Chapter Eighteen #2
‘But you’ve been like a father to me, sir,’ she said, earnestly now, the hands screwing the apron so tight her knuckles were whitening.
‘You’ve been so kind, and telling me things, and showing me your books and all, like I wasn’t just an ignorant girl, and I feel…
’ She took a desperate breath at her own boldness…
‘I’d like it to be you, sir. If it’s not asking too much. ’
It was, but not for the reason she thought. He had to clear his throat again to be able to speak. ‘I would be honoured to stand up with you, Ada. Honoured,’ he said, and then he had to stop or he might have sobbed.
His tears had started hers. A large, pure drop rolled down her cheek and her nose reddened. ‘Oh, thank you, sir!’ she gasped. ‘Thank you ever so!’
When she was gone, his life would be over. Was it better to be active in his own execution, or to have been a helpless onlooker, Fate’s plaything? He had to wave her away, unable to speak a word of dismissal, and she seemed as relieved to hurry off as he was to see her go.
‘She’s perfectly beautiful,’ Kitty said, leaning over the crib. ‘Oh, she’s going to have your brown eyes.’
‘Yes, they do seem to be changing colour,’ Nina said.
‘I think she’s going to look like you. I don’t see much of Mr Cowling – I’m sorry, Lord Wigston – in her.’
Nina didn’t like that sort of speculation. ‘Babies don’t look like anyone at this age. Aunt Schofield claims she can see my mother in her, which is amazingly sentimental for someone with her strong mind.’
‘I’m so happy for you. Didn’t I always say it would happen one day?’
‘You did.’
‘And I’m glad you had a girl. I would love a little girl of my own.’ She straightened. ‘It’s a beautiful day outside – shall you and I take her out in the perambulator?’
Nina glanced at Nanny Beamish, who nodded encouragingly.
Beamish had been with them for three weeks and already it was impossible to imagine the nursery without her.
Nina was glad she wasn’t from the sort of family where the nanny was an ancient retainer who had nursed three generations and was hidebound and steeped in tradition, who ruled the nursery like a fiefdom and regarded the parents as interlopers.
Beamish was young, only thirty, and though she had fifteen years of nursery experience this was her first position in charge.
She was energetic, cheerful, modern-minded and adaptable.
Nina liked the idea that she could be with her for many years: they would make the traditions.
Kitty claimed the treat of pushing, and they walked together along the path across the green centre of the square, slowly under the towering plane trees.
A single golden leaf floated down, swinging on the still air, to land on the perambulator blanket.
Kitty picked it off and said, ‘What’s the matter?
’ Nina looked a question, and Kitty said, ‘You’re my oldest friend.
I know you very well. I know when you’re upset about something. ’
‘Not upset,’ Nina said.
‘Worried, then.’ Here was an empty bench. ‘Shall we sit down, and you can tell me about it.’
They sat, and Kitty turned a little towards her in such a receptive silence that Nina felt obliged in the end to speak. ‘It’s silly, really. I’m so lucky that I ought to be the happiest female in London.’
Kitty smiled. ‘Then why aren’t you?’
So Nina told her about Wriothesby House being so grand and the social career she was threatened with.
‘It’s all very well for you,’ she concluded. ‘You were born to it, it was your world. You always knew you would make a grand marriage to a lord and run his house and entertain his guests and so on.’
‘Oh, Nina, you can’t imagine how scared I was when I first went to Ashmore Castle!
I didn’t know how to do any of those things.
I was terrified of failing, of doing something wrong.
And I had critical eyes watching me all the time – Giles’s mother!
You know perfectly well Lord Wigston loves you so much he would never be angry with you. ’
‘But his career will depend on it. It won’t just be the ton or the landed gentry, but politicians and diplomats – people who matter. And I don’t know what to do.’
‘Nor did I. It was Mrs Webster and dear old Moss who saved me. They knew what to do. Mrs Webster mostly – she would make a suggestion and then pretend I’d thought of it. You must get a really good housekeeper, someone experienced, and learn from her as you go along, the way I did.’
‘Is it as easy as that?’ Nina said, amused. ‘Where will I find this life-saving person?’
‘The death column in the newspaper,’ Kitty said, and blinked as Nina laughed.
‘But I’m serious. Aunt Caroline says it’s the best way to pick up experienced servants.
She always turns to it first, to see if any lady of the ton has died, because you have to move quickly or the good ones are snapped up.
