Chapter Fifteen
Afton met Miss Hatto on the back stairs, noted a pair of shoes in her hand, and said, ‘Let me polish those for you.’
‘No need, I can do it.’
‘I’ve a pair of boots to do myself. Two pairs are as easy as one.’
Hatto did not enjoy polishing boots as Afton seemed to, so she accepted. Finding the valets’ room empty when they arrived, she stepped in and lingered by the door frame to watch him work.
‘How are you liking it here?’ he asked, to make conversation.
In typical Hatto fashion, she answered obliquely. ‘I shan’t be sorry to go home.’
‘The German language is a problem, isn’t it?’ he guessed. ‘Makes getting along with the other staff difficult.’
‘I don’t have much to do with them,’ she said, with an edge to her voice that suggested he’d hit on something.
‘They don’t smile a lot, do they? But people can seem unfriendly when they don’t understand what you’re saying. And I suppose the princess runs a strict household.’
‘Not strict enough.’
‘Is someone giving you trouble?’ He glanced at her, concerned, and suddenly remembered the prince’s valet. ‘If someone did something or said something, you could tell me.’
‘I can take care of myself,’ Miss Hatto said firmly.
A voice from the door made them both jump.
Miss Taylor, the princess’s lady’s maid, had come silently up.
‘If you’re talking about Adolf, he’s too busy chasing kitchen maids to bother her.
He prefers fat girls.’ She had always had a sour, pinched face, but she looked more acid than ever as she added, ‘He says they’re more comfortable. ’
The words shocked Afton. ‘Can’t you say something to your mistress?’ A hint from her to the prince…’
‘You should know better than that. You don’t tell her highness things she doesn’t want to hear. As long as everything gets done, she doesn’t care what goes on below stairs.’
‘A good mistress should care. And she ought to want to know everything.’
‘Frau Bauer is the housekeeper here,’ Miss Taylor said impatiently.
‘She doesn’t speak English. She reports to the prince’s sister, Countess Lippstadt, because that’s who ran the household before the prince married.
The countess doesn’t speak English either.
She reports to her highness. Which actually means her highness tells her what’s required and she says, “Bestimmt, Schw?gerin,” and makes sure it’s done.
That’s how things work in this house – If it’s any concern of yours.
You’re just a visiting valet, Mr Afton. You should remember criticism from visiting valets is not welcomed.
’ She turned to Miss Hatto. ‘And you shouldn’t be in here,’ she added.
‘There’s enough of people being where they shouldn’t be without you adding to it. ’
Miss Hatto and Miss Taylor seemed to exchange a significant look.
Miss Hatto lifted the white collar of her lady’s-maid’s black dress, allowing Afton a glimpse of the gleam of steel and the jet-bead head of a long hat pin. ‘Like I said, I can take care of myself.’
Afton was intrigued. ‘Do you always keep that there?’
‘Always,’ she said. ‘You done with those shoes?’
‘Just a quick buff,’ Afton said. Meekly he gave them a rub and handed them over, and Miss Hatto walked away down the corridor.
Miss Taylor gave Afton a disparaging look. ‘You show too much,’ she said. ‘And it’s not her that needs a hat pin.’ And with this gnomic pronouncement she walked away in the other direction, leaving Afton to wonder.
Rachel enjoyed the wedding and the visit, except for a nagging fear that her mother had not done with her yet.
But the day of their departure came, and nothing had been said.
When she rose from breakfast the prince gave her a kiss on the cheek and called her his pretty daughter, and said he wished her great happiness.
Her mother left the table without looking at her at all, so she believed she had escaped.
It was too late to give her a tirade now.
The packing was all done and they had only to put on their coats and hats.
When the carriage was at the door and they were making their farewells, Mama beckoned her aside, and her heart thumped with alarm. How could she have underestimated her? If she wanted to scold, she would make her own occasion.
But the princess, having looked her over critically, said in a voice of unexpected mildness, ‘I have not spoken to you of wedding presents.’
‘W-wedding presents?’ Rachel stammered, thrown off balance.
‘I have ordered all your household linens from Whiteleys. They will keep them for you until you know where you will be living, then you can send for them to be delivered. Also a Limoges breakfast set, which is a present from the prince. And I wish you to have this.’ She reached out a hand without looking, and Miss Taylor, waiting behind her, placed in it a leather case.
