‘And I’ve got some grocery shopping to do. You will insist on eating every single day.’

For all their joking, she was concerned about their financial situation. They had to find some way of increasing their income. Since she moved in she had taken over looking after the accounts and had been horrified at how expensive a two-hundred-year-old house was to maintain. It might be heritage-listed but it had been neglected for decades and restoring it properly wasn’t for the faint-hearted.

Angus worked in IT and was capable of earning good money, but that wasn’t nearly enough for the urgent major repairs the house still needed. He’d had a small app he’d designed take off recently, which was bringing in some useful money, but not a fortune, since it had a limited target group. He’d warned her that his app would probably be superseded within a couple of years, so they couldn’t count on it long term.

What could they count on to keep this beloved monster of a house well tended, she wondered? There had to be some way of it bringing in a regular, steady income.

Two mornings later Angus came down late for breakfast then sat lost in thought, forgetting the piece of half-eaten toast in his hand.

‘Not hungry today, darling?’ Nell asked.

He jumped in shock and stared at her blankly for a few seconds, then cocked his head to one side and grinned. ‘Sorry. I woke up thinking about our financial needs. You know that scrubby bit of land down at the rear of our grounds, the one with the dilapidated old buildings on it? I’m wondering if we can do something with that?’

That really caught her interest. ‘I keep meaning to stroll down and have a closer look at it, but I haven’t been in a hurry because you said it was in ruins.’

‘You promised you’d not go there without me,’ he reminded her sharply.

‘I was planning to ask you, only you’ve been a bit busy lately on that project.’

‘I finished it late last night, Nell, and good riddance. Whoever wrote the original program was an idiot and it was a tedious job unpicking it. Did I ever tell you that part of the grounds has actually got an official street name?’

‘No. You just waved a hand in its direction and said it was rather dilapidated so to stay well away. What’s its official name?’

‘Saffron Lane.’

‘That’s pretty.’

‘Yes. Unlike the street. I took a quick look at the outside when I first inherited Dennings, but I had enough on my plate making sure the main house was weatherproof to do anything about those cottages. I did check that they hadn’t been damaged after one particularly bad storm and thank goodness they were all right. Actually, they look very sturdily built. But don’t go into them on your own. I don’t want you getting hurt.’

He gave her a loving smile as he said that, seeming unaware of the toast still in his hand. Her heart gave its usual happy little skip as she smiled back. The man she now thought of as her second husband was so cute when he grew forgetful!