Ruined (3 page)

No one commented upon this, and a moment or two later, Lady Hope began to speak about the difficulties of living in outlying areas, particularly in the winter. Jessie was not fooled. She had sensed everyone’s eyes upon her and knew that they were all wondering about Henry Lusty, who had begun to make his interest plain over recent weeks.

She had not yet decided what to do about his proposal. She had not told anyone about it, apart from Lady Ilam, and while she would never wish the younger woman’s honeymoon away, she would have been glad to be able to consult her further.

She could never think of marriage without having Raff at the back of her mind. She knew in her heart of hearts that he would never look her way, but she could not stop thinking about him. Yet she did want to be married and have children. Henry Lusty might be her last chance. He was a good man and not ill-looking. Right now, she felt as if she stood at a crossroad. If only she could be given some sort of sign!

‘Raff says that he is going to visit me whilst he is in Derbyshire,’ said Lady Agatha. ‘Personally, I’ll believe it when I see it.’

That will be my sign, Jessie thought to herself. If he fails to visit us, then I will accept Henry Lusty.

Chapter Two

A
fter Lord Ashbourne had bade Sir Wilfred and Lady Hope farewell, he set off in his travelling post-chaise to make his promised visit to Lady Gilchrist. John Pointer, his valet of some ten years standing, travelled with him. A slim, fair-haired man of his lordship’s age, he was elegantly if discreetly dressed in sober black.

‘An interesting visit, John,’ remarked the earl.

‘Extremely so, my lord,’ the valet responded.

‘Lady Hope’s still a handsome woman, don’t you think? I courted her over twenty years ago, if you remember.’

‘A very attractive lady, who knows how to dress to her best advantage,’ the valet agreed.

‘She’s done Jez Warburton some good, don’t you think?’ mused the earl.

‘Indeed.’

‘I’ve always been fond of Jez. I hope she doesn’t settle for Lusty. She could do so much better for herself.’ He thought of how Jez had looked at the wedding breakfast. His compliment to her
had
been sincere. He liked her, he was glad that she had had some guidance from Lady Hope, and if he was honest with himself, he had been surprised at how very lovely she had looked. He found it disturbing that she could not believe that he had meant what he said.

For a while, the two men travelled on in a companionable silence. Those who were familiar with the suave, debonair picture that Lord Ashbourne presented would have been astonished at the easy way in which he conversed with his valet. The fact of the matter was that 
his lordship let his guard down with very few people, not being prone to trust anyone unless he had first proved himself worthy of the earl’s confidence: John Pointer was such a man.

‘Ilam cut a fine figure, didn’t you think?’ asked Ashbourne, his tone deceptively casual.

‘Certainly,’ Pointer answered. ‘He is a son to be proud of.’

‘As you say.’

Ashbourne closed his eyes and thought about the past. He had been the only son and the youngest child of Michael Eldred Stafford Montgomery, the 7th Earl of Ashbourne. After his birth, his mother had lingered for a week and had then faded away. His father, never a very paternal man, had detested him from that moment. It had always seemed to be the way in his family that fathers and sons had detested each other. He had certainly hated his.

Strangely enough, he did not hate Ilam. He did not really feel that he knew him. That summer, something unexpected had happened. His son had fallen in love. Ashbourne had only had to see the couple look at each other to know that Ilam’s feelings were returned. The cynic in him sneered that such affection would not last. Yet there was something deep inside him that desperately hoped that it would. Miss Hope, or rather Lady Ilam as she now was, enjoyed a very good relationship with both her parents. What if she could teach her husband to love their future children? The thought almost made him catch his breath.

Thanks to a loveless childhood, brought up motherless and largely separated from his sister who was eight years older than himself, he was not used to looking for affection in his home. He and his sister had never been close. By the time he had been old enough to know her, she had been packed off to school, then he had been sent away to Eton, as soon as he was old enough to be accepted. He had hated it from the moment when, as one of the very smallest boys among a milling crowd, he had been sent from his boarding-house to collect bedding, and had found himself one of about fifty others trying to identify what had been allotted to him.

