‘How did you get here while it’s still high tide?’

He laughed. ‘It isn’t still high tide. It’s high tide again. I have a little boat that I keep tied up on the shore. My sister, Sarah, insisted on coming with me. She’s gone in search of Jarvis. I warn you, she has designs on him.’

‘You mean she’s in love with him?’ Meryl asked, dismayed. ‘In that case maybe I should back off.’

‘Forget it. Jarvis has known Sarah most of his life, and if he’d wanted to marry her he’d have done it by now. But their only link is horses. He loves riding. She owns a riding stable, does a bit of breeding. The trouble is, she’s fixated on bloodlines, in people as well as horses. The Ashtons are “good family”.’

‘I’m glad you told me,’ she said, amused.

‘Yes, you’d never have known that I’m “the Honourable Ferdinand” would you?’

‘I wouldn’t have called you honourable in a million years.’

He grinned. ‘Well, I’m officially honourable. The Ashtons have married the Larnes before, and now Sarah thinks nobody else has any right to him. But love? No way. Just watch out in case she poisons your tea.’

‘If he doesn’t do it first.’

‘He improves on acquaintance.’

‘So I should hope,’ she said darkly.

‘You don’t think you might get to like him?’

‘Not if I live to be a hundred!’

‘That’s funny. He said the same thing about you.’

‘I don’t know why I’m even talking to you,’ she said, exasperated. ‘If I’d drowned it would have been your fault.’

‘But you didn’t. It was fate bringing you to us so that you could marry Jarvis, hand over impossible amounts of cash and save this place from falling down. Do you have impossible amounts of cash, by the way?’

‘Totally impossible,’ she assured him.

‘I thought so. I looked you up. You really are Craddock Winters’s daughter, aren’t you? Oil wells, etc.’

‘But he doesn’t believe that. He thinks I’m a journalist.’

‘Not any more. I’ve put him right. Jarvis needs a great deal of money, quickly.’

‘But if he doesn’t want to take mine, we’re no further forward,’ she pointed out. ‘And you still have to persuade me to waste even five minutes on a man who dislikes me almost as much as I dislike him. It’s a small point, but I thought I’d mention it.’

‘You’re right,’ he agreed solemnly. ‘One should always pinpoint the problems at the start. Then we can proceed to Stage Two-solving them.’

‘Don’t build your hopes up, Ferdy. As soon as my car’s been located and I’ve recovered my stuff I’m-’

She’d meant to say ‘I’m out of here,’ but she was standing by the French door with the sun on her face and the words died. All the sensations that had assailed her on the balcony returned with greater force. Moving automatically, she pushed open the door and found herself in the garden.

Here everything grew in profusion. Someone had tried to create a kind of order, but in a desultory fashion, so that there was none of the precision neatness that could make a garden appear soulless. Again there was the blessed sense of peace, and the realisation that she had never known it before today.

She began to wander along a path, slightly overgrown but passable. It twisted and turned and she followed it eagerly, stopping once or twice to look at the trees laden with blossoms. After the previous night’s storm everything was dripping. A large drop of water went down her neck, but she only laughed.

Ferdy trotted after her, a few feet away, watching her every move.

‘It ought to be better kept than this,’ he said, ‘but it’s a big job. And I’ve got plans.’

‘You’re the gardener?’

‘I do a bit, to make up to Jarvis for falling behind with my rent. I live in one of his cottages, inland.’

‘Do you do anybody else’s gardening?’

‘No, I’m a painter by trade. I just potter about this place to save him having to pay a gardener.’

‘And he doesn’t mind you getting behind with the rent? That doesn’t sound like the charmer I met.’

‘We were at school together. I probably know him better than anyone.’

‘And you thought he’d take to the idea of a strange woman?’

‘Not right away. He’s a very proud man. But if you’d only-ah, well, never mind. You blew it, but I forgive you.’

‘I-? You have an almighty cheek, do you know that?’

‘I’m famed for it.’

They squabbled amiably as he showed her around the rest of the garden. It was impossible to be seriously annoyed with him, and the bright spring morning made her feel too good for annoyance anyway. She told him about her running argument with Larry Rivers, and Ferdy was highly entertained.

‘I think I’d like you to be Lady Larne,’ he said at last.

‘Thus saving your rent-free cottage?’ she supplied, reading him without trouble.

‘Exactly,’ he said, unashamed. ‘Don’t be in a hurry to leave. Give us a chance. You might like us. And Larne is beautiful.’

