I am certain Ambrose won’t let you suffer from the change, and will buy you any property you fancy.
Of course it is possible they will have no children, but on the other hand there is no reason to suppose they won’t.
You might prefer to build.
It is sometimes more satisfactory to build your own place than take over a property for sale.”
He continued talking, mentioning places within twenty miles or so of home that I might care to own, and I was thankful that he did not seem to expect a reply to anything he said.
The fact was that my heart was too full to answer him.
What he suggested was so new and unexpected that I could barely think straight, and shortly afterwards made an excuse to go.
Jealous, yes.
Louise was right about that, I supposed.
The jealousy of a child who must suddenly share the one person in his life with a stranger.
Like Seecombe, I had seen myself doing my utmost to settle down to new uncomfortable ways.
Putting out my pipe, rising to my feet, making an effort at conversation, drilling myself to the rigors and tedium of feminine society. And watching Ambrose, my god, behaving like a ninny, so that I should have to leave the room from sheer embarrassment.
I had never once seen myself an outcast. No longer wanted, put out of my home and pensioned like a servant.
A child arriving, who would call Ambrose father, so that I should be no longer needed.
Had it been Mrs. Pascoe who had drawn my attention to this possibility I should have put it down as malice, and forgotten it.
But my own godfather, quiet and calm, making a statement of fact, was different.
I rode home, sick with uncertainty and sadness.
I hardly knew what to do, or how to act.
Should I make plans, as my godfather had said?
Find myself a home?
Make preparations for departure?
I did not want to live anywhere else, or possess another property.
Ambrose had brought me up and trained me for this one alone.
It was mine.
It was his.
It belonged to both of us.
But now no longer, everything had changed.
I can remember wandering about the house, when I came home from visiting the Kendalls, looking upon it with new eyes, and the dogs, seeing my restlessness, followed me, as uneasy as myself.
My old nursery, uninhabited for so long, and now the room where Seecombe’s niece came once a week to mend and sort the linen, took on new meaning.
I saw it freshly painted, and my small cricket bat that still stood, cobweb-covered on a shelf among a pile of dusty books, thrown out for rubbish.
I had not thought before what memories the room held for me, going in and out of it once in two months perhaps, with a shirt to be repaired, or socks to be darned.
Now I wanted it for my own again, a haven of refuge from the outer world.
Instead of which it would become an alien place, stuffy, smelling of boiled milk and blankets put to dry, like the living rooms of cottages that I so often visited, where there lived young children.
In my imagination I could see them crawling with fretful cries upon the floor, forever bumping heads or bruising elbows; or worse, dragging themselves up upon one’s knees, their faces puckering like monkeys if denied.
Oh God, was all this in store for Ambrose?
Hitherto, when I had thought of my cousin Rachel—which I did but sparingly, brushing her name from my mind as one does all things unpleasant—I had pictured to myself a woman resembling Mrs. Pascoe, only more so.
Large-featured and angular, with a hawk’s eyes for dust as Seecombe prophesied, and far too loud a laugh when there was company for dinner, so that one winced for Ambrose.
Now she took on new proportions. One moment monstrous, like poor Molly Bate at the West Lodge, obliging one to avert the eyes from sheer delicacy, and the next pale and drawn, shawl-covered in a chair, with an invalidish petulance about her, while a nurse hovered in the background, mixing medicines with a spoon.
One moment middle-aged and forceful, the next simpering and younger than Louise, my cousin Rachel had a dozen personalities or more and each one more hateful than the last.
I saw her forcing Ambrose to his knees to play at bears, the children astride his back, and Ambrose consenting with a humble grace, having lost all dignity.
Yet again, decked out in muslin, with a ribbon in her hair, I saw her pout and toss her curls, a curving mass of affection, while Ambrose sat back in his chair surveying her, the bland smile of an idiot on his face.
When in mid-May the letter came, saying that after all they had decided to remain abroad throughout the summer, my relief was so intense that I could have shouted aloud.
I felt more traitorous than ever, but I could not help it.
“Your cousin Rachel is still so bothered by the tangle of business that must be settled before coming to England,” wrote Ambrose, “that we have decided, although with bitter disappointment, as you may imagine, to defer our return home for the present.
I do the best I can, but Italian law is one thing and ours another, and it’s the deuce of a job to reconcile the two.
I seem to be spending a mint of money, but it’s in a good cause and I don’t begrudge it.
We talk of you often, dear boy, and I wish you could be with us.”
And so onto inquiries about the work at home and the state of the gardens, with his usual fervor of interest, so that it seemed to me I must be mad to have thought for a moment he could change.
Disappointment was of course intense throughout the neighborhood that they would not be home this summer.
“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Pascoe, with a meaning smile, “Mrs. Ashley’s state of health forbids her traveling?”