One True Love

by Jessica Stirling

Genres: Sagas

Synopsis

Susanne Thorne is an orphan of means, one reason why Bette Hollander carries the young English girl off to her home in far-away Scotland. Bette would be more than happy for Susanne to fall in love with her handsome, headstrong son Louis, for marriage to the little heiress would repay old debts and restore the Hollander family's fortunes. But love cannot be delivered to order and as Susanne grows up and proves to have a mind of her own, Bette's plans for a match made in heaven seem fated to end in disaster.

Release date: July 30, 2010

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 464

Sample

Chapter 1

On 16th October 1845, the Bank of England raised the borrowing rate to three per cent and the market in railway shares went into steep decline. Wild speculation was replaced by panic, prices tumbled and many a fine gentleman who had got rich quick suddenly found himself poor again; Mr Neville Spencer Reeve was not among them. A wink and a nod from a friend in the City enabled him to escape penury by the skin of his teeth, but, for several years thereafter, he was obliged to devote himself to the practice of law with a diligence that had been sadly lacking during his time as an inveterate gambler on railway stock.

     The fortune he had almost lost had been spent mainly on women. He had buried two wives and fathered more than his fair share of children in, and out, of wedlock. He was no model parent but had nursed too many paternity claims through the Court of Chancery to neglect his obligations entirely and had made provision for his offspring, legitimate and otherwise, by farming them out to rural schools or setting them up in industrial apprenticeships. He could not, therefore, be brought to book for irresponsibility or condemned as a man totally lacking in heart. So, late on a gloomy March afternoon, he was not unduly alarmed to experience a twinge of compassion at the sight of little Susanne Thorne, hand in hand with her aunt, tripping across the courtyard of the Staple Inn just below his window.

     He stepped away from the window and carried a walnut high chair from its position against the wall and placed it before his desk on which lay a volume of Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England together with all the documents relating to Joshua Thorne’s last will and testament.

     The door from the courtyard slammed. The clerk’s voice rumbled in the stone stairwell and, a few moments later, Mrs Hollander and her ward were ushered into the office.

     ‘Madam.’ He shook Mrs Hollander’s hand. ‘Miss Thorne, have you recovered from your ordeal?’

     ‘I have, sir,’ the girl informed him. ‘Do you wish me to sit?’

     ‘By all means. See, I’ve put out a special chair for you.’

     ‘A baby chair, Mr Reeve?’

     ‘A chair for persons who are not full grown.’

     ‘Well, I’m not quite that, not yet.’

     Susanne clambered on to the high chair, planted her feet on the sloping step and did her best to appear grown up. Reeve waited until the aunt settled before he took up his position behind the desk. He was tall but not stooped and, except when occasion demanded it, wore no wig or robes. He was, in fact, far too much a man of fashion to favour the ancient accoutrement that had accumulated around his profession, much of which was designed simply to intimidate.

     ‘What age are you, Susanne?’

     ‘I’m fourteen, sir.’

     ‘Small for her age,’ said the aunt. ‘We’ll feed her up and she’ll blossom into a fine big strapping lassie in no time. Won’t you, my love?’

     ‘Yes, Aunt Bette. It’s what Papa would have wished for me.’

     Joshua Thorne had built up his printing business through sheer hard work and was known in the City for honesty and square dealing. He had married late in life and when his wife had passed away soon after presenting him with a daughter had employed a nursemaid, Miss Ashworth, to care for the baby. Miss Ashworth had been rewarded for her years of devoted service with a legacy of one thousand pounds and, soon after Aunt Hollander had arrived in London to take charge of Susanne, had gone off to live with a sister in Torbay. The Thornes’ house in Holborn, together with the printing shop in Farringdon Street and a paper-making factory in Shoreditch, had been sold and the proceeds invested in a trust to provide Susanne with an income, until she came of age.

     Reeve had first met the girl at the graveside in the cemetery in Gray’s Inn Road; a waif-like figure in childish weeds flanked by the nursemaid and the plump aunt and surrounded by a pack of faux relatives who had calculated precisely what Susanne was worth and who had clambered all over themselves in a belated attempt to lure her away from the Scottish aunt. He had admired her fortitude and common sense then, and he admired her now.

     ‘Do you understand, Susanne,’ he said, ‘the arrangements that have been made for your welfare?’

     ‘My Aunt Bette is to take care of me.’

