And Brat followed her, over the threshold.
12
"I have put you in the old night nursery," Bee said. "I hope you don't mind. Simon has the room that he used to share with-that you used to share with him." Oh, dear, what a gaffe, she thought; shall I ever be able to think of him as Patrick? "And to give you one of the spare rooms was to treat you like a visitor."
Brat said that he would be glad to have the night nursery.
"Will you go up now, or will you have a drink first?"
"I'll go up now," Brat said, and turned to the stairway.
He knew that she had been waiting for this moment; waiting for the moment when he must show knowledge of the house. So he turned from her and led the way upstairs; up to the big first landing and down the narrow corridor to the north wing, and to the children's rooms facing west from it. He opened the third of the four doors and stood in the room that Nora Ashby had arranged for her children when they were small. One window looked west over the paddocks and the other north to the rise of the down. It was on the quiet side of the house, away from the stables and the approach from the road. He stood at the window looking at the soft blue English distances, thinking of the brilliant mountains beyond the whirling dust of the West, and very conscious of Bee Ashby behind him.
There was something else that he must take the initiative about.
"Where is Simon?" he said, and turned to face her.
"He is like Jane," she said. "Late for lunch. But he'll be in at any moment."