Now as she was escorted to the large, columned doorway of the fine London terrace, Katherine decided she had never been more sure of anything. The terrace was in beautiful proportion with its elegant facade and rows of high, evenly spaced windows. It looked like a house where only the most refined family would live. Behind her, the carriage man gave a flick of his whip and a ‘Hya!’ and the carriage was moving away to the stables behind the house, because it was appropriate that a grand town house like this should keep an equipage.
She turned to the man, who was Mr Prescott, one of Lord Crenshaw’s solicitors. Mr Prescott had a distinguished, lined face and grey hair under his tall hat. She asked him in the doorway, ‘Did Lord Crenshaw ever live here?’
‘Yes, indeed. He stayed here often as a young man. Over summer, of course, he lives at Ruthern with his father. He takes a house on St James’s Square when he is in town.’
Ruthern was the family estate in Derbyshire. Lord Crenshaw had described its rolling green grounds, the southern aspect with its lake, arched walking paths, where you could stroll in summer. Ruthern eclipsed any of Lord Crenshaw’s town houses and housed the priceless artefacts he brought back from around the world. She found herself imagining its ivy-mantled walls and its corbelled bell turret, and how it must feel to walk around an estate knowing it was your own.
‘So he did live here,’ said Katherine, almost to herself.
The solicitor smiled. ‘He has had it redone for you. It was far too masculine to suit a young lady.’
Stepping into the wide hall with its marble floors, Katherine loved it immediately. She could see the morning room with a delicate frieze and pretty cornices, the perfect place to sip a little breakfast of hot chocolate. The drawing room opposite had a beautiful classical fireplace with fluted sides, and she glimpsed a Broadwood piano, surely installed so she might sit and play after dinner. The staircase rose to a second floor, where her bedroom would be, and she already knew it would be charming, with delicate silks framing the windows and bed.
‘I liked our old house,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Elizabeth!’ said Aunt.
Katherine looked down. At ten years old, Elizabeth was a pale girl with flat, dun-coloured hair and very dark, strong eyebrows.
‘We’re going to be very happy here,’ Katherine told her younger sister, touching her hair. She spared a thought for their cozy home in Hertfordshire with its comfortable furniture and old-fashioned wood panelling. But Lord Crenshaw’s house surpassed it in every way.
The night of the proposal, she had stayed up in bed with Elizabeth talking about the future that had opened up for her – for all of them. ‘We’ll be married at St George’s Hanover Square. I’d have it happen at once but Aunt Helen says we must wait until I turn seventeen. After that we’ll live at Ruthern, but we’ll come up to London for the Season. He’ll keep a house for Aunt and Uncle, and you may stay with them or with us as you wish. Though I hope you would choose us! You’ll have a governess, one you like, and he’s going to settle a dowry on you, so your chances of a good match will be higher too. Oh, Elizabeth! Did you ever think we’d be this happy?’
Elizabeth had frowned at her with her stern monobrow and said, ‘I don’t want to marry an old man.’
‘You’ll be rich enough to marry whoever you want,’ Katherine had said, hugging her sister affectionately.
‘I apologise for our youngest,’ Aunt now said to Mr Prescott. ‘The house is extraordinary.’
‘You must of course meet the staff,’ said Mr Prescott. ‘Lord Crenshaw has made every arrangement.’
There were a lot more staff than Katherine had been expecting. There was a housekeeper, a butler and footmen for the main house; a cook and kitchen staff for the kitchens; a groomsman, driver and stablehands in the mews; and curtsying maids of different types that Katherine didn’t follow.
Her aunt greeted each of them, asking a series of questions pertaining to the running of the household. Katherine was delighted to learn that she was to have her own lady’s maid, Mrs Dupont. Mrs Dupont was a young woman with dark hair in an elegant style perfect for a lady’s maid in a household of means. With the name Dupont she might be French, thought Katherine with excitement, having heard a French lady’s maid was the truest sign of refinement. Mrs Dupont had no French accent but she immediately endeared herself to Katherine by saying:
‘Oh, you’re even more beautiful than they said, Miss Kent! The new styles will look so well on you.’