“Sorry, her manners are atrocious. She was meant to say a polite hello, not knock you over like a skittle. How do you do, Lady Margaret?”

Lady Powerscourt was wearing a day dress of dove grey with pagoda sleeves, the bodice cut away over a white lace blouson with a high lace collar. She was slim and delicately pretty, with big brown eyes and chestnut hair worn in an elegantly braided chignon. “Welcome to Powerscourt.”

Her smile was rather frosty. Margaret scrambled to her feet to make her curtsy. “Lady Powerscourt. I am very much obliged to you for having me to stay.”

“Since you are to make your home with us for the time being, I think it would be best if you called me Julia. And this is Aoife.”

“Eeefa?”

“Eva, is the closest in English. She is named for the warrior princess of Irish legend. Aoife, however, is the gentlest of hounds. Your mother told me that you are very fond of dogs.”

“Did she? I am, and Aoife is a very beautiful creature.”

“I can see she’s taken to you, too. She will dog your every footstep, if you will forgive the pun, but please don’t feel obliged to put up with her.”

“Oh no, I’m delighted to have her company. And yours, too, Lady Julia—Julia. I hope I will not prove too much of an inconvenience.”

“This is a very large house with any number of rooms. I am sure we won’t get under each other’s feet. Come in, and I will show you to your bedchamber, and then we will take tea.”

Margaret followed her hostess, her heart sinking in the face of this rather tepid welcome. The reception hall was a vast square space with double arcades on each side. The cornicing was bright unadulterated white, as were the walls. The simplicity would have been dazzling, were it not for the massive stags’ heads which were mounted at intervals, their widespread antlers almost reaching the cornicing, giving the room a very Gothic feel.

“There are twenty-eight,” Julia said dryly, seeing Margaret’s expression. “My husband collects them. I believe these are mostly from Germany. There are a great many more in the other rooms, too, herds of them. As you will discover if he ever returns home, deer, both alive and stuffed, are something of an obsession with him. Don’t worry though—your bedchamber is mercifully free of them.”

Julia led the way up a wide staircase to the first floor, then a second, white-painted staircase to the next floor. “I’ve given you one of the turret rooms since it has the best view. It has been very recently decorated, but if you’d prefer something more traditional, I can show you the Pink Room or the Ivy Room or even the Tent Room, though the bed there is so large I fear you would be lost in it.”