Ortolans

by Claire Lorrimer

Genres: Romance; Historical Romance

Synopsis

Ortolans, a magnificent stately home that holds a mysterious grip on all those who live in it, hides a secret that has lain undiscovered for four hundred years. Three passionate, remarkable women play a vital part in the long, violent history of the house. In the 18th Century there is Eleanor, forced into an unhappy marriage with a ruthless adventurer plotting to take over the property. In the 19th Century there is hot-headed Sophia, prepared to risk everything to save it. And in the 20th Century there is Emma, who loves Ortolans but refuses to sacrifice her career for its sake, even if it means letting it fall into ruins. But just when it seems all is lost, the house finally gives up its incredible secret...

Release date: January 30, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 400

Sample

In a tall oak tree overhanging the banks of a gently flowing river in the county of Sussex, an osprey was devouring the small carp it had caught in the shallows. The white feathers of its head and lower part of its body were dappled by rays of fierce June sunlight filtering through the green leaves. At frequent intervals, the bird lifted its head, listening to the unaccustomed noises that drifted across the still hot air. The sound of hammering was intermittent and disturbed the osprey more than did the steady rasping of a wood saw.

Down in the valley, the silvery tones of the Detcham village church clock chimed the midday hour and the disturbing noises ceased. The osprey settled, preening itself to the familiar sounds of running water, of sheep calling to their lambs and the metallic chatter of the ortolans nesting in the meadows.

‘’Tis lamentable hot!’ sighed Master Pylbeam, the carpenter as he, too, heard the midday chimes and, wiping the sweat from his forehead, settled himself in the shade cast by the north wall of the house. John, his eldest son and young Tom, sprawled beside him, leaving room for Master Merrymore, whose team of oxen, unhitched from their wagon, were grazing on the lush grass not far from the load of oak tree trunks they had carted this morning from the forest.

The two lads watched whilst their father unwound the cloth in which their mother had packed the midday repast – slices of pickled pork, corn bread and chunks of hard cheese. Near to hand stood a brown earthenware jug of ale. The youths had been working beside their father since an hour after daybreak and they were too concerned with the hunger gnawing at their stomachs to notice the leisurely approach of a stranger.

Master Hicks, the mason, was first to espy the young man strolling towards the half-built house upon which they had all been working. The stranger had a leather bag strung over one shoulder and his doublet was draped loosely over his other arm. It was obvious from the cut and style of his garments that this was no farm labourer; but curiously he was not mounted as a gentleman travelling across country would be.

‘Good-day to you!’ he said as he drew near enough for speech. Beneath his fringe of fair, curling hair, his green eyes smiled pleasantly at the group of workmen who were rising to their feet at the sound of his educated voice. ‘No, please be seated. I have no wish to disturb you. On the contrary, I shall join you if I may.’

He sprawled in the grass beside them, perfectly at ease where they were not.

‘I will introduce myself to you – Michael Darwin, at your service.’

‘This be Master Pylbeam, the carpenter and they two do be his sons, Tom and John. I be Alfred Hicks, master mason and he be Merrymore, the carter.’

‘It is my pleasure to meet you,’ said the young man. He nodded his head in the direction of the building. ‘I see that you are indeed master craftsmen. ’Tis a truly beautiful house in the making. I envy you your skills!’

There was such genuine admiration in his tone that the workmen relaxed and Tom, the youngest, grinned.

‘It be hot for walking, Sir, surelye,’ he said.

‘And that is for certain,’ said Michael Darwin. ‘I was told in the village that there is a river nearby where I intended to slake my thirst.’

Simultaneously, the three men pushed their flagons of ale towards the visitor. He drank eagerly, and with no pretence of reluctance, accepted the subsequent offer of food. His method of eating was fastidious and whilst remaining respectfully silent, the men were hard put to conceal their curiosity. Sensitive to their feelings, their uninvited guest proceeded to enlighten them as to the reason for his presence.

‘I am an artist,’ he said, adding with a smile, ‘or at least, that is what I hope to be when I have mastered my trade as well as you have mastered yours, Master Pylbeam and Master Hicks. I am making my way as best I can to Italy where I hope to find a tutor to teach me. Meanwhile, I am obliged to pursue my craft as best I can.’

He gave a short, merry laugh.

