She did, and buzzed down her window too, sticking her sharp little elfin face out to feel the air, which, now that the rain had cleared, was fresh and soft, full of that just laundered smell of soaking wet grass upon which the sun has settled to steam dry. You could practically see it growing by the roadside from that heady combination.

“So we must be nearly there, then," she said, bringing her head back in and taking her feet off the dashboard, edging to the front of her seat like a child. “Didn't you say they lived near — oh, hello." She lurched towards me in surprise.

I'd taken a sharp left turn through a gap in the hedge into seemingly open country and was driving my poor ancient car at some speed down a red clay track with grass growing down the middle, bumping her up and down along the ruts. Celia clutched her seat and looked alarmed. But I was determined not to ease her in gently. She was such an urbane fount of knowledge in London where she'd grown up; such a sage generally about life, the mind, the heart, despite — or perhaps because of — her own disastrous love affairs. Sometimes I wanted to shake her out of her cool, implacable composure. I knew I had the upper hand in the country, and I wanted her to get a sudden eyeful of Trewarren, with no warning. The back drive, coming as it did across the home farm, afforded that better than the front. I wasn't immune to the grand old estate's charms either and, as we drove under the tall avenue of chestnut trees, the lush green pastures stretching away in an erratic jigsaw of low stone walls, it cast its shimmering, ambiguous spell upon my heart.

I had to slow down, though, when a heifer blocked our way.

"How many bulls are there in this field?" Celia asked nervously, closing her window. “Surely they fight?"

"Cows," I told her. "Highland ones, hence the horns. Roger's into rare breeds."

"Like his wife, by all accounts."