Inside, Rachel found a triple strand of pearls with a diamond clasp, which she had seen her mother wear many times. She wondered how she had managed to keep them when everything else was being sold.
‘They were my mother’s, given to me when I married your father, and I always meant you to have them on your marriage.
Linda had my grandmother’s pearls when she married Cordwell.
I wish you happy, Rachel. I still think you have made a foolish mistake, but perhaps Tullamore can make something of himself.
Stranger things have happened. And if marrying for love means so much to you that you were willing to throw away all I offered, then I sincerely hope that you find it answers.
We shall not be at the wedding – one sea-crossing this year is enough.
And I’m hoping for a visit from your uncle Fergus in October. ’
She nodded to indicate the audience was at an end.
Rachel, overwhelmed, could not remember how to move her feet.
She looked up at her mother and thought she had grown gaunt again, and was looking tired.
She had taken to walking with a stick, and though she wielded it more as though it was for the purpose of striking impertinent servants than because she needed an aid, it gave Rachel a pang.
Her mother had never been a motherly sort of parent, but she was the only parent she had left, and they had grown closer during her long come-out.
She felt a cold little finger of fear down the back of the neck that she might never see her again.
On an impulse, she reached up on tiptoe and kissed her cheek.
‘Thank you, Mama,’ she said fervently. ‘Angus will be a great man, you’ll see.
And I shall always treasure the pearls.’
The princess recoiled from the kiss. ‘Of course you will, you nonsensical child. Go now. Don’t keep the carriage waiting.’
But it was not said in a scolding tone. Rachel would almost have said it was kindly.
Nina’s confinement came to an end and Wriothesby House was still not ready. She would have liked to check on progress – Mr Cowling spent time there almost every day – but he had made her promise not to go near until it was finished. ‘I want to be the one to show it to you. I want to see your face.’
Now she was out of confinement Mr Cowling started to go away more often, saying there was a great deal of business to catch up with. One day he told her he was having to go to London and would stay there overnight. ‘I hate to leave you,’ he said, looking anxious.
‘I’m the one who should be worried,’ she said. ‘You’re taking the train.’
There had been the crash at Canons Ashmore in January, another at Salisbury in June, and only two days before, on the 19th of September, a third at Grantham.
A mail train with sleeper cars, travelling from King’s Cross down to Edinburgh, had passed through Grantham station at speed, despite the signals being at danger.
It had been supposed to stop to allow a goods train to cross over the lines from a branch junction.
When the mail train hit the points, which were against it, it derailed, sweeping away a bridge, and the carriages fell down the embankment, leaving the locomotive lying across both tracks.
Only the last three carriages remained on the rails.
The locomotive exploded and caught fire.
Fourteen people including the crew were killed and seventeen were injured.
The wonder was that there had not been more casualties.
‘Trains are safe enough,’ Cowling assured her. ‘Three accidents in a year sounds like a lot, but not when you think of the thousands of rail journeys there are. Now, don’t look so anxious, I shan’t die. I haven’t time – I’ve too much to do.’
He hadn’t meant it as a joke, but she gave a watery laugh, so he smiled too. ‘And I’ve arranged a little treat for you tomorrow, so look out for it.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s a surprise. You’ll have to wait.’
The surprise turned out to be Decius, who arrived early, just as she was getting up from the breakfast table. ‘I’m your present from Mr Cowling. You are to imagine me with a bow around my neck, if you please.’
‘I’ll imagine you however you like,’ she exclaimed, flinging her arms around him.
He gave her a brief, surprised hug in return before she remembered herself.
‘Oh, I am glad to see you!’ she said. ‘I had no idea beforehand that “confinement” was meant literally. Shall I ring for coffee? Have you had breakfast?’
‘I was well fed and watered before I came, thank you.’
‘Then come up and see my baby.’
‘With the greatest of pleasure.’
‘Do I sound like a simpleton? But you know, I can’t get over the surprise of it. Every time I say the words, it’s a glorious shock. I, Nina, have a baby – not a doll, or a kitten in a bonnet, but a real, live baby!’
‘Did you have a kitten in a bonnet when you were a little girl?’ he asked, amused.
‘A neighbour’s child, Jane, did, when we lived in India. She used to push it around in a doll-carriage. I had a pet monkey, which was better in some ways because when you held it, it put its arms round you.’
‘What was its name?’