That night, in the room which he shared with three other boys, he lay bitterly cold, and unable to sleep, and heard one of the others crying for his mother. He could not remember his mother, but he did shed a few silent tears for his nurse. When next he went home, he hurried up the stairs to look for her, and found that she was gone. 

‘What do you need a nurse for, sir?’ his father had asked him, barely looking up from the letter that he was writing. ‘You’re not a baby.’

He had protested; he could not now remember what it was he had said. He remembered the consequence, though. The pain from that beating had stayed with him for many days; and he had never pleaded with his father for anything again.

So deep was he in memories of the past, that it took him by surprise when the movement of the carriage told him that they were turning into the drive of Crown Hall, the home of Sir Philip and Lady Gilchrist. It was a handsome building, only twenty years old, purchased by Sir Philip as somewhere to display the antiquities that he regarded so highly.

As the carriage drew up at the foot of the steps which led up to the columned portico, Penelope Gilchrist emerged, and extended both her hands to him as he reached her side. ‘Welcome, Raff,’ she said, as he took them and kissed first one then the other. ‘It’s much too long since you were last here.’

‘It must be three years at least,’ he replied, as he offered her his arm and they walked together into the marble entrance hall, with its black and white checked floor and high ceilings. He looked about him, smiled down at her then said, ‘Now that, I like.’

She smiled back at him roguishly. ‘Oh Raff, I’m so flattered,’ she murmured as he walked past her to a plinth on which stood a black two-handled bowl with figures of athletes painted on it in shades varying from cream to red.

He did not pick it up, but cradled it gently in his hands. ‘Greek?’ he asked. ‘About 500
BC
, I would guess.’

Lady Gilchrist wandered over to join him. ‘I believe you are right,’ she answered. ‘Philip brought it back with him last time he came home. Someone handled the box carelessly at the docks and he nearly had a fit. It travelled the rest of the way on his knee.’

‘I believe I would have done the same. It’s magnificent.’

‘As well as being beautiful, fragile, and very expensive,’ she agreed, laughing. ‘Come along. I’ll show you to your room, and you can have a look at the rest of Philip’s collection. I believe he has acquired some pieces that you haven’t yet seen.’

After he had left his travelling things in his room, Ashbourne came back downstairs, carrying with him a package which he presented to his hostess.

‘It’s Meissen,’ he told her, as she opened the wrappings. ‘I thought it might be to your liking.’

‘This is charming,’ she declared, turning the pastoral figure around and admiring the delicate green and pink colouring. ‘You and Philip may keep your mouldy Greek and Roman pottery. I find this infinitely preferable.’

‘You see, I remember your taste,’ he murmured.

‘As I do yours,’ she replied, indicating a tray with glasses and a bottle of claret. ‘You did not stay long after the wedding, then.’

He poured wine for each of them. ‘I am not so popular with my daughter-in-law’s family or with my sister that I felt tempted to stay,’ he replied. ‘Besides, after the bride and groom have gone these affairs acquire a degree of languor, I find.’

‘Your son’s wife is lovely,’ her ladyship observed. It was one of her attractions that she was able to see qualities to praise in other women.

‘Yes she is, isn’t she? She has some spirit, too. When we were dancing the other night, I asked her, out of devilment you know, whether she did not think that had she met me first, she might have been tempted. She told me that I was much too pretty for her.’

Lady Gilchrist laughed. ‘What she should have said, of course, was that she was utterly besotted with Ilam. Anyone could see it.’

‘Yes. The boy is fortunate,’ answered Ashbourne, looking down into his wine. ‘Any news of when Philip will return?’

Later on, the two of them sat down to a well-chosen dinner, eating in a small parlour rather than in the dining-room. ‘It’s much easier to keep warm in the winter,’ said Lady Gilchrist.

They were both well-travelled people with a wide interest in art and books, and found plenty to talk about. After dinner, they went into the drawing-room together, Ashbourne carrying his glass of port in one hand and the decanter in the other. ‘Agatha would be surprised,’ he remarked. ‘I’m sure she thinks that I spend every dinner that I attend slowly sinking further and further under the table.’

‘You used to, didn’t you?’ 

‘In my youth,’ he agreed. ‘That was before I discovered that it didn’t drive the demons away; it just brought them back next morning with tiny hammers inside my head.’