‘I have been following a group of travelling players, who are making their way to the south coast. Last Saturday we were at Henfield Common. Whilst the crowds gather to watch the tumblers and jugglers or the dancing bear, I draw likenesses of people in the hope that they will buy their portraits from me for a few groats. Since I am without other means of support, you might call me both artist and vagabond!’

‘I were at that there occasion in Henfield!’ said the carter. ‘It were axcellent. I justabout did enjoy myself although there must’a been two or three hundred people a-scrouging about. My missus was queered where they all did come from!’

Michael Darwin nodded.

‘There was a good crowd. I earned myself a few pence that day. Now I am on my way to Rye where the players will be performing again later in the summer.’

‘Rye be near the sea!’ Tom announced. ‘They do say the Spanish Frencheys will be coming across the sea and we shall be burnded and bloodshedded if us doant stop ’em.’

‘Spanish Frencheys?’ the artist repeated. ‘Surely they cannot be both!’

‘Frencheys be our name for foreigners in these parts,’ explained Master Pylbeam kindly. ‘If there’d be Frenchmen a-coming to kill us, we’d call ’em French Frencheys!’

‘I am grateful to you for the explanation,’ said the visitor, a look of amusement on his face. ‘I learn something new every day on my travels. It would interest me greatly to learn more about your trade, Master Hicks. I have seen many beautiful houses, but never yet in the making. You must tell me how ’tis accomplished.’

Seeing that the youth’s interest was genuine, the master mason rose to his feet.

‘Once the site is chosen and the plans agreed, Master Pylbeam selects the timbers for the sill plates, tie beams and bay posts. When these are in place, ’tis time for the wall plates, the purlins and rafters, then the roof. Most often we put tiles on but new squire – Sir Richard Calverley he be – chose for to have these slabs. They did come from the east side o’ Sussex – from a village called Horsham where stone’s quarried. They be more durable than our baked tiles but, though I’d no ought to say so, I do think the red tiles be purtier.’

‘Nevertheless, the slabs blend well with the surroundings,’ the young man said, viewing the roof with his artist’s eye.

‘The gen’leman who do be going to live here, he said justabout the same. He be unaccountable pleased with the house,’ the carpenter proffered. ‘He didn’t have no fancy to live in the old Grange up on the hill though he tol’ me t’was part of the gift to him from Her Majesty, the Queen. In all the four hundred acres she gifted him for some brave service he done for Her Majesty, this here dip in this here meadow is where he be choosing to live. His mistus fancied being able to sight the river yonder from the upstairs window and Squire’s fancy was took by the trees and all them dratted ortolans. That’s what the house is to be named – Ortolans House – after them pesky finches!’

‘’Tis the owner’s choice since he’s paying the bills!’ laughed the artist. ‘I dare say he is a country lover, happy, as I am, to be in this corner of Sussex far away from the big city. If he is a family man, he’ll not think London a healthy place to raise children.’

‘You’m come from Lunnon then?’ enquired Master Pylbeam whose curiosity had finally loosened his tongue.

‘I was born there!’ said Michael Darwin, running his hand appreciatively over a carved oak boss waiting to be mounted over the roof intersections. ‘I’d be living there now but for a disagreement with my father as to my future.’

Young Tom was staring at the artist with round eyes.

‘If you been a-living in Lunnon, Sur, then mebbe you seed the Queen?’ he asked.

The artist nodded. ‘Several times! My father often took me with him to court. I saw Her Majesty last on my seventeenth birthday – a year ago, that was – before I had made up my mind to leave home.’ He paused, noticing the boy’s simple homespun jerkin and breeches, and added thoughtfully: ‘I suppose it must seem strange to you that I should wish to leave a life of luxury for that of a vagabond. But my father and I were in great disharmony. He wished me to accompany him to fight the Spaniards and I – well, ever since I can remember, I have wanted nothing else but to be a great painter.’

‘Can you not be a great painter in Lunnon, then?’ asked the carpenter.

‘England is not the country in which to learn my trade,’ Michael Darwin said. ‘I need to go to Italy where painters like Signor Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael Santi lived. But the Pope lives in Italy and many Italians are Roman Catholics so my father would not hear of my going there. Thus I must make my own way, and since he would give me no money to pay my passage, I am obliged to earn it for myself.’

‘’Tis a strange way for a young gen’leman to earn a living!’ said John Merrymore. ‘Me – I’d leastways be building things that’ll be standing, surelye, long after I be in graveyard.’

