The Morning Gift

In spite of this inauspicious beginning, dinner went off well and Miss Somerville, reviewing the evening in the privacy of her bedroom, had every reason to be satisfied. Perhaps Quin’s chivalry had been aroused by Verena’s unfortunate descent; at any rate he was attentive and charming and Verena said everything that was proper. She admired the portrait of the Somervilles, even declaring that the Basher’s face was full of character; she was able to be intelligent about farming, for her uncle in Rutland not only bred Border Leicesters but had a prize herd of Charolais cattle. And when Miss Somerville mentioned – trying to make a joke of it – Quin’s intention of making the house over to the Trust, the Placketts had been as incredulous and aghast as she had hoped.

‘You cannot be serious, Professor!’ Lady Plackett had exclaimed. And Verena, risking a somewhat outspoken remark said: ‘Forgive me, but I would feel as though I was betraying my unborn children.’

In fact Verena, throughout the evening, said all the things that Frances had been thinking. Verena was sound on the subject of refugees and had, when Quin was out of the room, expressed satisfaction that an Austrian girl in her year would not be coming up with the others later that night. She was able to trace a connection between the Croft-Ellises and the Somervilles, distant but reassuring, and what she said about the puppy was exactly what Miss Somerville herself had been thinking – it really was kinder in cases of this sort to drown the little things at birth.

‘A very pleasant girl,’ said Miss Somerville, as Martha came to bring her her bedtime cocoa.

A medieval monk bent on poverty, chastity and the subjugation of the flesh would have been entirely at home in Miss Somerville’s bedroom. The window was open, letting in gusts of the damp night air, the rugs on the bare floorboards were worn, the mattress on the four-poster had been lumpy when Frances came to Bowmont and was lumpy still.

Martha agreed. ‘She’s made a good impression below stairs,’ she said, not thinking it necessary to add that a Hottentot with smallpox would have done the same if it ensured that Bowmont remained in private hands and that the servants’ jobs were safe.

It was Martha who had gone with Frances to the house of her fiancé on the Border, Martha who had come back after twenty-four hours and kept her peace for forty years about what had happened there – but even Martha could go too far.

‘Why don’t you let me get you a hot-water bottle?’ she asked now, for her mistress, in spite of the success of the evening, was looking tired and drawn and the cold did nothing for her arthritis.

‘Certainly not!’ snapped Frances. ‘On December the 1st I have a bottle and not a day earlier – you know that perfectly well.’ But she allowed Martha to pick up the battered silver hair brush and brush out her sparse grey hair. ‘I take it it was Elsie who let the puppy out?’ she said presently.

Martha nodded. ‘She’s soft, that girl. It’s with Comely not having anything to do with it. She hears it crying.’

‘Well, see that it’s taken down to Barker first thing in the morning; it nearly caused a nasty accident.’

‘It’ll have to be the day after. He’s away over at Amble tomorrow. They’re breaking up a ship and he’s got some wood ordered.’

Lying in bed, her icy feet curled under her, Frances again thought how well the evening had gone – and in any case she meant to go and live in the village once Quin was married. True, Quin had not shown any particular interest in Verena, but that would come – and glad of an excuse, she picked Pride and Prejudice off the bedside table. ‘She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me,’ Mr Darcy had said when he first saw Elizabeth Bennet. Oh yes, there was plenty of time.

Unaware of his aunt’s hopes, and deeply unconcerned with the fate of Verena Plackett, Quin stood by the window of his tower room and looked out at the ocean and the moon, continually obscured by fierce black clouds. It was still raining but the barometer was rising. It had been a risk bringing the students up so late in the year, but if Northumberland did choose to lay on an Indian summer, they would find themselves most richly rewarded. The autumn could be breathtakingly lovely here.

Quin had slept in the room at the top of the tower since his grandfather had led him there at the age of eight, a bewildered orphan in foreign clothes and a pair of outsize spectacles supposed to strengthen his eyes after an attack of measles. Separated by three flights of stairs from his nurse, laid to rest each night under the pelt of a polar bear which the Basher had shot in Alaska, Quin had gone to bed in terror – yet even then he would not have changed his eyrie for the world.