‘I hope that you are settled in at Midwinter Royal House, Miss Odell,’ Deborah said now with a friendly smile. ‘It is barely three weeks, is it not? I always find that it takes time to accustom oneself to a new place.’

Rachel agreed. ‘I hope,’ she added, ‘that my parents will permit me to become settled in the Midwinter villages. We are forever on the move, you know.’

Deborah’s face lit up. ‘Of course! Your father is the prodigiously famous antiquary Sir Arthur Odell, is he not? We are most impressed to have such eminent neighbours.’

‘Impressed and not a little excited to discover what he will dig up,’ Lady Marney added unexpectedly. She gave Rachel a shy, sideways smile, taking her eyes off the road for a second. ‘No doubt it is all old hat for you, Miss Odell, but we have never experienced an excavation in the Midwinter villages before, though everyone has been wondering what is in those mounds for time over mind.’

Rachel laughed. ‘I cannot promise that it will be vastly exciting, Lady Marney, but I am sure that my parents will turn up something of interest. They usually do.’

‘I expect that you have travelled with your parents to the most extraordinary places, Miss Odell,’ Olivia Marney said encouragingly. ‘Egypt, Greece, Italy…’

Rachel sighed. It was always the same. Everyone found her life tremendously exciting except she herself. ‘Yes, I have been to all of those places and more, Lady Marney, although the recent hostilities have rather put an end to the more exotic assignments.’

The sisters laughed together. ‘My dear Miss Odell,’ Deborah said, ‘you sound quite jaded by the whole experience!’

Catching Lady Marney’s smile, Rachel realised that Olivia was not standoffish, but merely shy. She could not wonder at it. Having a sister as ebullient as Deborah Stratton would be enough to cast most siblings into the shade. Yet it was odd, for the widowed Mrs Stratton could only be the same age as Rachel herself, whilst Olivia was a good few years the elder, and married to a viscount into the bargain. Rachel would have expected her to have more address.

Deborah patted Rachel’s hand consolingly. ‘Never mind, Miss Odell. We are pleased to have you amongst us. I think that you might become quite a curiosity! There is not that much society in the Midwinter villages, you know, and even as far afield as Woodbridge…’ She pulled an expressive face.

‘My sister is more accustomed to the sophisticated delights of Bath, Miss Odell,’ Lady Marney said drily. ‘I fear she finds country life very tame.’

‘I do not!’ Deborah objected. ‘I have lived in Midwinter Mallow for fully three years without being in the slightest bit bored, Liv.’

‘I hear that life in the Midwinter villages is likely to become much more exciting,’ Olivia said. ‘Ross, my husband, said that the Duke of Kestrel is paying one of his rare visits to Midwinter and has brought some of his family and friends with him.’

‘Lud, a house full of rakes and adventurers,’ Deborah said. ‘That will cause a flutter in the country dovecotes!’

Rachel imagined that the lively Mrs Stratton would find a man like Cory Newlyn vastly entertaining. She could picture Cory regaling Deborah with tales of his outrageous expeditions, smiling into her eyes whilst he spun tall stories about buried treasure. She had always viewed Cory’s conquests with an indulgent smile before, but now she felt slightly sick. She wondered whether it was the jolting of the gig that was responsible for her queasiness.

A moment later the carriage swept through the gates of Saltires and started its journey through the lush parkland that surrounded the house. Rachel looked about her with interest. Although she had visited Lady Sally a couple of times already, she had always walked from Midwinter Royal and the path along the river did not afford the same view of the beamed Jacobean hall as this long approach did. She gave a little sigh.

‘Oh, it is pretty, is it not?’

‘Vastly pretty,’ Deborah said, smiling, ‘and very old. It is the dower house for Kestrel Court, you know, Miss Odell. Lady Sally and her husband named it Saltires when the Duke leased it to them on their marriage. Justin Kestrel and Stephen Saltire were the greatest of friends, you know.’

Rachel had wondered how Lady Sally Saltire came to be living so close to Kestrel Court, for the tall, twisted chimneys of the larger house could just be seen beyond the trees of the deer park.

‘One would have thought it unconscionably awkward,’ Deborah continued, ‘for the Duke and Lord Stephen were both suitors for Lady Sally’s hand in marriage. When she chose Lord Stephen it was rumoured that there would be a duel for her hand!’ Deborah’s eyes sparkled. ‘How romantic is that?’

‘Not very,’ Olivia said crushingly. ‘The whole story was only a hum-Justin Kestrel would scarce have offered his old friend a home afterwards if they had fallen out over a lady, would he?’

