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The realisation that she was not just a village girl, despite her homely clothes and basket of apples, seemed to pique the stranger’s interest. ‘Well, I’m Rokeby.

If you could see your way to tuning my piano-forte, I would be gratified,’ he said stiffly, as if unwilling to be beholden to anyone.

With the sound of his name, Leonora knew that the gamekeeper was right.

The Earl had indeed returned. A ripple of excitement and alarm shivered through her veins; what difference would this make to the predictable pace of village life?

His gaze alighted on her blackberry-stained fingers and she slipped them into the pockets of her pelisse.

Disconcerted at appearing such a country maid, Leonora nevertheless met his sardonic expression with a frank, unembarrassed face. She was used to being Queen Bee in Hasterleigh and was not going to be intimidated. ‘It might take me a long afternoon. When do you need it to be tuned?’

‘Tomorrow?’ He seemed impatient.

‘The heir to my father’s estate is due tomorrow. But I could manage the following day?’

‘I’m on my way to a friend’s estate. I will be absent for a few days but my factotum, Stowe, will show you where the instrument is. Would two of the clock suit you?’

Leonora nodded and picked up her basket, which seemed to have grown heavier. Rokeby was about to rap on the roof of the carriage to tell his coachman to drive on when he turned to catch her eye again. ‘That mud, was it my doing?’ He gestured to the drying streaks splashed up her skirts.

‘You were going rather fast, my lord, and a wheel hit a rut in the lane.’

A sudden smile broke his austere countenance and he tipped his hat. ‘My apologies, Miss Appleby. Perhaps I should be more careful in future.’ And with that the horses sprang forward, the blind went down and he was gone.

* * *

The following dawn was overcast and had the chill of autumn.

Leonora had not slept well, troubled by the day ahead which marked the fissure in her life when her childhood home would be hers no longer and a new, less carefree, stage would begin.

Mr Lockwood was expected by the afternoon.

He was travelling some thirty miles from Mayfair, which should take the best part of the day.

Cook and Nanny P were busy in the kitchens and Jack Clegg, their general manservant, was preparing the dining room for the evening meal.

Daniel, the gardener, had brought in an armful of late-blooming roses, Michaelmas daisies and some rare pink Mexican dahlias, the tubers of which her mother had managed to charm from the head gardener of the royal estate at Kew.

Leonora decided to arrange the flowers herself for a large vase on the dining room table and one for the hall.

She walked quickly into the garden to collect some more greenery to bulk the arrangements out.

Busy cutting ferns in the boggy garden by the stream, she was hailed by Charlotte who swung through the gate from the adjoining Vicarage garden.

The girl’s sweet face was downcast. Leonora straightened up from the fernery and joined her as she walked towards the Manor, asking, ‘Why so dismal?’

Charlotte paused to look up at the house and said, ‘I can’t bear to think of you no longer living here. It’s so encouraging to know you’re just a garden away.’

‘The Lodge is only a few hundred paces farther. You’ll still be able to visit whenever you like.

’ Leonora smiled at the young woman. She had known her all her life from when she herself was eight, and had been caught up in the excitement as the news flared round the village that a foundling had been left on the Vicarage steps.

Leonora’s mother had died the previous year, leaving her alone with a distant father who immured himself in his library; the miraculous advent of this baby was somehow connected in her own childish imagination with a longing for a sister.

The unknown baby also brought a different dream of family to Reverend Mildmay and his wife Sarah. They had not been blessed with children and were long reconciled to their state, but when this newborn baby was delivered to their door, it seemed to have been by the Divine stork itself.

Charlotte Blythe was her name, given her by an unseen hand who had pinned it on a card to her swaddling cloth.

Now, at eighteen, Leonora thought her as pretty as a picture.

The two young women stood in the Manor gardens, both with their different thoughts.

Charlotte was disconsolate, gazing back at the house.

‘I hope the new heir will not change it. It’s perfect as it is. ’

Leonora took her arm and led her to a stone seat in the shade of an old yew tree. ‘Lottie, I’ve been wondering if Mama Mildmay has mentioned presenting you for a Season in London?’

Charlotte looked surprised and not a little alarmed by the change in conversation. ‘No. I don’t think I have the breeding or they the funds for such a thing. They’re only my foster parents, after all.’ She grasped her friend’s hand. ‘You haven’t been presented, Leonora, and you don’t mind, do you?’

