Page 91 of Rivals at Ashmore Castle

He looked oddly shy. ‘I’ve chosen to be Lord Wigston. I thought I’d better keep myself reminded of my origins in case I got too big-headed.’

‘An auriga!’ she exclaimed.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘When Roman generals paraded through Rome, celebrating a triumph, they had a slave called an auriga riding behind them in the chariot, whispering to them, “Remember thou art mortal,” so that the gods wouldn’t get jealous and punish them for hubris.’

‘You see!’ he said delightedly. ‘Trust you to know something like that. You’re fit to be a great lady.’

No, I’m not! she cried inside her head. I can’t do it! I’ll let you down!

‘I had to go and see a fellow at the College of Arms,’ he went on, following his own thoughts. ‘The herald in waiting, or some such title, to talk about what I wanted on my coat of arms. Imagine that: Joseph Cowling, the cobbler’s apprentice from Wigston, with a coat of arms!’

‘You’ve come a long way,’ she said.

He gave an odd little grunt of assent, a comfortable sound. He was not daunted by his advancement, only pleased, and it calmed her a little. He put his arm round her and drew her against him so that they stood side by side looking out of the window at the dusty green of late summer or early autumn, where soon the leaves would begin to gild, and then fall.

‘We’re building a kingdom,’ he said.

Well, she was not Miss Sanderton any more, she was a wife and, more importantly, a mother. She was grown up. What life demanded of her, she would have to face up to, even if it scared her. And the new Wriothesby House had been built for that future. Even houses like Chatsworth must once have been brand-new and unblemished, probably not homelike at all, but their families had come to love them and belong to them. Of course, they were earls and dukes and probably had a different view of houses…Perhaps he would be a duke or at least an earl one day…It happened…Or if not him, one of his descendants…Her descendants…

‘In that case…’ she began, and realised she had said it aloud.

‘Yes, my love?’ he asked absently, his eyes on what would one day be the park.

She felt foolishly shy. ‘We ought to try to have a boy next time.’

He looked down at her with his heart in his face. ‘Would you? Really? Shall we have another?’

She nodded. ‘I’d like Amelia to have a brother,’ she said. ‘I don’t want her to be an only child, like me. It’s a lonely thing.’

‘I was an only child as well,’ he said. ‘But I’m not lonely now. Oh, this is…!’ He seemed lost for words. ‘This is so good!’ he managed at last. ‘This is the beginning of great things for us.’

I will get used to it, she thought.

When a woman married, her future was placed in her husband’s hands. If he fell on hard times, for instance, she would have to stand by him and scrape along as best she could. Oddly, she could imagine herself in that situation, bravely making do, being thrifty, mending clothes, scratching together meals from odds and ends, using up candle stubs. Her fate had been the opposite, to be plunged into a life of unimaginable luxury and consequence. It was rather funny, in a way, that she found that future harder to accept. But she was a soldier’s daughter, she remembered: she would have to square her shoulders and get on with it.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It was Richard who advised Rachel to ask Aunt Caroline to go with her to view the two possible houses that Angus had found for them, and while Rachel didn’t feel the need of advice, she was glad enough to have someone to show them off to.

‘Russell Square?’ Aunt Caroline said doubtfully, when Rachel told her the address of the first. They were to meet Angus there. ‘Are you sure, dear? Isn’t it rather far east?’

Rachel didn’t know. When they arrived at the square, she was pleased to see it had a big green space with trees in the centre, just like Berkeley Square. ‘But bigger,’ she pointed out. ‘Only look how nice, Auntie!’

Angus must have anticipated a criticism, because he jumped straight in with an explanation as he handed the dowager out of the carriage. ‘It’s convenient for the general office in Finsbury Square – only two miles away. I can walk there. And the shipping office in Limehouse is only another two miles further on.’

‘Limehouse,’ said Aunt Caroline, in the same way she would have said ‘Timbuktu’ or ‘the Isle of Avalon’.

‘But we’re not much more than a mile from Berkeley Square here,’ he concluded.

Rachel looked up at the house, too excited about the idea of a first home of her own to care about geography. Four floors plus attic and semi-basement, a narrow terrace house of white stucco to the first floor and yellow London brick above, tall Georgian windows and a little decorative ironwork outside the first-floor windows. She knew exactly what it would be like inside: she had been in dozens of houses just like it in all the fashionable squares of Town. Dining-room on the ground floor; a double drawing-room on the first, bedrooms on the second and third, servants’ bedrooms in the attic and the kitchen offices in the basement.

But this one would be hers!

‘It’s only six bedrooms,’ Angus was saying, ‘but we won’t need more than that to begin with. And the drawing-room and dining-room are a good size.’

There were steps up to the front door, bridging the semi-basement. The hall and stairs were narrow, but the dining-room was adequate, and upstairs the double drawing-room, with the partition doors between the two halves folded back, and the sunlight streaming through the almost floor-to-ceiling windows, looked so nice that Rachel exclaimed, ‘It’s lovely! And isn’t it big?’