‘Paintings last, too,’ argued Michael Darwin gently. ‘In our separate ways, we are both creators – or such I hope to be,’ he added modestly.

Across the meadows came the sound of the church clock chiming the hour.

‘’Tis time we was at work!’ said Master Pylbeam firmly. ‘Plasterer comes in marnin’ and we’ll not be ready for him this road.’

‘Perhaps I can be of some help?’ suggested the visitor, but the men would not hear of it. For all the young man called himself a vagabond, he was no labourer and his hands were white and smooth. It would not seem fit that he should even assist John who was already back at work applying the wet wadges of wattle and daub between the studs. Tom, the youngster, was mixing the dung, horsehair and clay for his elder brother to apply.

‘Then since you will not allow me to repay your hospitality with my labour, I will draw your likenesses for your amusement – and to pass the time!’ said Michael Darwin.

He opened the leather satchel he had flung on the ground and withdrew some sticks of charcoal and several sheets of rough white paper. Sitting himself on one of the tree trunks, he became engrossed in his drawings.

By the time the men paused for a rest, he had done a fair likeness of Master Pylbeam facing up a length of oak with his adze, the carpenter’s skill in the handling of this hoe-like implement such that the timber shone with a beautiful smoothness, the grain of the wood visible in flowing lines. He had drawn Tom and his brother; and the mason, who had been fixing the studs on either side of the gabled window-frames, making them ready to receive the wattle and daub. He had drawn John Merrymore, harnessing his oxen back between the heavy wooden shafts of the empty cart.

Each man in turn stared at his own likeness and that of the others in admiration. Their uncritical pleasure in the sketches was enhanced by the assurance of the artist that the portraits were theirs and might be taken home to show their families and to keep. The boy, Tom, quickly found his voice.

‘You be clever enough, surelye, to draw the Queen!’ he said, goggle-eyed.

‘Alas, I have had no such opportunity!’ smiled the artist, ‘although I have painted a picture once of Hampton Court – which is one of her palaces.’

‘Have you drawed Lunnon, then?’ persisted Tom. ‘I allus did want to go to Lunnon. My Dad was up at Smiffle Show adunnamany years ago, afore I were born, but I never did see Lunnon, nor never will I doubt!’

‘’Tis a big place!’ said Michael Darwin. ‘If I had more paper to spare, I could draw London for you. Then you could see how it looks.’

‘Can you not draw on the wall?’ Tom said eagerly. ‘Plasterer will be covering it in marnin and t’wouldn’t do no harm.’

‘You shouldn’t ought to be pestering the young gen’leman,’ broke in his father, giving the lad a none-too-gentle clip over his ear, but at the same time leading the way back into the house. ‘I doant see as how it would do no harm,’ he muttered, ‘leastways not if you’ve a fancy to make a drawing, Mr Darwin, Sir? But t’will be sundown soon and like as not ye’ve got to be going on your way?’

‘I’m in no hurry, Master Pylbeam, other than that I must find a roof under which I can sleep this night.’ The young man glanced at the pile of wood shavings in a corner of the room and his face broke into a smile.

‘We could come to an arrangement, Master Pylbeam. If you will allow me to stay here for the night, by morning, I will have young Tom’s picture of London completed for him. T’would save me the cost of a night’s lodging at an inn, and with the weather so warm, I’ll not be cold.’

The men were uneasy at the thought of this strange youth, who they did not doubt was of gentle birth, sleeping rough in the half-completed house. But by sundown, they had given way to persuasion and young Tom had been sent home to fetch food, a lantern and a blanket. The boy would have liked to remain with the artist but he was not permitted. Nevertheless he was awake at the sound of the first cock’s crow and for once foregoing his breakfast of porridge, ran the two miles to the new house to see how his picture was progressing.

Michael Darwin had covered a section of one wall with dark bold lines. He greeted the boy with a sigh.

‘’Tis not as I’d hoped, Tom. The surface is too bumpy. See here, the surface of the river – that’s the Thames by the way – it should be smooth, with ripples only where there is a wake from the boats and barges.’ Shaking his head, he pointed out the uneven lines of towers, the curves of the bridge where none should be.

‘Oh, but ’tis a prime picture, surelye!’ gasped Tom.

‘Perhaps … if I had had a good surface and my paints …’

‘Plasterer comes today. He’ll make you a prime surface. He be sing’lar good at plastering, so my Dad says. If master mason tells him to do it, he’ll do as he’s tolt.’

