Across the room stood a bed with posts, hung with bottle-green velvet. An indigo cover was pulled back to reveal pillows that looked white and very clean. Perhaps they had bought new linen just for her.

She sensed their preparations. That she was unique, exciting, like a new-born baby.

There was the faint smell of damp, but over this the dry peppery smell of the fire, and a scent like face powder in a compact.

‘Your bags will be brought up to you.’ The servant Michael indicated the passage. ‘The green bathroom is there. We have hot water.’

‘Thank you.’ Of course the house was old enough to have done without. She wanted the servant to go. The room overwhelmed her yet for a few precious minutes she might hide in it. ‘When do Mr Stephan and Miss...’

‘Miss Anna and Mr Stephan will go down shortly.’

‘How shall I find them?’ she asked.

‘The rooms will then be lit on the ground floor, Miss Rachaela.’

The servant went out and the door shut. A curtain like those of the bed fell back over it.

There was another large slim window beyond the bed, its drapes undrawn; this window too was of blackened stained glass. Rachaela stared and made out the plumed image of a tree, two figures. She would need daylight to see what kept her company here.

She went to the fire. It was appealing, a luxury, and none of the trouble of cleaning or laying it would fall to her. A servant—the Scarabae had domestic help.

Rachaela tried to enjoy the fire.

There were blue iris flowers enamelled on the fireplace tiles. The carpet in the room was very old, Persian probably, blue and rose plants and green birds.

In two places a mirror winked behind the candles, ornately camouflaged by designs of coloured glass jewels. A huge old dressing-table supported a winged mirror whose face was similarly obscured. Rachaela looked at herself through a hedge of lilies, a wild sunset in rays and swallows, cutting her into segments. How bizarre. But it would not matter, she had brought her own ordinary mirror with her.

She sat on the bed a moment, conscious of the dim sound of the sea and of the ticking of a pair of clocks, a black clock on the mantel with two angels, a tiny tower beside the bed. The greater clock told her it was seven-thirty, while on the tower the face showed nine.

Rachaela glanced at her watch, but she had, as so often, forgotten to wind it. It had stopped.

Well, she must prepare for Stephan and Anna.

She could not imagine them.

She got up and made herself go out into the lamp-lighted corridor. She found the bathroom at once, the only other door at this end of the passage.