She knew he was always concerned about finance so she didn’t try to stop him accepting the job, but she wished whoever it was had left them alone for another week. They could have made so much more progress together.

When he’d finished talking, she barred the doorway. ‘You’re going nowhere till you’ve had a proper breakfast.’

He looked at her face and his intent look was slowly replaced by a wry smile. ‘You’re a terrible bully, Nell Chaytor.’ Then he frowned. ‘You know, we really ought to get married. We keep agreeing that we will, so I don’t know why we haven’t done the deed. Nell Denning sounds a much nicer name to me.’

‘I might not take your name. Why couldn’t you take mine?’

‘Because of the house.’

‘Ah yes. There is your dear little cottage to think about.’

‘We’ll get married as soon as we have a spare moment,’ he said.

She plonked a kiss on his cheek. ‘Whatever. But I don’t need an official public agreement to tell me I love you and want to be with you, my darling. In the meantime, sit down and I’ll make you some scrambled eggs. Won’t take long.’

He stayed but he started working on his phone as he waited for her to make his breakfast and within a couple of minutes was lost to what was going on around him. She doubted he’d have noticed if she’d dropped a plate and smashed it right next to him.

He ate the food quickly after she’d waved the plate under his nose a couple of times to draw it to his attention.

When he’d finished she again stopped him leaving. ‘One more thing, then you can vanish into your office: do you want me to place an advert for the houses or wait till you’ve finished this job and work one out together?’

‘What? Oh, yes. Please do it now. We’ve discussed the criteria enough for you to put something together, haven’t we?’

He went off to his office without waiting for an answer but she said it anyway, ‘Well, we haven’t really discussed it in detail, but if I attract the wrong people with my ad, we can always say no. I’m not giving a rent-free house to anyone I don’t like the looks of, that’s for sure.’

She was well aware that you couldn’t always tell what a person was like from just one meeting, so on the principle that two heads were better than one, she intended to get Angus involved in choosing which applicants to accept, if she had to tie him down to do that. She was quite sure they’d have a lot of responses to their advert, because she intended to place it in one of the big national newspapers and maybe see if the arts editor would like to do an article about what they were planning.

Two days later a man who said he was from the council rang to ask if he could speak to Mr Denning.