Michael Darwin looked longingly at his pigskin pack. Within were his treasured sable paintbrushes, his chamois-leather pouches of pigments. He needed but a few yolks of raw eggs to make paints and he would dearly love to feel the brushes in his hand again. When he had left home with only a sovereign in his pocket, he had believed, on his journey to the south coast, he might find a burgher or squire who would commission him to paint his wife or child, and in such manner, earn his passage to Italy. With little knowledge of the world beyond the protected environment of his home, he had discovered that work was not so easily come by for an eighteen-year-old, untrained, unknown artist. After several weeks, he had realized that if he were to provide himself with no more than victuals, he had no alternative but to join the travelling players and earn what little he could with his charcoal sticks. There had been no single opportunity to paint.

Now, despite the handicaps of the roughly applied daub and wattle, his picture had begun to take shape not only on the wall but in rich colours in his head – the lapis-lazuli blue he would mix with a pinch or two of black-lamp pigment to dull it for the sky; the malachite green toned with raw umber for the meadows leading down to the south banks of the Thames, yellow ochre for London Bridge and for the stonework of the Tower of London and the Palace of Westminster.

He pulled himself up sharply. Pigments were expensive to buy and once his meagre supply was used, he knew of no other place than London where he could renew his stock, even if he could afford to. He had vowed never to return to London until after he had made his way to Italy; that when next he saw his family, he would be a famous painter. There would be no opportunity to purchase further pigments until he reached Italy.

‘Well, young Tom, if Master Hicks agrees to allow me a little piece of wall to work on, and if you can bring me a fowl’s egg or two, I will paint you a small part of this drawing – the river, perhaps and London Bridge, the roof tops and spires of the city.’

At first, all the men were doubtful. What if the Squire were to visit them unexpectedly and find the plasterer wasting his time; and it would be wasted because, so the artist told them, he must apply his paint whilst the plaster was still wet and once dry, would remain there forever. They could all lose their jobs and their reputations for such foolery … and foolery it was since the painting was for no better reason than to let young Tom see London town as it was.

Nevertheless, it was finally agreed that a small section of wall between two beams could be freshly plastered for the artist, since this room was to be the library when it was completed and all its walls wood panelled. No-one, lest it be an unexpected visitor, would ever know the plaster behind the panelling had been painted.

By sundown, a second section of wall had been plastered. To please the child, the artist had painted in a tiny figure of Tom on the south bank of the Thames and now all the men wished to be included in the painting. They had watched with fascination the manner in which the young painter had carefully separated the white from the yolk of the eggs Tom had fetched for him, drying each yolk by passing it from one hand to the other until there was no trace of albumen left. On the surface of the smooth piece of board Master Pylbeam had provided, Michael Darwin had mixed the precious pigments painstakingly into the yolk, sometimes merging the resulting colours together to obtain a new shade of green or red or blue. They had watched, neglecting their own work, how easily and with such concentration he applied the paint to the damp plaster and with it, created a world he knew and which they were coming to know.

‘And ye’ll stay another night and put me in the picture tomorrow?’ each one pleaded. ‘The mistus, too, she askt to be put in. She did say to tell ’ee she’d be wearing her pink Sunday gown in London and if t’was hot like today, her’d be carrying her pink sunshade with the white tassles what belonged to her gurt-granny.’

The days became a week and then another week. Whenever the artist had completed a section of wall, the plasterer came from whichever room he was working in to prepare another. Mistress Pylbeam, accompanied by three little children, came to see the wall, bringing cherries, pastries, a bowl of curdy cheese and fresh-baked bread, and a further supply of hens eggs, so that the three toddlers could be in the picture.

Beyond caring now about his fast-dwindling supply of pigments, Michael Darwin worked all the daylight hours on his first fresco. He was happy as he had not been in months, and Italy, with its promise for the future, was momentarily forgotten. With cheerful compliance, he added even the carter’s oxen dragging a load of timber across the meadows leading down to the wharf at South Warke. He painted the Queen being carried to the Palace of Whitehall in the royal barge, waving her handkerchief to Mistress Pylbeam clothed in her pink Sunday dress. He painted Sir Francis Drake, mounted on a big white horse tossing a gold sovereign into young John’s buttoned-back felt cap.