     ‘Can you read?’ Neville Reeve enquired.

     ‘Of course I can read,’ Susanne replied, indignantly. ‘I learned at Miss Millar’s Academy. I can read music too, and count and embroider.’

     ‘My enquiry is directed not towards ascertaining if you can read, Susanne,’ Reeve said, ‘but to ensure that you are capable of understanding that which I will read to you.’

     ‘Is it the law, sir?’

     ‘It is the law.’

     ‘Is it about my papa’s money?’

     ‘It is.’

     ‘I’ll try to understand,’ Susanne promised.

     Neville Reeve could have recited the relative clauses from memory but he preferred the girl, and the aunt, to have it straight from the horse’s mouth. He opened the volume of legal commentary and read from it: ‘“The power and reciprocal duty of a guardian and ward are the same as that of a father and child, except in as much as the guardian, when the ward comes of age, is bound to give an account of all that has been transacted on behalf of the ward and must answer for all losses by wilful default or negligence. In order then to prevent disagreeable contests it has become a practice for many guardians to indemnify themselves by applying to an officer of the Court of Chancery, acting under direction, and accounting annually before the said officer of appointment.”’

     ‘Is that who you are, sir?’ Susanne asked. ‘The officer of appointment?’

     ‘Indeed, it is,’ Neville Reeve answered. ‘I have been licensed by the Court of Chancery to ensure that your aunt, Mrs Adam Hollander, receives a quarterly sum to keep and maintain you, and that she accounts annually for all additional sums spent on your welfare, no more and no less.’

     ‘Until I come of age?’ Susanne said. ‘When, sir, will that be?’

     Neville Reeve paused, then, by way of answer, resorted to reading from Blackstone. ‘“A female at fourteen is at years of legal discretion and may choose her own guardian; at seventeen may be executrix; at twenty-one may dispose of herself and her lands.”’

     ‘My lands?’ Susanne giggled. ‘What lands have I got?’

     ‘You may dispose of yourself, then,’ said Neville Reeve.

     ‘How do I do that?’

     The lawyer shrugged. ‘By marriage.’

     ‘When I am twenty-one?’

     How typical of a female not to interrogate him about the size of her fortune but to fix instead on the conditions of marriage attached to it. What in heaven’s name were they teaching them in Miss Millar’s Academy these days, he wondered, and had the law found its way on to the curriculum along with etiquette and embroidery?

     ‘Well, no,’ Reeve admitted. ‘Under Scots law, you may, in effect, marry after you are above the age of twelve years. It would, of course, be better – I mean, better for you – if you did not throw yourself into an ill-considered union with some young man who may court you simply because you have money.’

     ‘What,’ Susanne said, ‘if he loves me?’

     ‘Nature,’ said Neville Reeve, ‘may well endow you with all that is necessary to be a wife, and the law recognises that fact. Nature, however, may be somewhat more tardy in endowing you with sound judgement. I would strenuously advise you to seek advice from your aunt before you allow yourself to be beguiled by the blandishments of a person of the opposite sex.’

     ‘Beguiled?’ Susanne giggled again, then, sobering, asked, ‘Do I not need your consent to marry, then?’

     Neville Reeve closed both eyes and wrestled with what remained of his conscience. He tried to imagine what she would look like when she grew up. Pretty, perhaps, but more likely veering to the plain, though those dark brown eyes were mischievous enough to hint that she might have more character than he gave her credit for.

     ‘No,’ he said, at length. ‘No, you do not need my consent to marry.’

     ‘Thank you for telling me,’ Susanne said. ‘That is a useful piece of information to have at one’s disposal.’

     Reeve placed a hand on Susanne’s shoulder and peered into her dark brown eyes. ‘Twenty-one years, young lady,’ he said, ‘twenty-one years is the age at which you will cease to be regarded as an infant, so styled in law, and will be free to do as you wish. Marriage does not enter into it.’

     ‘It might?’ Susanne insisted.

     ‘Yes, my love, it might,’ said Aunt Bette Hollander. ‘There are lots of handsome young men in the Kingdom of Fife.’

     The Kingdom of Fife; a tusk of land jutting into the North Sea. The village of Strayhorn, where Bette Hollander’s husband had built himself a house, did not even deserve a mention on the map; one house, one servant, one adult son, no railway, barely a decent road, as far as Reeve could make out; yet the girl professed herself happy to embrace a new life in that remote corner of Scotland, and who was he, a humble servant of the Chancellor, to deny her?