Deborah’s face fell. ‘I suppose not.’

‘The Duke and Lady Sally have not rekindled their romance since her widowhood?’ Rachel ventured, hoping that Olivia would not think her prying. ‘If not, that might suggest there was no truth in the tale.’

‘No, they have not,’ Deborah said. She looked dissatisfied. ‘I do not believe they see each other very often, for Justin Kestrel travels a great deal and Lady Sally is for the main part settled in London. Oh, it was such a romantic story and now the two of you have utterly deflated it-and me into the bargain!’

Olivia laughed. ‘Romance, my dear Deborah, is a sadly overrated commodity,’ she said, unconsciously echoing Rachel’s comments to Cory earlier. ‘Far better to aim for a comfortable match and a settled life.’

Rachel smiled. ‘I had heard that Lady Sally was once a prodigiously famous beauty. Has she never wished to remarry?’

‘No.’ It was Olivia who answered. ‘With wealth and position and good society, why should she need to marry?’

‘Well,’ Deborah began, ‘she might need a man to-’

‘Deb!’

Olivia shot her sister a warning look, which Rachel intercepted. She almost laughed. It seemed that Olivia had been worried that her sister would make some unguarded remark about a woman’s need for male companionship. Such a comment was scarcely proper in front of a young unmarried lady, but Rachel wryly suspected that she would be unlikely to be shocked. It was Lady Marney and Mrs Stratton who would no doubt be horrified if only they knew the education that Rachel had been subject to from an early age. It did not matter that the frescoes and sculptures of bacchanalian pleasures and erotic excess had been unearthed by her parents and were supposedly classical; they were still explicit and shocking and had left the young Rachel Odell in open-mouthed wonder. She could remember clearly the day that Cory Newlyn had come across her almost standing on her head in an attempt to work out whether a certain position indulged in by two figures in a fresco was physically possible…

Still, it was better to allow Lady Marney her illusions, Rachel thought. She was enough of a curiosity as it was, without shocking the ladies further, and she knew her unorthodox upbringing would give some people a disgust. It was a great pity, when all she had ever wished for was to lead an ordinary life. She smiled gently and said nothing.

‘I suppose it is too late for Lady Sally now,’ Deborah said with a sigh, ‘for she must be all of three and thirty if she is a day. Far too old to be contemplating remarriage!’

The gig drew up outside the main door and a liveried footman immediately appeared to help the ladies descend. Tucking her copy of The Enchantress, which she had borrowed from Lady Sally’s extensive library, under her arm, Rachel followed Olivia and Deborah inside.

The reading group was a very select affair. Only six of them sat around the polished walnut table in Lady Sally Saltire’s library. In addition to Deborah Stratton and Olivia Marney there was Lady Sally herself, Helena Lang, the vicar’s daughter, and Lily Benedict, a dark beauty married to a gentleman who lived retired.

‘Well, my dears,’ Lady Sally said when they had all discussed the first couple of chapters of The Enchantress, ‘we all suspect that Sir Philip Desormeaux will get more than he bargained for from his advertisement, but then any gentleman who advertises for a wife deserves to be put in his place…’

She smiled at them all conspiratorially and it felt to Rachel as though she was drawing them all into the warmth by the sheer force of her personality. From the top of her elegant head to the tips of her kid slippers, Lady Sally Saltire exuded the sort of style that left Rachel in open-mouthed envy. Lady Sally was sleek, elegant and effortlessly modish. Nor was it simply a matter of dress. Rachel reflected that Olivia Marney, for example, was fashionable but rather lifeless. Sally was vivacious, with all the style conferred through being a rich and supremely elegant society widow.

‘I always think that a man who needs to advertise for a wife must have something seriously wrong with him,’ Helena Lang said. Her tone suggested that she would never give such a poor-spirited fellow the time of day. ‘After all, there are plenty of dreadful men who still manage to attach a wife without having to resort to the newspapers, so how bad would one need to be to advertise? It is quite shocking when one comes to think of it.’

There was general laughter at this.

‘It is true that appalling men can marry quite easily if they are rich and titled,’ Lily Benedict agreed. ‘One sees it all the time.’

Lady Sally rang the bell for the servant. ‘More refreshments, ladies? I have another project that I wish to discuss with you all before you leave.’

Two footmen brought in trays laden with cake, tea and lemonade. Rachel accepted a glass of the latter for the day was very warm and it was quite stuffy in Lady Sally’s library. Though the casement windows were open to allow in a thread of breeze, the low, plaster ceilings seemed to trap the heat.