‘And that is you, Master Armitage,’ he told the plasterer as he painted a tiny figure high up on the ramparts of the Tower of London, ‘when you were chosen by the Lord Chamberlain to repair the east tower!’

Finally, to please young Tom, he added his own figure standing on the prow of a large sailing-ship heading down the Thames, ‘t’wards Italy!’ as Tom insisted.

But even Michael Darwin’s wall fresco ceased to be the topic of conversation the night bonfires were lit high up on the South Downs. News reached the village and from thence the artist that well over a hundred Spanish ships had been sighted off Plymouth and that English ships had sailed under Sir Francis Drake’s command to intercept them.

For several days rumours were rife until finally by the end of the month, facts were confirmed by the vicar from his pulpit that the Spanish armada had been driven into the North Sea and the threat of invasion was over.

It was the moment, Michael Darwin decided, that he must move on if he were to reach Rye on foot to rejoin the group of travelling players. It would be safe now to cross the English Channel and although the beautiful house had almost come to feel his own, he had exhausted his supply of pigments and could paint no more.

It was of little consequence to him that he must leave his work behind him and that Master Pylbeam had already begun to cut the oak panels that would hide his painting from others’ gaze. His pleasure had come from the creating and he knew that he had not wasted his time. He had discovered how much he needed to learn if he were to be more than a simple amateur; that talent was not enough on its own to meet the standards he had set himself.

It was his fellow craftsmen – the master mason, the carpenter, the plasterer and finally the newly-arrived woodcarver – who were saddened, not by the young gentleman’s departure, although they liked him well and wished him well, but by the necessity to cover over the charming London scene in which they themselves had been immortalized.

‘’Tis hidden now!’ Master Pylbeam said to his sons as they fixed the last of the wood panels between the beams. ‘But doant you never disremember it’s there, young Tom.’ He noted the wistful expression in the boy’s eyes and added with a grin: ‘And you beant be lying if you tells your gran’chillun’ as how once you was pictured standing on the banks of the Thames awaving to the Queen!’

‘That I was, surelye!’ said young Tom, his face slowly resuming its customary grin.

Lady Calverley pulled the bell rope and summoned the footman.

‘Find out if the child is awake yet, Harry!’ she ordered. ‘If she is, tell Dora to bring her down to see me.’

‘Yes, milady! Dora asked for breakfast for the young lady an hour ago, but Cook said the tray came back untouched.’

Lady Calverley sighed.

‘Then tell Dora I want to see her before she brings Miss Eleanor down.’

As the footman departed, the elderly woman straightened her lace mob-cap and turned to regard her husband whose head was buried in the Morning Post.

‘I do hope the poor child is not ill, Walter!’ she exclaimed. ‘That long journey down from Scotland may have proved too much for her. She looks so thin and frail!’

‘Country air will put some colour into her cheeks!’ muttered Sir Walter, who had not greeted with enthusiasm his wife’s arrangement to have her unknown godchild to stay with them at Ortolans for six months. He had glimpsed the girl in the hallway when their neighbours, the Howells, had delivered her last night. Half-hidden by an over-large black travelling cloak, the child had looked scared out of her wits as she bobbed him a curtsy and scuttled upstairs after the maid.

Frequently bored and frustrated by the infirmities of old age, Sir Walter had become something of a recluse since their only surviving daughter had married a Frenchman and gone to live abroad. Their only son, William, was absent on a prolonged Grand Tour. At least the house was peaceful, he told himself, and he had his wife’s undiluted attentions. Now he was obliged to put up with a strange child around the place!

‘As soon as Eleanor is well enough, I must have her fitted for some new clothes!’ his wife was saying. ‘I know the McCores are strict Calvinists but really, Walter, you would have been as horrified as I to see the garments Dora unpacked last night. All Eleanor’s dresses are shapeless and made in some horrible black, grey or dark brown colour – and the child only fifteen!’

‘Didn’t look it! Skinny little scarecrow!’ her husband grunted, returning to his newspaper.

There was a knock on the door and the young girl Lady Calverley had hired to look after her visiting god-daughter came into the drawing-room. Only two years older than her new charge, Dora Pylbeam was nevertheless the eldest daughter in a family of thirteen, and well accustomed to children. She was rosy-cheeked, cheerful, plump and good-natured, and Lady Calverley thought her the right choice as maid for Eleanor since, being so close in age, she could also serve as companion to her. For the past month, her own maid, Molly, had been training Dora in her duties.