     ‘Madam,’ he said, turning away from Susanne, ‘I require your signature on the petition of wardship. You will receive your first quarterly payment on the first day of June, paid to you through the Dundee branch of the Merchants and Traders Bank, with which institution a portion of the late Mr Thorne’s capital has been invested. The balance of the fund is under my jurisdiction and will be placed to yield a maximum return.’

     ‘Is a signature all that is required of me?’ Mrs Hollander asked.

     ‘That is all,’ Neville Reeve answered. ‘I will see to it that copies of the documents are delivered to your hotel before you set off tomorrow morning.’

     ‘And your fee, sir?’ the aunt said.

     ‘My fee has been deducted from capital. It is all, I assure you, to the letter and quite above board.’

     ‘I don’t doubt it, Mr Reeve,’ Mrs Hollander said. ‘Joshua wouldn’t have chosen you if you hadn’t been reliable.’

     Drawing the papers across the desk, the attorney flicked open the lid of a brass inkwell and, with a flourish that bordered on legerdemain, presented the woman with an ebony pen-holder. He leaned over her shoulder, and pointed.

     ‘There, if you would be so good.’

     Laboriously, Mrs Hollander signed her name.

     ‘There, too.’

     Mrs Hollander repeated the process.

     Mr Reeve dried both signatures with lilac blotting paper, witnessed each sheet with his own dashing moniker, blotted them again and filed them with the rest of the Thorne documents.

     On glancing up he was surprised to see tears trickling down the girl’s cheeks. He was tempted to console her but the milk of human kindness had been somewhat soured by his recent reverses, and he restrained himself.

     ‘Oh now, now,’ Bette Hollander crooned. ‘Oh, my poor wee lamb,’ and, plucking Susanne from the high chair, smothered her with kisses.

     And while this touching scene was taking place Neville Spencer Reeve seized the opportunity to stuff the Thorne documents into his enormous safe and, with a sniff of satisfaction at a job well done, locked them securely away.

 

Competition had reduced the travelling time between King’s Cross and Edinburgh to thirteen and a half hours and the race was now on between the Caledonian and Great North Western railway companies to woo customers with comfort and convenience. The convenience of having a water closet situated between the first- and second-class carriages was greatly appreciated by Aunt Bette Hollander who, so she told Susanne, had a barometer instead of a bladder and could measure not only changes in temperature but even in altitude by her need to make pee-pee.

     In the month of their acquaintance, Susanne had become used to her aunt’s lack of modesty. Life in Strayhorn and marriage to a sea captain had, it seemed, imbued her with an earthiness that sat ill with her aspirations to be regarded as a lady of quality.

     Aunt Bette had spared no expense in contracting for one of the well-upholstered U-shaped berths in the first-class carriage and had paid extra to have the quantities of luggage that she had acquired in the ‘Metrolopus’ stowed in the van. Susanne was unaware that the cost of her transportation from the Hub of the Empire to the Kingdom of Fife had been deducted from her account with the Merchants and Traders Bank, or that Mr Reeve had signed away twenty-six guineas to cover nineteen nights in the New Holborn Hotel where Aunt Bette and she had resided after Papa’s house, empty of furnishings, had passed into other hands.

     It was beginning to dawn on Susanne, though, that she would never see Miss Ashworth again, would never again prattle with Esmeralda Finch or Lisbeth Crouch, her best friends at Miss Millar’s Academy, never sit with Papa in the library upstairs while he read to her from Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare or the illustrated edition of Bible stories that, at Miss Ashworth’s insistence, he had provided for her instruction.

     The coach lurched and rattled. The green fields of England and its dusty towns bobbed past the window, veiled by smoke from the locomotive.

     Long before the train reached Grantham there was a nasty, metallic taste in Susanne’s mouth that not even a sip of cordial from her aunt’s silver flask could remove. After several sips from the silver flask Aunt Bette fell asleep and, lying back against the cushions, Susanne eyed the woman listlessly.

     She looked, Susanne thought, more like a painted doll than a person, like one of those elaborate waxworks that, by means of hidden bellows, were made to breathe. Her plump cheeks were daubed with rouge purchased from a stall in the Soho Bazaar. Her hair hung in fat loops intertwined with tiny pearls bought from a shop at Oxford Circus. She was wrapped in a voluminous mantle acquired from a splendid emporium in Regent Street, and a new black Babet hat, crowned with feathers, danced tipsily to the rhythm of the iron wheels. There was something ungracious about her aunt in repose, something to which Susanne could not yet relate; nor was she entirely convinced that the village of Strayhorn was quite the paradise that the woman made it out to be.

