She shook her head. ‘No – I’m back for good.’

‘Not afore time neither. You’re not a city lass. You dress nice, I’ll grant you that . . .’

‘Oh thank you, kind sir.’ She bobbed a mocking curtsy.

‘But you’re too pale – and too thin.’

Now she laughed. ‘Well, if I can’t get my old job back in town, I’ll be working on the land, so I’ll soon end up as leathery-looking as you.’

Then the teasing stopped; the look that passed between them saying that they both knew what the other was thinking. Without the need for explanation, it was then she asked, ‘Danny, you won’t have to go, will you?’

His face sobered, the grin fading. ‘Farming’s what they call a reserved occupation . . .’ He hesitated. She held her breath, knowing very well what was coming. ‘But I – I might want to go, Katie.’

She let out her breath slowly in a deep sigh. She might have known. Someone like Danny wouldn’t want to be thought a coward. Not Danny.

She was watching him, seeing, suddenly, the changes the last nine years had wrought in him. He, too, was thinner in the face, yet his shoulders and chest were if anything even broader and more muscular than ever. Men of his age, she thought, were usually married with two or three little ones. But then, she thought wryly, so were young women of her age!

Neither of them had found a partner. There had been one or two young men in Lincoln who had asked Kate out and sometimes she had gone. But there had never been a second meeting. Either she had politely refused, or a further invitation had not been forthcoming. Perhaps the young men were vaguely aware that they were being compared with the ghost of a love from the past.

As for Danny, he didn’t seem interested in any of the young women in the district. He was now Squire Marshall’s farm bailiff, well liked and well respected by all those under him, and he still acted as the ailing Squire’s personal chauffeur when the old man needed to go anywhere, though gout and increasing infirmity confined the Squire more and more to his home. Mrs Marshall had died in the winter of 1932 and the Squire lived alone with only a few servants to care for him. His son, Arthur, lived in London, taking no interest in the affairs of the small estate and visiting only rarely.

‘He’s doing very well,’ the Squire would tell anyone who would listen. ‘Something in the City, you know. A wonderful career . . .’ Then the old man’s eyes would cloud over and he would sigh, ‘I don’t know what’s to become of the estate, though, when I’m gone.’