‘Perfect.’ Sue had no idea what he meant, but decided not to enquire further. ‘You know, I was a bit worried about your … eccentricities. But on the whole, I think you are going to be great at this. Your enthusiasm makes a refreshing change, and I’m warming to your peculiarities, especially the more of this wine I drink.’

‘Well, you know,’ Nick told her. ‘I do get a lot of practice at being me. So you’re strapped for cash?’

‘We are always strapped for cash,’ Sue admitted. ‘The Montaignes have been officially broke since the Civil War, but we muddle on somehow. Since the Great Flood though, I’ve no idea how I am going to keep this old place going much longer. But I can’t bear the thought of selling it. My family have lived on this spot for eight hundred years. We’ve built four castles here – this is the most recent incarnation. You can’t imagine what it feels like to be the one, the one Montaigne in all of these years who fails. Who lets it all go. You can’t imagine what it’s like to be that person.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Nick said, softly. ‘That sounds very hard on you.’

‘It feels it,’ Sue admitted. Why it was so easy to talk to this odd, rotund gentleman she didn’t know, but there was a kindness about him. Something that made her believe in … well, in him, she supposed.

‘But I can’t complain, what gives me the right to complain?’ Sue picked herself up, as she had done all her life and lifted her chin. ‘I have a much nicer life than most people, and really, why should I get to keep living in this great old ruin, just because I call it home? I’d do perfectly well in a nice little three-bedroomed semi somewhere.’

‘I don’t think you would,’ Nick said. ‘I think you’d feel like a tiger in captivity. This place is your natural habitat, and it suits you. You are both rather magnificent.’

‘Goodness.’ Sue found herself blushing. Has it really come to this, that at the age of forty she was reduced to flirting with men who wore Santa costumes in their spare time? And yet, she felt immensely cheered by his kindness.

‘Would you like a tour?’ she offered on a whim, which probably had a good deal to do with the wine. ‘Of the house?’

‘My dear lady—’ Nick offered her his arm ‘—I would love one.’

‘Can I ask you a question?’ Sue said as she led him out of the solar. ‘How do you get your beard so white?’

‘Ah, well, now that would be telling,’ Nick said. ‘But a really good biological washing powder usually does the trick.’