     She had been happy in London with Papa and Miss Ashworth, Cook and Mary Jane to look after her, and no memory of Mama to trouble her dreams. She had revelled in the little treats that Miss Ashworth had arranged: a sail on the Thames to Greenwich, a visit to the Tower, an evening excursion to Drury Lane to hear an opera sung in Italian. She had also reached an age when the future flickered with fascinating possibilities. The older girls at Miss Millar’s Academy were full of talk of balls, parties and picnics, of meeting young men, falling in love and, lurking behind a veil that not even Esmeralda could penetrate, all the alarming mysteries that marriage entailed.

     Then, in January, Papa had fallen sick.

     In those last days Susanne had seen little of him. Miss Ashworth had kept her ‘amused’ downstairs and life had gone on almost as before, except that there had been lawyers and doctors and gentlemen from the Merchants and Traders Bank calling at the house, bearded, black-coated gentlemen in tall hats to which granules of snow or droplets of rain adhered.

     At first Susanne had refused to accept that death had entered her papa’s house. He had seemed so peaceful lying in his spotless nightgown, hair and beard combed, with nothing to indicate that anything much was wrong with him, save for a freckle of blood on a handkerchief tucked under the pillow that supported his head, and the medicines that the doctors had left on the night table.

     Papa had smiled and stroked her hair. He had little enough to say, only, ‘Dearest, dearest, I will soon be with your Mama in heaven, or so Miss Ashworth tells me,’ and, later, ‘I have instructed Mr Reeve to write to my relatives in Scotland and ask them to take care of you.’

     Then, one terrible morning, Miss Ashworth had held her tightly and everyone had cried and, late that same evening, her Aunt Bette Hollander had arrived from Scotland, breathless, but not speechless, with concern.

     Grantham and Newark, Tuxford and Retford, on to Doncaster, to York and Edinburgh and, tomorrow, Perth. All the things that she had loved were being left behind, stripped away, mile upon mile, by cuttings and viaducts, embankments and tunnels. The fields were no longer shot with green. Snow lay in patches along the footpaths. Spring sunshine was swallowed up by lowering cloud that grew thicker and more constant as the locomotive puffed northward.

     In vain Susanne tried to cling to the remnants of her composure, to convince herself that Strayhorn was all that Aunt Bette said it would be and that everyone there would be kind and loving and would welcome her with open arms. But, as the journey became ever more tedious and tiring, her confidence waned and she began to cry, very softly, holding her hands to her face to hide her ingratitude.

Chapter 10

Louis’s letters home were few and far between and invariably contained requests for money. At the end of each letter he added greetings to his little cousin, but for Susanne postscripts were not enough. She was more hurt than angered by Louis’s neglect and as winter drifted sluggishly into spring, did her best to put him out of her mind.

     By the month’s end the fishing grounds were dotted with boats and the average catch was almost the equal of a good summer haul. Curers and cadgers crowed and rubbed their hands and trade, even in Strayhorn, was brisk.

     On 10th March two English fish agents arrived in the village to survey the old curing sheds with a view to purchase. They were dismayed to find that the sheds had been demolished. They met with Martin Mazzucco in a back room of the Dalriada. Martin emerged from the meeting with tears in his eyes for, so the story went, he hadn’t sold the old sheds or the Fisherfield acres but had leased them to Harry Coburn in exchange for shares in a company that, it seemed, had no capital assets and no other shareholders. A better man than Martin might have contemplated murdering the broker, or at least taking him to court, but Martin was so ashamed of himself that he just lay about the house in a haze of rum, moaning so loudly that you could hear him halfway across the bay.

     Mild weather kept Alan Redpath on his toes. Scarlet fever spread as far as Caddis, three small children died and three others became so ill that they were removed to the hospital in Dundee.

     Scarlatina was only one of the plagues that winter visited on Fife folk. Never had there been such hacking and wheezing as there was that spring, never such a demand for coffin-makers and grave-diggers, with the dead queuing up for Tom’s attention and Angus Gamrie snapping at his heels to administer Protestant unction in the form of prayer to the sick as far afield as Brogan’s Farm, out on the edge of the moor.

