It turned out I wasn’t far off, with one of them anyway. As promised, Jonathan had sent Dolly a cafetière so she could try the coffee from the Fortnum’s hamper.

‘Whittard,’ said Dolly, sounding impressed, as she tore into the packaging. ‘Very fancy.’

It certainly was and he’d added even more coffee to the order.

‘Let’s try it out with our late lunch, shall we?’ I suggested.

Dolly was all for that and saved the other parcel until we were sitting down to eat. She had also taken delivery of her monthly meat order from the local butcher and insisted we had a hot meal.

‘You’ll need some sustenance for tonight,’ she said, sliding the delicious-looking hand-raised chicken pie into the oven to warm. ‘And you can’t go wrong with these.’

The second parcel was a prettily wrapped box of locally designed Christmas cards from the Cherry Tree gallery.

‘I would have picked these up, Dolly,’ I said, looking through the selection. ‘Saved you the postage.’

‘I didn’t pay for postage,’ she explained. ‘Lizzie Dixon asked if I wouldn’t mind having them delivered, free of charge. They’ve had a problem with their courier apparently and wanted to send out a few orders by good old Royal Mail to regular customers to see if they fared any better.’

‘I see,’ I said, picking up a card sporting a very feisty looking Robin. ‘This one is rather nice.’

‘Isn’t it?’ Dolly smiled. ‘He’s certainly got a lot of character! A young woman called Hayley, who happens to be the Wynthorpe Hall housekeeper, designed these. You’ll no doubt meet her next week when we take the tour.’

‘She has an amazing talent,’ I said, taking in the finer details. ‘And I have to say I’m rather intrigued by the hall as well as the people who live there. It really does sound like a magical kind of place to me.’

‘It’s certainly that,’ said Dolly with a wink, ‘you’ll see. Now, while that pie’s warming, I’ll ring Lizzie and let her know these have arrived and,’ she craftily added, ‘you might want to have a proper sort through and see if you can find a card you’d like to send to your parents.’

*

It was almost dark when Beamish arrived late that afternoon, but even before he’d stepped into the light in the cottage, I could see he was looking a bit rough around the edges again.

‘My goodness,’ he laughed, looking around him. ‘You two have been busy, haven’t you?’

‘Dolly wanted the decs up,’ I told him, ‘so that’s what she’s got.’

‘With bells on,’ he laughed again, his gaze taking it all in. ‘It looks fantastic.’