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?’
It was, of course, nowhere near the size of Aunt Caroline’s own, and she knew that the rooms looked big because they had no furniture in them.
But she adjusted her sights to the needs of a newly married young couple, and away from what an earl’s daughter might have had with the right marriage.
‘It’s nice, dear,’ she said. ‘And, of course, it is only your Town house.’ She herself lived permanently in London, but the children surely would have a country seat eventually.
Glancing about, she calculated the size of the bedrooms above.
Probably two on the next floor, with possibly a dressing-room in between; the four on the top floor would be small, almost bachelor rooms. But who would they be likely to have to stay?
‘What is the other house like?’ she asked.
‘It’s a little bigger than this one,’ Angus said. ‘Still only six bedrooms but it has a wider entrance hall. But it’s in Mecklenburgh Square, and some of the houses on the other side of the square have been divided into lodgings, so it’s not quite such a nice address.’
Caroline said quickly, ‘I don’t think we need to go and look at it,’ she said.
‘This house seems quite suitable for young people beginning their married life. We must see what furniture you can take from the Castle. And, of course, there will be wedding presents to come. We shall have fun furnishing it.’
Rachel beamed at the ‘we’.
‘I was hoping you could advise us about servants,’ Angus said.
‘Cook, kitchen maid, two housemaids and a man,’ she replied briskly. She had, of course, already been thinking about it. ‘Rachel will need a lady’s maid. The manservant can double as butler and valet – it’s quite often done these days in smaller households.’
‘Won’t I need a housekeeper?’ Rachel asked, aware she knew nothing about how to run a house. Angus had told her a long time ago that she ought to learn either from her aunt or her mother, but she had thought it a silly suggestion. Perhaps she should have listened to him.
‘If you find the right man, he and the cook between them will run things,’ Aunt Caroline answered.
‘We must make enquiries. An older, experienced man and a steady, reliable cook – and you must pay them well, Angus. No good ever came of skimping on upper servants’ wages.
The maids we can get from an agency. Now we had better go and look at the offices.
They will probably need thoroughly cleaning and painting, and we haven’t a great deal of time before the wedding.
It would have been better to put it off until the spring – I don’t know why you don’t. ’
‘Because we couldn’t bear to wait any longer,’ Rachel said, before Angus could.
There hadn’t been a wedding at Ashmore Castle since Lady Linda’s, and the excitement below stairs more than made up for the extra work.
Rooms had to be cleaned, furniture polished, carpets and curtains beaten.
The best china service, for the wedding-breakfast – the gold-rimmed one with the Stainton crest on each piece – was got out to be washed.
The breakfast set, for other meals, had one or two missing pieces, but fortunately it was of a popular design that was still manufactured so Mrs Webster could order replacements.
There were things she’d have liked Frederick’s help with, but Mr Moss had taken him over completely.
All the silver had to be brought out and cleaned, and with literally hundreds of glasses to polish, furniture to move, visiting valets to accommodate, and the wine list to decide, it didn’t look as though he’d be available at all before the wedding.
Moss brooded over the guest list, shaking his head a little.
He, almost alone in the household now, remembered Lady Linda’s wedding: a hundred guests for the ball in the evening, and fifty sitting down to the meal beforehand.
Every bedroom had been occupied, and they’d had to ask neighbours to accommodate some of the visiting servants and horses.
That had been a wedding fit for an earl’s daughter, even though she had only been marrying a viscount.
But his old lordship had been in a different mould, one of the great old landowning aristocracy of Victorian days.
And it had been before the troubles came to the house, so no expense had been spared.
His present lordship wore his rank too lightly, in Moss’s opinion, and was not sociable.
They’d had a Royal at Lady Linda’s, representing the Queen, as well as high figures from Society and the Government.
Lady Rachel’s affair would be very small beer.
Of the family, apart from those resident in the house, only the old dowager and Lady Manningtree were coming, and Mr Sebastian and his wife, expected back from Italy.
Not the princess and Lady Linda – now the landgravine, he must remember: Moss understood that they were hosting a visit from Lord and Lady Leake at Usingen.
But at least the groom would have some family present, having been reconciled to his mother.
Lady Tullamore would be bringing her next eldest son Frederick – Fritz – and his wife; her third son Benedict; and one of her daughters, Miss Augusta – Gussie – who was to be a bridesmaid.
They would sit down fourteen at the table on the evening before the wedding, with another twenty-four for the wedding-breakfast.
Well, Moss would do his best for Lady Rachel, who was a sweet, pretty young lady (though if he was to admit a favourite it had always been Lady Alice, who’d had a way of running up to him when she was little and prattling to him about the things she had seen while out riding.
She had once brought him an autumn leaf whose vivid colours had caught her notice.
He’d tried to preserve it as a keepsake, pressing it in a book, but it had become brittle as it dried and crumbled away…).
In the kitchen, Mrs Terry had for days been dashing about with a furrowed brow, clutching an increasingly dog-eared and stained notebook.
In it she had written out the menus for the wedding-breakfast and all the other meals, the numbers expected, a list of ingredients, the order in which the dishes should be prepared and how long in advance this could be done.
Then there were the Downstairs meals, at which there would be visiting maids and valets.
Mrs Webster had hired two extra temporary kitchen maids for her.
In addition she had the wedding cake to make.
No-one could remember where the enormous tins were kept, but they were eventually discovered in a high cupboard in one of the pantries, and William, who was tall, got up on a chair to get them down.
When the day’s labours were over and she ought to have been in bed, she had made a start on creating sugar roses, birds, bows and other ornaments for the cake, which she stored carefully in a tin in the coldest larder so they wouldn’t get damaged.