‘Yes, it is,’ she said slowly. ‘Last night it tried to kill me. This morning-it’s amazing. I can’t believe it’s the same place.’

‘It’s got more moods than you can think of. Stay at least a few days.’

She listened to the quiet again. It was made up of soft sounds, like birdsong and the muted roar of the sea. And if she went back? Noise, the smell of gasoline, fighting. Ferdy was shrewd enough to say nothing, watching her intently.

At last she gave a sigh, like someone reluctantly leaving a dream. ‘You’re forgetting,’ she said, ‘that my “fiancé” is about to boot me out.’

‘But that’ll take time,’ Ferdy said. ‘You can’t leave until your car is found.’

They smiled like conspirators, and Ferdy drew her arm through his.

‘Let’s go in to breakfast,’ he said.

As they neared the house Meryl saw Jarvis waiting for them, and had a slight shock. Coming upon him unexpectedly, without time to hoist her prejudices into place, she realised that there really was something to be said for him after all. It wasn’t his height, or the width of his shoulders. It wasn’t even the proud set of his head, or his air of authority; nor the way he was looking at her, like a man willing to admire but keeping his powder dry.

It was none of these, and all of them. And then it was something extra that would have made him stand out in any group of men. If they’d met at any other time she knew she would have found him interesting.

He approached and spoke with formal courtesy. ‘Miss Winters, I hope you slept well last night.’

‘Fine, thank you,’ she said, stretching the truth a bit. This wasn’t the moment to mention turnips.

‘I must say,’ he continued, ‘you look better in those clothes than what you were wearing when we last met.’

Into her mind there flashed the memory of her own moment of nakedness the night before. Quickly she raised her eyes to his face, and heard his swift intake of breath as he read her involuntary message. ‘You mean-your bathrobe,’ she said.

‘Of course,’ he said curtly. ‘I’m sorry it was too large-’

It was the wrong thing to say. The memory was there between them again. He stepped back as though scorched.

A woman appeared and Jarvis hastened to introduce her as Sarah Ashton. Meryl judged Sarah to be in her late twenties, with fair hair and a fine aristocratic face, not pretty but handsome. Ferdy had said she ‘had designs’ on Jarvis, and certainly she was looking at Meryl with blatant dislike. But she greeted her politely and stood aside to let her pass into the room. Then she took the place at table next to Jarvis and closest to the teapot.

‘Perhaps you would prefer coffee?’ she asked of Meryl.

‘I like English tea.’

‘Oh, really? Do you drink it very much in America?’

Meryl’s lips twitched. ‘Well, America isn’t on the moon, you know.’

Sarah presided over breakfast, assuming the role of lady of the house, terrifyingly gracious to Meryl, treating her like any casual visitor. If Meryl had been easily intimidated she would have gone down before this onslaught, but she had a determination that matched Sarah’s any day.

She soon sensed that Jarvis was uneasy, and it puzzled her that he shouldn’t have regained his poise. An English lord must surely be enough of a man of the world to cope, even with this situation. She addressed a pleasant remark to him. He answered politely but didn’t follow through, and Sarah steamed in to take over.

It was taking all Jarvis’s self-control to feign indifference. As Meryl had expected, a night’s sleep had restored his temper and he’d been prepared to meet her in a moderately friendly spirit. He would help find her car, and send her on her way with no hard feelings.

That was before he’d talked to Ferdy.

The discovery that this woman was as wealthy as she claimed had appalled him. If he became friendly now she really would think him a fortune-hunter, switching on his smiles for the sake of her money. He groaned inwardly as he recalled some of the things he’d said last night.

He’d watched her with Ferdy in the garden, deep in animated conversation. There was something magnificent about her. And he’d called her passably pretty. How her green eyes had glittered with indignation.

There could be no peace with such a woman, and no man in his right mind would want her around, disrupting his life. But she was splendid, like fire. And as dangerous.

He had tried not to dwell on the memory of her nakedness, but now he abandoned virtue and dwelt on it with pleasure. How could a woman be so slim and yet so beautifully rounded at the same time? Long, elegant thighs, delicately flared hips, a waist so tiny that his hands could almost have met around it-

‘I beg your pardon?’ he said hastily, realising that Sarah had spoken to him.

‘Do you want some more toast, Jarvis?’

‘No,’ he said hurriedly. ‘No, thank you.’