Judy turned her head to see Jay walking purposefully to the middle of the great hall. He clapped his hands and called for silence.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to enjoy yourselves because this is the last time you will get anything from Creek Manor. The truth is that I’m selling the estate, and your employment here is terminated. I’ll give you a month in which to find alternative accommodation.’

There was a stunned silence, and then everyone began to talk at once. Judy found her mother and Wilfred standing at the table where the wedding cake was waiting to be cut. Hilda was deathly pale and bright spots of colour were raised on Wilfred’s weathered cheeks.

‘How can Jay do this to us?’ Hilda said in a low voice. ‘We’ll lose our home. Oh, Judy! What will we do?’

Chapter Eight

No one knew how the fire started. Just days after the manor house was sold and the last person left, the house was razed to the ground, and everything in it was consumed by the flames. It was rumoured in the village that one of the dispossessed servants had set it ablaze out of sheer malice, but this was simply hearsay. However, fingers were pointed at several people who had the most to lose, and one of them was Wilfred Faulkner. It was well known in the village that he had a long-standing grudge against Jay, considering him an upstart and an unworthy heir to the estate. Faulkner had been with Squire Tattersall since he was a boy, and had been devoted to him. But all these whisperings were largely ignored, and some blamed the curse of Creek Manor, saying it had finally done its worst.

As far as the family were concerned, Jay had left for Australia before the conflagration, taking his mother and Jack with him, and it was the new owner who was the loser. No one knew his identity, nor had they seen his mysterious person, and it now seemed unlikely that they ever would. The only buildings left standing were the stable block and coach house, but the horses had been sold off and the only occupants were rats, mice and bats. Pip and Nate had lost their jobs and their home above the tack room, and it was Marius Walters who came to their aid by offering them work in the stables at Colneyhurst Hall. Daisy had taken pity on young Lizzie and had employed her as a tweeny, although Judy suspected that Daisy might regret her generosity when she discovered Lizzie’s innate clumsiness.

Everything had happened so quickly, and there had been so much to do after Jay’s shock announcement that the manor house was for sale, that Judy had only a short time in which to brood over Jack’s decision to leave the country. He had tried to persuade her to go with him, but as far as she could make out he seemed to have fallen out of love with her and was now totally obsessed with the idea of gold mines and the large hotel that Jay was having built. Jack was convinced that a long sea voyage would effect a cure, but it seemed to Judy that he wanted her more as a nurse or unpaid servant than the woman he had once professed to love. She had spent many sleepless nights trying to come to a decision, and it hurt her more than she could have imagined when she had to tell Jack that she would not go with him. He had been angry at first, and then he had pleaded with her, but she was convinced that he was making a terrible mistake. She neither liked nor trusted Jay, and with good reason. He had turned his back on the people who had worked at Creek Manor for most of their lives, and some of the older members of the household were facing a poverty-stricken future.