AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘I said I must check dates with you and would get back to him. He seemed pleased.’ Gregory frowned again. ‘He had better not be trifling with you, Phyll.’
‘No, of course he is not. No one trifles with me. Now, shall we see if Wednesday will suit everyone?’
‘A letter for you, my lord.’ Herring proffered a silver salver.
Ashe ran his finger under the red-wax seal and scanned the single page. ‘My first dinner invitation,’ he remarked to his father who was seated in the chair opposite him, long legs outstretched as he studied the surveyor’s account of the state of Eldonstone, the Hertfordshire country house.
‘Bachelor affair?’
‘Apparently not. It’s from Fransham. I met him at Tattersalls today. He says he’s invited Lord and Lady Hardinge—he was at the ball yesterday—and a Sir Peter Blackett who is an MP, with his wife, and a Miss Millington, whoever she is.’
‘Your mother is threatening a dinner party.’ Lord Eldonstone made a note against a column of figures and tossed the bundle on to a side table. ‘I suspect we won’t get away with only seven sitting down to eat.’
‘Eight, if Fransham’s sister is acting as hostess.’
Ashe could have sworn he kept his voice neutral, but his father arched an eyebrow. ‘Miss Hurst? She looked an intelligent and refined young woman. Unfortunate for the poor girl to have had such a careless father.’
‘Yes,’ Ashe agreed. And she is mysterious, and smells of jasmine and has an edge to her tongue. And I cannot get her out of my head. ‘Is that report making depressing reading?’
His father grimaced. ‘About what I expected. You neglect a place that size for as long as my father did, and screw every penny out of the land while you are at it, and the results are never going to be good.’
‘Sounds expensive. Should I have taken more care with the amount I have just spent on horseflesh?’
The marquess shook his head. ‘We can cope easily enough with this, and when we get the estate turned around and the income recovers it will look after itself. I was thinking of going down there next week for a few days—do you want to come?’
They had agreed on board ship that Tompkins would organise the essential cleaning and restocking of the house, engage more servants and generally get it habitable before the family visited. Establishing themselves in society, launching Sara and holding endless meetings with lawyers and bankers had to take priority over the country estate.
‘So soon?’ Ashe acknowledged to himself that he was ambivalent about the Hertfordshire house. London was a city and he felt comfortable in cities. But rural England was a foreign country. Green and lush as though there was a monsoon every day of the year, foxes to hunt, not tigers. Tenants to get to know, not hundreds of subsistence peasants totally at their raja’s beck and call. And part of him knew that it was the country estates that defined the English nobleman: the unknown house was his fate and his responsibility.
Ashe smiled grimly to himself. He had been trained to fight—this was simply another battlefield, a more subtle one that would require all his diplomatic skills.
‘Just a flying visit. We’ll leave your mother and sister here.’
‘I’ll come, with pleasure.’ His father wanted his support, although he would never admit it, and the sooner they got this over with, the better. ‘After all, there is no waltzing in the countryside.’ And no distracting Miss Hurst, either.
Chapter Six
By the time Wednesday came around Ashe, like the rest of his family, had an array of gilt-edged cards to sift through and they were all keeping Edwards, the marquess’s new secretary, busy with acceptances and the occasional regret.
But this dinner party would be a modest beginning to his London social life, he supposed, eyeing the narrow house in Great Ryder Street. When he mounted the steps and knocked, only to have the door answered by a maid, he realised just how modest. Male staff only above stairs in the afternoon and evening was the rule, Perrott had explained, although to find female staff anywhere but in the ladies’ bedchambers was a novelty to Ashe.
Inside there was none of the oppressive splendour of the Herriard town house, for which he envied them. But it was elegantly, if simply, decorated and furnished and he suspected Phyllida’s eye for style and her nose for a bargain had contributed to that.
‘Clere! Glad you could come. Welcome.’ Fransham came forwards with outstretched hand and began to introduce him. Hardinge greeted him as an old acquaintance and Ashe liked the direct friendliness of his wife. The Parliamentary baronet, Blackett, was thin and serious, but his wife made up for it with plump joviality and then there was a Miss Millington, who was introduced as ‘My sister’s friend.’ From the shy glance she directed at Fransham, Ashe suspected there was something more to her presence than that.
Phyllida came in as he was agreeing with Miss Millington that the sunshine that morning had been very pleasant. ‘Lord Clere will consider it the depths of winter, I imagine,’ she said as she smiled in greeting. ‘Good evening, Lord Clere. Confess, you do not consider our feeble spring sunshine worthy of the name.’
‘I will admit to not having been warm since about Gibraltar,’ he countered. ‘But I have high hopes that the summer may reach the temperature of an Indian winter, Miss Hurst. Meanwhile, I am thawing in the kind welcome I have received in London.’
Hardinge chuckled. ‘A diplomat, forsooth.’
‘I was, after a fashion. I acted as an aide for several years to my great-uncle, the Raja of Kalatwah, and that involved some diplomacy.’
‘In which languages?’ Sir Peter enquired.
‘Hindi and Persian. I speak some native dialects with rather less facility,’ Ashe admitted.
‘We shall have to enlist you to the Foreign Office.’ How serious he was, Ashe could not tell.
