When they had reached Paddington Station, she was told that there was a train to Oxford in an hour’s time and that, from there, they would easily catch a connection to Moreton-in-the-Marsh. But owing to delays on the line, they arrived late at Oxford and found that the local train had already left and there was not another for three hours.

Carina thought now that she would have been wiser to have stayed the night in Oxford. They could have slept in a hotel and started off fresh the next morning and they would not have been so oppressed by what lay ahead.

Yet somehow she had been filled with an urgency to perform the task that had been set her.

Perhaps, as Mrs. Bagot had suggested, Lord Lynche would want to see his wife – perhaps, if she dallied on the way and Lady Lynche died before he could reach her, there would be nothing but reproach and recriminations for her conduct in not going straight to The Castle, as she had been asked to do.

Whichever way she looked at it, it seemed to Carina that she was doing the wrong thing because the time had dragged on. Now it must be nearly midnight – and how could she expect anything but disagreeableness if they arrived at such an hour?

She had a sudden glimpse of some high iron gates between stone pillars surmounted by heraldic lions and knew that they must have reached the entrance to Lynche Castle.

She felt a sudden panic sweep over her. How could she have let herself become involved in such an impossible situation?

Then a movement of the small head lying against her chest made her tighten her arms about the little boy and resolve – if she could do nothing else – to fight for his rights. Lord Lynche had married his mother and the child was his flesh and blood. How, then, could he dare not to acknowledge Dipa? At the same time Carina was not foolish, she knew that this was going to be difficult – very difficult indeed.

When she had left the house in Eaton Terrace and entered the hired cab that Agnes had fetched from Ebury Street, Carina had told the driver to go first to an address in Park Street.

On reaching the rich fashionable quarter of Mayfair, she had climbed out, telling Dipa to be a good boy and to sit quietly in the cab for a few minutes while she collected her luggage.

She knocked on the door of an imposing-looking mansion and it had been opened after a few seconds by an elderly woman with white hair and an anxious face.

“Oh, Miss Carina, you are back at last!” she exclaimed. “I was getting’ so worried about you. I was afraid somethin’ had happened!”

“A lot has happened, Nanny,” Carina answered, passing through the hall and into the large sitting room whose windows overlooked a garden at the back.