     Tom had visited Brogan’s Farm several times in the past, when it seemed that old Guy was knocking on death’s door, and had had ‘dealings’, as it were, with Guy’s servant, Annabel, a dark-haired, dark-eyed girl of nineteen, who, if not quite all right in the head, was quite all right in the hay-loft. In the minister’s judgement, Annabel had required the administering of something other than Protestant unction on a fairly regular basis until, to his chagrin, old farmer Guy miraculously recovered his strength and chased the girl off in one direction and Tom in the other, shouting, no doubt deliriously, that he didn’t need a minister to do for him what he could perfectly well do for himself.

     With so many commitments, Mr Oakley’s attendance at the schoolhouse suffered greatly and Prim, to her relief, saw little of him across the span of the spring. The main victim of Tom Oakley’s neglect was the whale-master’s wife who, unlike Miss Primrose, wasn’t in the least amused to find herself being written off. At Sunday services a nod or a half-hearted bow substituted for conversation and no notes were hidden under the stone in the potting shed to arrange a rendezvous.

     Then one March morning Bette clambered up the cliff path to the church and left a note – unsigned, of course – under the big stone that secured the door of the potting shed. The following Sunday she sat under the prow of the pulpit and scanned Tom’s face for a sign that he’d found her letter and would grant her request for a meeting. No signal, no response. She tried to corner him after service but somehow the minister made himself scarce and she wasn’t rash enough to beard him in the vestry where beady-eyed Angus Gamrie stood guard on the collection plates. On the following morning, Monday, she scrambled up the sheep path again, peeped under the stone and found her note, wet and disintegrating, still there, unread.

     That night, long after everyone had gone to bed, Bette took off her clothes and tilted the cheval glass above her dressing-table and, by the flattering light of a solitary candle, gazed at her body and realised that her time had passed, that no man, least of all a man as discerning as Tom Oakley, could possibly find her attractive. Compliance, complicity and occasional expensive gifts would not bring Tom back to the bloated old woman who stared at her from the glass.

     Her affair – her last affair – was over and done with.

     In time, she felt sure, Tom would find another mistress.

     And when that time came, she would have her revenge.

 

‘Susanne,’ Miss Primrose said, ‘are you happy?’

     ‘In school?’

     ‘In Strayhorn?’

     ‘I am not unhappy.’

     ‘Do they treat you well, your aunt and uncle?’

     ‘Yes, they are very kind.’

     It was a little after three o’clock. Prim had dismissed the class early, for the wind was picking up and a storm was clearly brewing.

     Susanne was not dismayed by the prospect of foul weather. She loved the rain and the mighty gusts of wind that whipped the sea into a frenzy, for, though she’d grown a bit recently, she was still slight enough to slip beneath the wind like a field-mouse or a vole.

     ‘And your cousin? How is your cousin?’

     ‘Louis?’ Susanne answered. ‘Poof! I don’t care about him.’

     ‘I thought you did?’

     ‘If he can’t be bothered to put pen to paper, why should I care?’

     ‘You write to him, of course?’

     ‘I do. Well, I did,’ Susanne said. ‘It’s like casting stones into a well.’

     ‘Perhaps he’ll regret his indifference when he sees how you’ve changed.’

     ‘Have I changed? Have I really?’

     They were in the classroom, not the cottage. Prim had made tea and brought it through from the kitchen. They were seated on the infant benches, nursing cups. Zena and Greg had gone home.

     Prim nodded. ‘You’re growing up, Susanne.’

     ‘I don’t feel grown up.’

     ‘Growing older, I mean.’

     ‘You mean I’ll soon be of an age to marry?’

     Gillian Primrose hadn’t meant that at all. She raised an eyebrow. ‘Marriage?’ she said. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

     ‘I have,’ Susanne said.

     ‘And who would you marry?’

     ‘Anyone who’ll have me,’ Susanne said. ‘But no one will.’

     Prim laughed. ‘Why not?’

     ‘I’m too small, too ugly.’

     ‘You’re not ugly, And’ – Prim paused – ‘you’re rich.’

     ‘I will be, I suppose, when I come of age,’ Susanne said. ‘That, I think, is the problem. How will I know if he loves me?’

     ‘Life isn’t written like a novelette, Susanne. The choices we’re offered aren’t conveniently arranged in black and white. I wish to heaven they were.’

