“Get your cloak and your bonnet, my beloved. We are leaving at once and, if we hurry, we will be home in time for a late dinner.”

“But, Denzil, there are no servants.”

“That is where you will get a surprise,” her husband said. “I went home first expecting to find you there. Then I heard what had happened and I told nearly everyone in the village to come and look after us, until we have things organised. They will do it, you can be sure of that.”

“Oh, Denzil, it does not seem true that you are here, and I need be unhappy about you – no longer.”

There was a note in Lady Caversham’s voice as she spoke, which Thalia knew was not tiredness or lassitude but an overwhelming happiness.

It would be a long journey home, but she had a feeling that it would not tire her mother half so much as sitting being miserable as she had these last three years.

The mere fact that her father was back made her look radiant and there was a flush on her cheeks and her eyes were shining as if she was a young woman again.

“Come along,” Sir Denzil said firmly. “Hurry, Thalia, I have no intention of spending a night in this poky little hole.”

They were being swept along in the flood tide of her father’s vitality, Thalia thought.

But, while it was wonderful to have him there and thrilling to know that he was alive and well, there was nevertheless a nagging feeling in her heart that told her his return could not be as perfect for her as it was for her mother.

‘I must tell the Earl – I must let him know what has – occurred,’ she thought.

Even as she thought of it she knew that it was something she must not do.

If he learnt who she really was, then he would feel obliged after all that had passed between them to offer her marriage.

She would have caught him, as he had said he had avoided being caught all these years.

She remembered only too clearly how she had told him that the women she waited on bought their clothes as a bait to catch a fish, and had laughingly added that the Earl of Hellington would be a very large catch if they could land him.

She could still hear the note in the Earl’s voice as he had said,

“I assure you I fight ferociously never to be netted!”

She had told him that she spoke prophetically and that in the end he would be caught and, once he was in the net, there would be no escape.

“That is exactly what I am afraid of,” the Earl had said.

He had no wish to be married, that was obvious, not even to someone he loved.