The car surged forwards so fast that Helen was jerked backwards in her seat. She settled back, ready for the return drive to Oxford, but Oliver merely drove down the little rise away from the house, took another road across twilit parkland from which a damp mist was already rising and drew up in front of a cottage that might have belonged to a groundsman. It was screened on three sides by tall trees and all the windows were dark.

Helen followed Oliver through the drifts of leaves to the front door and stepped inside after him. When the lights came on they blinked at each other.

‘Home,’ he said.

The door had opened straight into a low, square room. It was shabby, filled with a mixture of what looked like outworn drawing room furniture and outgrown nursery pieces. The atmosphere was unmistakably welcoming. Helen looked round at the worn chintz covers, overlapping and unmatching rugs and the plain cream walls with an air of relief. She suddenly felt more comfortable with Oliver than she had done all day.

‘Make yourself at home while I do the fire.’ He knelt down at the open hearth. ‘Or, better still, be an angel and make some tea.’

The kitchen was at the back. Helen hummed softly as she rummaged in cupboards to discover thick red pottery mugs and a homely brown teapot. When she carried the tray in, Oliver was lying on a rug in front of the fire, his head propped against the sofa cushions. He watched her as she put the tray down on the floor and then rocked back on her heels to meet his eyes. Oliver patted the cushions beside him, but Helen ignored him for a moment. Instead she poured tea into the red mugs and then handed him one. Then she wrapped her thin fingers round her own. Emboldened by the cosy domesticity of the little room, she asked him, ‘Why do you call this home? If your parents live over there?’

‘I’ve used this little house to escape to for years. When I was younger, to escape from the family. Nowadays, when I’m here, which isn’t often, it’s to avoid the tourists.’

‘Tourists?’

‘Mmm. The house is open to the public. Hordes of it. We’ve retreated to one of the wings, like survivors in a sinking ship.’

‘What is this place?’ Helen asked again.

‘It’s called Montcalm.’

Of course. Oliver’s father, then, was the Earl of Montcalm. And this blond boy who was laughing at her in the firelight came of a family whose history stretched back to the Plantagenets.

‘Didn’t you know?’ he asked her.

‘No,’ Helen said humbly. ‘Or, if I did know who you were, I’d forgotten.’

‘How lovely.’ Oliver was laughing delightedly, and her own laughter echoed his. ‘Come and sit here.’