“And Elise?” Daisy said, trying not to sound too hopeful, although Jasper gave her a curious look when he said, “Oh, you’ll see a lot of Elise. She and I, we’re the yoga buffs. Through here . . .”

Jasper waved Daisy toward the back of the house, where the smell of baking—earthy and nutty and delicious—intensified. The room into which Daisy stepped was so far from the bubbled plasterwork and linoleum of Catterick Hall that to use the word kitchen to describe both rooms would be blasphemous.

The floor was tiled in terra-cotta, the walls painted the same lush creamy white as the wooden cabinets, and the counters were wiped clean enough to gleam. On the far side of the room, beyond the chunky farmhouse table, Elise extracted a tray of biscuits from a sprawling range oven. When Elise stood, petite and perfectly curved in a loose vest and tropical print leggings, Daisy felt as if she’d stepped into a photo shoot for some trendy lifestyle magazine.

“This is Daisy,” Jasper said. “I think she could use a beginner’s infusion if you’ve any left?”

“Oh, I know Daisy.”

Under the beam of Elise’s smile, Daisy disappeared inside the neck of her sports cardigan, almost relieved when Elise turned away to set things on a tray—enamel-lined clay cups and plates heaped with warm cookies. As Jasper turned toward the sink, the Eyes of Zoise embroidered onto the back of his black dressing gown twinkled happily at her.

Elise nodded toward a door that Daisy had thought was a pantry. “We’re down in the basement,” she said.

Opening the door, Daisy found stone steps leading down to where a pool of warm, wavering light welcomed her. The steps were cool beneath Daisy’s feet, but on reaching the bottom, she stepped onto a thick, plush rug. The basement was huge—the house must have been built on a hill, the front higher than the back, because the entire back wall was nothing but glass-paneled doors looking out onto what Daisy presumed was the garden, although it was too dark to see more than a hint of a greenhouse and some trees. The floor was so densely layered with rugs and mats that when she stepped forward into the studio, it was as if she were walking on a spongy cloud. Spotlights in the ceiling were turned down low, and all around the walls, jars and vases with candles burning inside hung from nails embedded in the brickwork.

The smell from the kitchen permeated the room, mingling pleasantly with the low murmur of friendly voices and whatever was burning in a gently smoking stone basin. Something about the room, the people in it, and the prospect of some social yoga made Daisy feel at ease.

As she took a sip of the brew that Elise had given her, she realized this felt a lot like coming home.