Then he deliberately set the letter on one side and proceeded to eat a substantial breakfast.

*

It was after ten and the clock in the tower had struck the hour, a grinding noise that echoed and re-echoed through the empty building when Alyna heard a step on the balcony.

For a moment Lord Dorrington’s eyes scanned the rows of hard wooden pews that were occupied on Sundays by the servants of Nobility and the less fashionable parishioners, before he saw her.

She was at the back of the balcony, seated beside a stained glass window through which the sun was percolating in a golden shaft of light.

He walked towards her and she rose quickly to her feet, but did not move to meet him.

When he reached her side, he said with a hint of amusement in his voice,

“You choose very unusual meeting places, Alyna!”

“I could not think of anywhere else that Martha would not think strange,” Alyna answered.

Her voice was breathless as if she had not expected him to come and yet had been waiting anxiously for his appearance.

“Martha?” Lord Dorrington questioned.

”My maid,” Alyna explained. “She had to accompany me as I walked here.”

She saw Lord Dorrington look round as if in search of the woman and said quickly,

“She is downstairs at the back of the Church. She cannot see us. I told her I wanted to be alone to speculate on how I should look as I walked up the aisle to be – married.”

There was a tremor in her voice and Lord Dorrington said quietly,

“What has happened since last night?”

He seated himself as he spoke in a pew beside Alyna, choosing a position with his back to the window so that the light was on her face as she talked to him.

She was wearing a large hat on the back of her head.

It was decorated with daisies and pale blue ribbons, and he thought, as he glanced at it, that it tried too obviously to be the sort of hat that could only be worn by a very young girl.

Her gown was similar, but not quite so elaborately over-trimmed as the one she had worn last night.

Even so the tiny little bows of blue ribbon, the frills of tulle round the neck and round the sleeves, made it seem almost too young even for a girl of seventeen.

Alyna looked wrong. There was too much emphasis on her youth and the frizzled curls of her fair hair seemed in the morning light to make an even greater effort to disguise the character of her face.

Only her eyes were the same, Lord Dorrington thought, large and frightened, and today he could see quite clearly they were in fact almost vividly green.

“We can talk without our voices echoing,” Alyna explained as she half-turned in the pew to face him. “I tried the effect from the front of the balcony and realised that Martha or someone else might hear us speaking. But she is inclined to be deaf and I think if we keep our voices low we are quite safe.”