“Then why did she not answer my letter that I wrote to her when Mama died?”

“She was abroad, dearie. And you know what the posts are in those outlandish places, Aix-la-Chapelle or whatever it’s called. Ten to one she never got the letter.”

“But I have not seen her for such a long time – over two years – perhaps she will have forgotten about me.”

Mrs. Merryweather gave a big laugh that seemed to come right from within the depths of her fat stomach and then stifled it with a scream of pain.

“Forget about you? Why, dearie, you know as well as I do that Mistress Fitzherbert has always doted upon you. ‘My baby’ she used to call you when you were little. I can see her now comin’ to the cottage just after you were born. I was in the sitting room tidyin’ up. She comes runnin’ in through the door, you must have been twelve at the time. As pretty a picture as you could see anywhere.”

Mrs. Merryweather smiled at the memory before she continued,

“‘Where is the baby, Mrs. Merry?’ she cried. That was what she always called me. It was a sort of joke between us because I was always jokin’. ‘Upstairs, miss’, I says to her ‘and don’t you go wakin’ her neither’. She runs upstairs two at a time and then I hear her knockin’ ever so softly on your mother’s door. She was always considerate of other people’s feelings was Miss Maria.”

“And what did she say after that?” Gretna asked, not because she had not heard the story a thousand times before but because it was somehow comforting.

“She comes downstairs lookin’ as solemn as an owl,” Mrs. Merryweather went on. “‘And what do you think of her, miss?’ I asks. ‘She’s lovely, Mrs. Merry! She’s lovely. I shall come and see her every day and make her my very own baby.’ She kept her word right enough!”

“Every day?” Gretna asked.

“Come rain, come shine,” Mrs. Merryweather answered, “she’d come in to see you. Sometimes she’d only be able to stay a moment or two, but sure enough she’d never miss. She’s older now, but her feelings haven’t changed. Why, the very last time I saw her, it must have been just about two years ago, that was it, May, 1784, she says to me, ‘Mrs. Merry, look after Miss Gretna and her Ladyship and, if anythin’ happens or they should want anythin’, you are to let me know’. Your father was ill at that time and we were all afraid her Ladyship would break down under the strain of nursin’ him.”

“I still cannot think why she did not write to me – when Mamma died,” Gretna worried.