He arrives while they are sitting at lunch. Lunch is a frugal affair of cold meat jellies and some kind of lentil porridge: a rebuke to the senses, Livia’s idea. Thomas chews each spoonful like the dreary ordeal it is, ignoring Charlie’s kicks under the table. The porridge has been thickened with cornstarch and has the consistency of frozen mud.

Then Thorpe, the butler, steps up to the table and whispers something into Lady Naylor’s ear. The emotions that attempt to gain purchase on her features are hard to read, but annoyance sits topmost, rules the slant of her mouth. She rises without a word, forcing both Charlie and Thomas to scramble to their feet (for one must not sit when a lady stands), then takes three long strides that carry her out of the room.

Curiosity easily defeats their lentil-smothered appetite. Already on his feet, Thomas follows Lady Naylor at once. Charlie is only a step behind. Livia remains at the table. Looking back, Thomas catches a glance of her: stiff-backed, chin tucked into her throat, resigned to this latest of humiliations.

They find milady in the front hall. She has taken up position at one of the big windows looking out onto the driveway. There, two riders have just climbed off their horses. The first is a tall, lumbering man in a greatcoat with close-cropped hair and hard, flat features. He is closer to fifty than forty but moves with the confident ease of a younger man. His cheeks are raw with wind and cold.

As for the second man: it is disturbing to see him out of school clothes and dressed instead in a gentleman’s hunting gear. Thick chequered tweeds in muddy greens with a matching cap and knee-high boots. A smudge of dark down twitches on the upper lip. Julius Spencer has been growing a moustache. He has brought a further horse, a pack horse, laden with trunks and leather-cased rifles. From his wrist a riding crop dangles by its loop.

They cannot hear Julius’s voice through the window. Judging by his gestures he is instructing Lady Naylor’s servants to help the older man lift down the trunks. He is his valet then. When a stable hand leaps forward to catch the reins Julius has tossed at him, a shadow darts out from behind the horse’s bulk and sits down waist-high to its master. Dark copper fur draped in abundant folds over a thickset body; the eyes red-rimmed and small within their face’s droop; the lips rolled back to disclose mottled gums of black and pink. The dog howls, a sound loud enough to carry indoors; is petted for its trouble, or rather cuffed across the head and snout, then leans its slavish love into its master.