‘And have the demons gone now?’

‘Don’t pry, Penelope,’ he said in a good-humoured tone that nevertheless held an edge of finality.

In the drawing-room, Lady Gilchrist had found a place for her new Meissen figure on a table which stood against the wall with a mirror behind it. ‘It could have been made to stand there, don’t you think?’ she said. She paused then added delicately, ‘You must know that I would be very glad to show you how grateful I am.’

‘You are very good, my dear,’ he replied, with a graceful
inclination
of his head, ‘but you see, Philip has promised me something very special from Pompeii, so …’

‘You regard the delights of ancient pottery above…?’

‘No, my dear, I value Philip’s friendship very highly,’ Ashbourne replied frankly. ‘I don’t trespass on his preserves – as you well know.’

She did not press the matter, but instead began to talk of other things. This had not been the first time that she had suggested a liaison, but, attractive though she was, he had never really been tempted to succumb. His friendship with Sir Philip, formed quite unexpectedly in Greece when they had both been in quest of the same amphora, was of ten years standing, and the nature of his upbringing had meant that he did not easily form attachments. He had therefore no intention of sacrificing one of the few that he valued for a romantic romp which, although it would no doubt be stimulating in its way, experience told him would prove to be all too brief.

On the day of his departure, he stood at his bedroom window in his shirt sleeves looking out at the rain lashing down into the garden. He himself had been married on such a day as this. Not for him the glorious October sunshine that had seemed to offer a blessing to his son’s union with Eustacia Hope. He had been married to Laura Vyse in the chapel at Ashbourne Abbey on a day when the heavens had opened and powerful winds had ripped through the countryside. It was almost as though nature itself sensed that the enterprise was 
doomed to failure. The marriage had been planned by his father for some time, but his intention had been that it would not take place for two more years. It had been brought forward by circumstances for which he, Ashbourne, was largely responsible. As he looked at the patterns the driving rain made on the outside of the windows, he could still see the face of Dora Whitton, the farmer’s daughter whose gentle affection had been such a contrast to his father’s coldness, and who had given herself to him so sweetly in the first intimate contact that either of them had known….

A murmured suggestion from Pointer reminded him that
breakfast
would be on the table. Turning, he allowed the manservant to help him into his coat. He looked at himself in the mirror. It would probably be the last time that he paid any attention to his
reflection
before dressing for dinner. He was so used to his astonishing good looks that he never thought about them, and was not
personally
vain. Now, however, he looked at himself critically, noticing the lines at the corners of his mouth, and the grey at his temples. Laura, his bride, had never loved him. She had, he suspected, been a little in love with his father, and his father with her. Clare Delahay the actress, now Lady Hope, had rejected him in favour of Sir Wilfred. His daughter-in-law had said that he was too pretty for her taste. Lady Gilchrist would have taken him to her bed, only because Philip was away. Even Jez Warburton, who had adored him for years, would probably marry Henry Lusty. Was he destined to be the kind of man with whom women played for
entertainment
, but who was always rejected eventually in favour of someone else?

Firmly putting this destructive piece of introspection behind him, he took his handkerchief from Pointer and set off down the stairs. Lady Gilchrist was waiting for him in the breakfast parlour, and they sat down together. Ashbourne was not one of those men who favour silence at the breakfast table, and they talked as they ate with the ease of old acquaintances. The conversation turned to some of the items on display at the British Museum. As Lady Gilchrist had not seen some of the latest pieces she was eager to hear the earl’s descriptions.

After the meal was over and Ashbourne’s belongings had been collected from his room, they stood in the hall to say goodbye, not 
venturing outside because of the inclement weather. ‘I’ll come and see Philip when he returns from the Continent,’ the earl promised.

‘You are welcome to come before that,’ Lady Gilchrist told him roguishly.

‘You are very kind, but I always avoid temptation if I don’t intend to succumb,’ he answered, grinning. He was walking to the door with his hat in his hand when a messenger arrived from the village with the post. He gave every appearance of being a drowned rat. ‘You cannot possibly expect someone to bring your letters to you in this weather,’ said Ashbourne.