What he saw now was that Mrs Hughes was a very thin woman, with sinewy arms and grey hair escaping from a dirty cotton cap. That the sustenance of his body had long been in the hands of such a person now surprised him. He would have preferred his cook to be rounded of form, pink of cheek and spotlessly clean. He let escape from him a long, mortified sigh.

‘If your mind is made up, Mrs Hughes,’ he said. ‘Then there is nothing I can do. Only apologise to you for any oversight on my part.’

But how on earth, he asked himself, when so many strangers were flocking to Bath for the winter Season, renting houses and arranging elaborate breakfast parties, match-making teatime feasts and evening soirées, was one to procure a new cook?

Because Sir William’s dead wife and then his daughter had always taken these kinds of domestic question upon themselves and not bothered him with them, he felt like a child presented with some arithmetical sum it did not know how to solve. He sat over the remains of his teacake and bacon, with coffee going cold in a jug, until Valentine Ross arrived to hold his morning surgery and then shared the problem with him.

Ross suggested buying the Bath Chronicle, in the expectation that cooks might advertise their services there. They sent their housemaid, Becky, out for the paper and looked through it carefully, but this solution did not seem to be accessible within its pages. Many employers were advertising for cooks, but no chefs were offering their services. Sir William said to Ross, ‘Had we wanted a hod-carrier, a coffin-maker or a chimney-sweep, we would have had no difficulty, but this does not help us at all. Can a hod-carrier roast a chicken? Can a sweep confect a caper sauce? I think not.’

The two men looked at each other. Visions of featureless days, devoid of any hot food, leading soon enough to unbearable hunger – only to be assuaged at exorbitant daily expense in one of the Bath chop-houses – instantly oppressed their minds, and after a moment Sir William ventured, ‘I think I will write to Emmeline and ask that Jane returns straight away. And she will find some means to solve the problem for us.’

He glanced up to see a stricken look on Ross’s face, which he was trying to fathom when their doorbell sounded, indicating the arrival of the first patient of the day. Valentine Ross at once left the room to take up his position in his surgery and no comment was made upon the idea of Jane’s return from London. Sir William found himself alone again, his mind in a state of severe puzzlement.

Taking matters into his own hands, determined that he should not be subjected to Jane’s return to Henrietta Street until he had found some means to cope with the strain and heartache of working at her side, Ross hurried through his roster of patients as quickly as he could that day and then walked down to Mrs Morrissey’s tea rooms.