‘Well, when I was your age my father was unwell and I could not leave him. I was also going to marry Captain Worth, don’t forget.

But then he was killed.’ The baldness of those words and what they meant never failed to catch her breath.

How could someone so young and full of life be snuffed out?

Leonora sighed. ‘So I am too old now for such thoughts.’

‘You seem happy enough.’

‘Oh, I am content. Happiness can be found for a while, at least if you venture everything, but I’ve come to consider contentment as the greater art.

I have my music, and Nanny P, and you, and others in the village as friends.

’ She took her hand. ‘But for you, so young, I’d hope a chance of a wider life, to marry and have your own family.

And there is nowhere with more choice of fine young men than London in the Season. ’

Charlotte had turned to look Leonora in the eye. ‘I know the Captain was cruelly taken from you, but you can’t mean you are resigned to not marrying?’

‘I have enjoyed helping to manage the Manor estate all these years since my father’s death. It is the loss of that that pains me more.’

Charlotte’s face turned mischievous. ‘Reverend Mildmay’s new curate is looking for a wife. You know he’s the son of Sir Roderick Fopling.’

Leonora gave a shout of laughter. ‘Lottie, you can’t be serious! The best that can be said for Richard Fopling is that he is as unalike his sporting papa as anyone could be!’

‘Oh, I know. What a bore Sir Roderick is. Always in his hunting clothes, mud-splattered and braying about his prowess in the field. He has no other talk!’ Charlotte’s face had fallen at the memory of how many meals she had sat through at the Vicarage as Sir Roderick talked at headache-inducing volume of his latest triumphs.

Their heads touched as they laughed. Leonora stood up. ‘Come, I have to get on with the flower arrangements. You are joining us tonight at six, are you not?’ She picked up her basket of ferns and some trailing ivy and they headed back to the house.

‘Yes, it’s very kind of you to include the Reverend and Mama Mildmay. And Curate Fopling too.’

‘Well, I thought it useful for everyone to get to know the new owner of the Manor and for him to meet his neighbours.’

‘I hope Nanny P will also be there.’ Charlotte was handing Leonora the best pieces of trailing ivy to finish off the arrangement.

Leonora was firm in her response. ‘She’s the closest I have to a mama, and I don’t care a jot if Mr Lockwood objects to sitting down with my old nurse.’

Charlotte recalled what she had wished to tell her friend.

With an animated voice she said, ‘Oh, the latest gossip! Everything comes to the Vicarage you know. The Earl of Rokeby has been seen in his black chaise. Well, they think it’s him.

The blind is always down but he has this great black-eyed dog which sticks its head out to survey the world and frighten the children. ’

Leonora had begun to put the flowers into the vases when she looked up. ‘Oh, I’ve actually spoken to him.’

‘What? You should have told me! What’s he like?’

‘Well, he looks as if he’s been very damaged by the war. He has an eye patch.’

‘No! Did he say anything to you?’ Charlotte was immediately intrigued.

‘His coach was going so fast in Orchard Lane it splattered me with more mud than even the young pigs manage when they escape to the orchard. He didn’t seem in the least concerned.’

‘How inconsiderate! Surely he apologised?’

‘He was more concerned to ask me if I knew of a piano-forte tuner.’

‘You didn’t offer to tune his, did you?’ Charlotte’s eyes were round with astonishment.

‘Actually, I did. But don’t trouble yourself, Lottie. I’ll take Nanny P as a chaperone. Anyway, the Earl will still be away.’

‘But it’s complicated to do. I’ve watched you with yours. It’ll take you all day.’

‘I so like piano-fortes. They have different characters and I’m happy to get to know a new one.’

* * *

The evening did not get off to a good start.

The Reverend and Mrs Mildmay arrived early, hurried there by Charlotte who wanted to help her friend.

She was sensitive to the fact that Leonora, without the benefit of parent, spouse or sibling, was due to entertain the assembled guests and this unknown interloper who would claim her home and everything she had known.

Curate Fopling was delayed, having been sent by the Reverend to administer spiritual comfort to a parishioner crushed by a cow.

The hostess too was late and still dressing so Mrs Priddy, in her best navy brocade gown, showed them into the drawing room with the windows facing the garden, and offered refreshments.

Mr Lockwood, the unknown heir, had been due in the afternoon but was yet to arrive.