And that’s another thing, Nina – you aren’t all alone.
When you’re here in London you can always ask Aunt Caroline for advice.
And when you’re in the country, there’s your friend Bobby. I had no-one when I began.’
‘Bobby doesn’t do that sort of entertaining. But I take your point.’ She sighed. ‘It’s just that it all seems so…so huge and difficult, like a great weight hanging on me that I can’t put down. It makes me want to run away and leave everything behind—’
A movement seen out of the corner of her eye made her turn her head, and Giles was there. Their eyes met, and she felt the shock of connection like a jolt in her stomach.
‘Lady Wigston,’ he said, hardly moving his lips, as though speech was not what he meant to do just then.
‘Lord Stainton,’ she said, likewise.
‘How absurd, you can’t call each other that,’ Kitty said gaily. ‘What are you doing here, Giles?’
‘I was coming across the square to fetch you and bring you back to tea. Aunt Caroline’s orders. You were talking about running away,’ he said to Nina. His eyes hadn’t left hers. ‘Where would you be running to?’
She said, ‘A small cottage, clean and bare, everything very plain inside. Simple meals, comfortable clothes. Perhaps a little bit of garden, to grow beans.’
‘And a hive for the honey-bee,’ he said.
‘And beyond it, nothing but open countryside.’
‘I go one better,’ he said. ‘A tent, and a camp fire, under a sky like a wheel of stars.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Nina said. ‘And if you feel civilisation creeping too close, you can fold the tent, load up your horse and ride further away.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Kitty said.
He tore his gaze away from Nina’s and said, ‘A dream for people who feel the world is too much with us. Shall we go? Rachel has called, and she’ll eat all the teacakes if we don’t hurry.’
Kitty stood up. She didn’t understand, but she was used to that. ‘You haven’t even looked at Nina’s baby,’ she said.
He glanced down. ‘I’m afraid I’m no expert on girls. Is she coming to tea as well?’
‘Of course,’ Kitty said. ‘Aunt Caroline will want to see her.’
She put her arm through Giles’s, so Nina took over the pushing of the perambulator and they walked on.
This first meeting with Giles after so long was bound to be disturbing, she thought.
And if she had supposed the old attraction had simply gone, she had deluded herself.
There would always be that vital connection between them, that sense of shocked recognition when their eyes met.
He was her first love. But she found she could live with it now.
They would never be together, but that was all right.
She loved her husband, and she had a child – that was her life, and it was a good one.
You couldn’t change the past, but you could let it sleep.
The following day, Lepida called on Nina.
She was looking well – her intermittent illness had been in remission for several months – and she brought a gift for the baby, whom she admired dutifully.
‘I can see the attraction,’ she said. ‘As long as you don’t have to give up all your intellectual life. ’
‘I don’t think there’s much danger of that,’ Nina said.
‘Ah, yes. Papa said you were worried about your qualification for the life of a political hostess.’
‘How on earth did he hear that?’
‘He called on Lady Manningtree,’ Lepida explained. ‘They are awfully thick, these days, so she tells him everything. And she heard it from Lady Stainton, in whom, apparently, you confided – though confidence is perhaps not the right word here.’
‘I don’t mind. Lady Manningtree is like an aunt to me – a rather softer one than the one I have.
And I have been worrying about my future responsibilities.
A big house, and big parties – I haven’t done anything like that.
Country weekends. Keeping up with current affairs, entertaining foreign dignitaries, perhaps. ’
‘But you have a mind. Nothing is beyond you if you use your intellect. You must look at the problem logically and solve it.’
Nina smiled at this typically Lepida advice. ‘Kitty said I should get a good, experienced housekeeper.’
‘Yes, that will help with the practical side of it. A good cook, too, though Papa says that’s a long process of trial and error, mostly error.’
‘And what’s your advice?’
‘Preparation. You must make lists.’
‘Lists?’
‘For every occasion, write down who is to come. Spend time over the placement at table – Mama and Papa do that together if there are new people invited. Plan the menu. Make a note of some topics of conversation in case of awkward pauses. “Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.”’
‘Thomas Carlyle,’ Nina said absently. ‘Is that all it takes?’
Lepida smiled. ‘You have been to fashionable parties. You have met society ladies. Do they all strike you as exceptionally clever?’
‘So it’s just a matter of writing things down?’