‘Certainly not. You can call me Mr Drannock.’ He was laughing again. She looked wildly about the cove and rested her eyes on the place where she thought Kernick would be. ‘Now you don’t know whether to go or stay, do you, Ameline?’ he said, practically in her ear.

Ameline gave a little shiver despite feeling hot and flustered. ‘I don’t know what to make of you. I don’t know if you’re being cruel or lighthearted… Perhaps it is better if I leave now.’

She sounded so unhappy Bartholomew found himself pitying her. ‘I promise to behave like a perfect gentleman.’ He looked at her downcast face. ‘Stay, please.’

Realising he was still holding her hand, she blushed violently, wishing she could break the hold of his deep dark eyes. She wriggled her hand free. ‘Are we nearly there now? At Mother Clarry’s rock?’

‘It’s not far, only a few yards.’

They walked the rest of the way with Ameline stumbling uncomfortably without his aid.

‘Let’s sit down,’ Bartholomew said, as an order rather than a suggestion.

Ameline obeyed, cautiously lowering herself on to the cleanest looking slab of granite and fussing her skirt into neat folds. He chose a perch not too close but where he could look down on her and placed a foot on another rock.

‘Will it be all right to call you Bartholomew now?’ she ventured.

‘Of course,’ he replied, tilting his head up to Mother Clarry’s rock. He pointed to it. ‘Well, there’s the witch’s seat. What do you think of it?’

Ameline angled her head and studied the rock carved out of the cliff face by the elements down the ages. ‘It’s impressive. One could easily imagine a witch sitting up there. It looks very sheer below it. Has anyone ever climbed up to sit on it? It must be very difficult, quite dangerous I should imagine.’

‘It is, I’ve done it often, as man and boy. ’Tis said if you try and fail, the witch will have you in her power for all eternity.’

Ameline looked at him closely. She thought him to be a little younger than herself, perhaps somewhere between man and boy. ‘The cove must be very eerie at night with all these tales of witchcraft and hauntings.’

‘It is, and during the day when the sea fog comes in thick it feels as though it’s trying to stop you from breathing. You can imagine all kinds of terrible things are about to come out of it and do the most gruesome things to you.’

He was smiling with an easy charm and she became aware of why she had felt she ought to have known him when he’d first walked up to her. Bartholomew Drannock looked rather like Oliver.