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to a stop on the freshly raked gravel – Lady Beatrice, Lord Charlwood’s widow, had arrived once more from London.
    And my heart skipped a beat.
    She fascinated me, with her short dark hair and her daring clothes. Last time we’d seen her she’d been inblack for her husband’s funeral, but now she was wearing a cream hat and a lovely swirling silk coat in shades of blue and gold. The servants all gossiped about her during supper and Betsey the kitchen maid reckoned Lady Beatrice must find it stiflingly dull here in the country after London.
    ‘Perhaps Her Ladyship feels closer to her dead husband here,’ said Mrs Burdett. ‘And that’s enough disrespectful talk about your betters, Betsey, my girl.’
    Poor Lord Edwin, he was sick the day after his birthday tea. Robert muttered that the Duchess had probably poisoned him, but Cook pointed out that was unlikely, since the man who would be next in line if the young heir to the dukedom died was, she said, an even worse prospect than Lord Edwin.
    ‘Why?’ asked Nell.
    ‘He’s a distant cousin, and a bad lot, you mark my words,’ Cook said darkly. ‘They say he’s got business interests in America.’ In Cook’s eyes this clearly amounted to a criminal offence.
    ‘He must be well-born, though,’ put in Betsey.
    Cook shrugged. ‘I’ve heard his father was an English lord. But this lord brought shame on his family by marrying a common Frenchwoman, and then the two of them got divorced in France – a fine old set-up.’ Cook had a particular aversion to the French, ever since the Duchess had started ordering her to put some more of the newly fashionable French dishes in her daily menus. So that was the distant cousin dealt with, and duly condemned.
    Anyway, the ailing Lord Edwin had to be driven offhome with his ever-anxious mother, but the other guests stayed on enjoying themselves, and during the beautiful summer days that followed I watched for Lady Beatrice. She played tennis on the lawns, wearing a long white skirt and lace-trimmed white blouse, or drove her friends out into the country lanes in her gleaming blue motorcar. And I didn’t think she looked like a grieving widow at all.
    I watched her whenever I could, because I thought she was beautiful.
    In November that year the war ended at last, and there was a thanksgiving service at the village church, which all the staff were given permission to attend. I’d heard from Mrs Baxter that Will was safe, though not home yet; but I was so sad for all the men who never would return home, and I was sad too because I was beginning to realise that I would probably never see my Mr Maldon again.
    I tried each night once the lamps were out to remember his face and his voice, but my memories of him were fading. And what if I did some day meet him? What could I expect of him? Nothing, except the chance to thank him for the kindness he’d shown my poor mother and me in Oxford that day, and to thank him for securing me this job at the Hall, for he’d been right; I was safe here, even if I was lonely. And I did feel that Mrs Burdett, as he’d said, watched out for me.
    I was sixteen the following spring. By then Robert had fixed up a crystal set in the servants’ hall, and he wouldfiddle around with it each night until, after a lot of noisy hissing, he would get some modern music. Mrs Burdett was disapproving at first; she still loved to listen to her Caruso records, but one evening a tune on Robert’s crystal set caught her fancy – ‘Rockabye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody’
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and she went quite pink with pleasure when Robert caught her by the hand and did a few smart steps with her.
    ‘Come on, Mrs B,’ he coaxed. ‘You love it, really. And you dance like one of the chorus girls at The Gaiety.’
    I loved the music, and I listened to Robert with almost painful concentration. ‘What’s The Gaiety?’ I asked him afterwards.
    He winked at me. ‘It’s a theatre, little Sophie. A fancy theatre in London,