‘Well, Dora, I understand Miss Eleanor has not eaten her breakfast. Is she not well?’

‘’Tis my opinion she’s no more’n queered, milady!’

Lady Calverley, who was familiar with the Sussex dialect, concealed a smile.

‘What has she to be frightened of, Dora? You’ve not been telling her the house is haunted, I hope!’

‘No, milady, I’ve not done no such thing. Her be just finding things a bit strange, surelye. She ain’t had no maid afore – and the bed, she’d not never seen a four-poster. Seems as how all her can say is: “Oh, look! Dora!” at this and that, admiring like. I thought as how she were sleepin’ but when I went in, she was in that twill night-shirt kneeling on the winder-seat, a-lookin’ out at the garden.’

‘No harm in that, Dora!’ Lady Calverley said gently.

‘No, milady, ’ceptin’ her could catch her death of cold, but though her hops back into bed fast as ever I tolt her, her kept askin’ me: “What are those blue flowers called, Dora?” And when I tells her thems bluebells and if’n the sun stays shining, we can go down to the wood and pick as many as her wants, you’d have thought as how it was Christmas, milady. She were like a bairn with a golden guinea when I tolt her she could throw grain to them pesky white doves she espied on the roof! “It’s all so purty, so purty!” her keeps saying.’

‘You must remember, Dora, Miss Eleanor has spent nearly all her life in a city,’ Lady Calverley said. ‘She is unaccustomed to country life. Since she is not ill, you may bring her down as soon as she is dressed.’

Though Lady Calverley had written on many occasions to Tabitha and Hamish McCore asking if her god-daughter might come on a visit, the Scottish couple had been unwilling to make the necessary arrangements for their ward. Walter was of the opinion that they disapproved of the Calverleys who, because they had title and wealth and were not Calvinists, they probably considered to be dissolute! There was little Joan Calverley could do other than to write regularly to her god-daughter and send her gifts on her birthday and at Christmas time. She was convinced that the girl’s neatly-written replies were censored, for the language was stilted and the spelling too perfect for so young a child. Eleanor’s day-to-day existence, by all accounts, was quite unnaturally restricted – prayers, lessons, sewing, embroidery, more prayers, and her only outings were to prayer meetings at the kirk.

Although Lady Calverley went regularly to church every Sunday and on holy days, and had brought up all her children very firmly in the Christian faith, she believed that their childhood should be as carefree and happy as circumstances allowed. It was a policy she had never regretted, more especially when three of her four daughters died prematurely – one of diphtheria in childhood, one in her twenties of consumption and the third in childbirth. Now that the fourth, Catherine, was living so far away from home, she renewed her attempts to persuade the McCores to allow little Eleanor to visit them.

Fortuitously, the Calverleys were on excellent terms with their neighbours, the Howells, who lived at The Grange up on the hill to the north of Detcham. On learning of Lady Calverley’s interest in her god-daughter, they offered to bring Eleanor back with them when they next returned from their estate in Scotland. One of their children, Jane, Mrs Howell said, was of the same age as Eleanor and the two girls could enjoy each other’s society during the summer.

Unable to produce any valid excuse for a further refusal of their permission, the McCores had allowed Eleanor to accept the invitation.

The door of the big drawing-room opened, and the girl came into the room. She made her curtsy and with head still bent, waited for her godmother to speak. Dressed in a drab brown shapeless garment, her fair hair scraped back in a tight bun at the back of her head, she looked like a child from the poor-house.

‘I hear from Dora that you have been admiring the garden, my dear!’ Lady Calverley said encouragingly. ‘I myself am a very keen gardener and so it pleases me to hear that you share my interest.’

At last, the drooped head was raised, and Lady Calverley found herself staring into a pair of violet-blue eyes which looked enormous in the pale, thin face. The girl appeared to be nearer twelve than fifteen – and was far too thin, she thought anxiously.

‘There are so many flowers, ma’am!’ the girl murmured. ‘They are even growing on the house!’

Lady Calverley smiled.

‘That is because I like the scent of roses at my bedroom window. Now you must call me Godmother, my dear, and this is your Uncle Walter who you met last night.’

The eager expression was gone as once again, the girl’s head drooped as she curtsyed.

‘Now, my dear, I want you to enjoy your little holiday with us. You are therefore to do exactly as you please except that I shall insist upon you eating properly. You are far too thin! When you have had