowsham seemed, in that most damning of phrases, a nice girl, which was hardly enough to rouse him from his romantic hibernation. He gave her credit that she did not seem to be trying to ‘catch’ him. He actually felt quite sorry for her: it must be humiliating to be dangled, by one’s nearest and dearest, in front of any available man. And he thought better of her by Saturday evening after she had acquitted herself impressively on the hunting field: she rode well, and threw herself wholeheartedly into the business without fussing about wind or rain, mud splashes or thorns. In that respect she reminded him of Alice, who was far and away his favourite of his sisters.

On the Sunday it stopped raining at last – the wind had gone round in the night to the east and it was colder but with a clear sky – and everyone wanted to be out of doors. When he heard Miss Rowsham express a vague desire to walk to the village, he was only half surprised to hear himself offer to escort her. He determinedly did not see the pleased look on the face of Lady Ravenscar. Kitty offered to show Lady Ravenscar the gardens and Rachel said she would accompany them, and Alice had already gone out with the dogs on her own solitary ramble, so he resigned himself to being à deux.

Then Giles said, ‘I was going to ride down myself – I have to see Bexley about those illegal snares we found – but I don’t mind driving in the trap if you want to come with me. It will be rather muddy for walking,’ he added, which caused Kitty to throw him an exasperated look.

Amused, Richard consulted Miss Rowsham. ‘Walk or drive?’

She responded, ‘I should like to walk, if you don’t mind it. I never worry about mud.’

And he felt again that little tug of approval. ‘Then walk we shall. It’s not going to rain again today, and I undertake to find the driest path down the hill.’

By the time Alice reached the village street, the dogs were tired enough to walk quietly at heel, but she leashed them anyway in case of cats, and wandered along the shops. She knew the content of their windows pretty much by heart, but it was good after weeks of rain to look at something other than wet green fields.

As she reached the corner of Church Lane, the dogs dashed away from her so suddenly they yanked the leash out of her inattentive hand. They had spotted Axe Brandom, just coming out of the sexton’s yard behind the church.

Her heart jumped. She hadn’t seen him since church on Christmas Eve. Once she had been a regular visitor to his woodsman’s cottage, but now she denied herself the pleasure. She was reminded of the rector talking about ‘avoiding the occasions of sin’. It was not sin to love him. But it would not be allowed, and he would be much more harmed by the consequences than her: he would be blamed, vilified, driven out. It had been a hard and suddenly grown-up thing to understand that, and to take responsibility. She was only nineteen, but no longer a heedless girl.

It would have been best to give him a polite nod and turn away, but the dogs were fawning on him and licking his hands, and would certainly not leave him if she called. So she crossed the road to him, feeling as though she were being pulled like a compass needle to her personal north.

He didn’t smile, but there was more than a smile in his eyes, which warmed her like sudden sunshine. ‘Lady Alice,’ he said. ‘How are you?’ He pushed the dogs down and they dropped their rumps obediently to the pavement and sat, one either side of him, like heraldic statues, panting with pleasure, unfurling yards of pink, frilled tongue, and looking at Alice as though she were the outsider and Axe their master. He always had that effect on animals.

‘What are you doing here? Did you walk down?’ she asked, a truant part of her mind thinking they might walk back together.

‘Drove down,’ he said, thinking wistfully that he might offer her a lift back. He jerked his head towards the sexton’s yard. ‘Della’s in there, with the cart. Brought a load of logs for rector. I was going to poddle along and see how Eli’s doing.’ Eli Rowse was the village blacksmith – Axe had been assistant blacksmith before he took the job as woodsman to the Ashmore estate. ‘I heard he was poorly. Rheumatism in the hands.’

‘I expect it’s the damp weather,’ Alice said. ‘Richard was complaining about his shoulder this morning.’ It didn’t really matter what they talked about. Just being close to him eased something in her. ‘Is Dolly not with you?’ Dolly was his terrier.

‘I asked her if she wanted to come, but she said she’d rather stay by the fire,’ he said, smiling at the whimsy.

‘I can’t believe it,’ Alice said. ‘Not come out with you?’ I would never choose that, she thought.

‘She’s getting old. She’s eleven now.’ He gave a tiny shrug. ‘Dogs don’t have long enough lives.’

She felt a pang, imagining how much he would miss the little bitch when she died, how lonely he would be out there in the cottage in the woods. ‘If only—’ she began, hardly knowing how the sentence would end.

But there was a tremendous, shocking bang, followed by a long, rending, crashing noise of terrible destruction. Her eyes widened, her scalp felt cold as the hair lifted. They both turned to look; the dogs stood up and whined.

At the far end of Church Lane, at the top of the hill, was the railway station: the line ran along the ridge.

‘That sounded like—’ she began, dry-mouthed. But her words were cut off by a heavy explosion. A column of black smoke rose. Faintly they heard screams and voices shouting.

They must go – had to go – must try to help. ‘The dogs!’ she said.

‘Shut ’em in the stable with Della,’ Axe said, with a jerk of the head towards the sexton’s yard.