     ‘Is that why you’ve never married?’

     Six months ago the question would have seemed impertinent; not now.

     Prim sighed. ‘Nobody ever asked me.’

     ‘Perhaps somebody will, one day.’

     ‘One day, one day,’ Prim said. ‘I no longer believe that all my dreams will come true – one day.’

     ‘I do,’ said Susanne.

     ‘And so you should,’ Prim told her, tapping her knee. ‘So you should.’

     ‘One day,’ said Susanne, ‘there will be a knock upon the door and when you open it there will be the man of your dreams.’

     ‘Hah!’ Prim said, sceptically.

     Then the door of the classroom opened and a voice called out, ‘Hello.’

 

Macklin House lay three miles inland, a bland Georgian mansion, square, upright and elegant, surrounded by eighteen acres of parkland. Nine bedrooms and five public rooms seemed an excessive amount of space for one small family, Tom thought, enviously, as he scurried up the driveway to the front door.

     A servant girl relieved him of his overcoat and hat and ushered him into a drawing-room so sparse in its furnishings that there was barely a chair to sit upon. Tall windows were spotted with rain and far away Tom could just make out the scribble of the sea bowed by the weight of storm clouds. The room would have been depressing had it not been for the log fire that blazed in the grate and the fragrance of pine it released. Tom had no appointment with Coburn. He had taken a chance that the fellow would be at home, not on business in Edinburgh or, more likely, out shooting whatever it was that one shot in the breeding season. He rather hoped that the gorgeous child, Darsie, would be at home too, but, so far, there had been no sign of the girl.

     Harry Coburn had not been born with a silver spoon in his mouth – his father had been a weaver in Selkirk – but he had found a way of promoting himself into a class to which he, Tom Oakley, felt that he rightfully belonged. Coburn was a widower now but all this spacious elegance, Tom thought, looking round, had stemmed from a judicious marriage.

     Claws clicked on the floor of the hall.

     Pushing open the door with a massive shoulder, an enormous hound peered in at him and, a second later, Harry Coburn dashed into the drawing-room, trailed by a lanky butler and three female servants bearing an assortment of tea-things on a trolley the size of a traction engine.

     ‘Reverend.’ Harry jerked Tom’s arm up and down as if he were a pump in need of priming. ‘An unexpected pleasure. Most unexpected.’

     ‘I trust I did not interrupt you?’

     Servants darted about, fetching kettles and dishes, and clothing the enormous trolley in a linen shroud that, almost miraculously, became littered with cups and finger bowls, plates of seed cake and buttered brown bread.

     Tom was pressed into a chair, a linen napkin spread on his lap and, within seconds, was served tea from a silver teapot, after which all the servants, save the lanky butler, trailed out again, the deerhound pattering in their wake.

     ‘Done!’ Harry Coburn extracted a watch from his fob pocket and checked it, as if he were supervising a military manoeuvre. ‘Not too shabby, though I say so myself.’

     ‘What,’ Tom said, ‘do you do about dinner?’

     Harry Coburn laughed. ‘I give them a running start.’

     ‘Life below stairs,’ Tom said, ‘can never be dull.’

     ‘No, it is, I fancy, rather less dull for them than it is for me.’

     Tom sipped tea and looked around. ‘You are alone here, sir?’

     ‘I am, alas. I am.’

     ‘Your daughter  ...’

     ‘Boarding at school in St Andrews.’

     ‘You must miss her.’

     ‘What? Yes, I suppose I do.’

     ‘My children,’ Tom said, ‘provide rather more distraction than companionship. There are, of course, seven of them.’

     ‘You have a wife, do you not?’

     ‘I do, sir, a very able helpmate.’

     ‘You see,’ said Harry, brightly but vaguely. ‘There you are!’

     ‘There I am?’

     ‘No.’ Harry leaned over the trolley. ‘Here you are, Mr Oakley, here you are, and  ...’

     ‘You’re wondering why.’

     ‘Hmm, I am, rather.’

     Except for the fact that his collar was askew and his necktie loosely knotted Mr Coburn might have been an advocate, or one of the more eccentric members of Tom’s own profession. He was clad in a tight black morning suit and a grey waistcoat and, stripped of riding boots and kidskin breeches, looked a good deal less ‘flash’ than usual.

     ‘You cannot have dropped in merely to chastise me for hiring a party of labourers,’ Coburn went on. ‘The adm