“Are there lots of books in it?” Carina enquired, thinking that during the winter she might improve her mind by reading. There certainly was not going to be much else to do.

“Thousands and thousands of ’em,” the footman replied. “I’ve often thought as ’ow I’d have liked to read ’em myself.”

“Can you read?” Carina asked, guessing from the wistful tone of his voice that he was illiterate.

“Oh, I learned a few words at school,” the footman answered, “but I wasn’t there for very long. I got the offer of goin’ as a page to a gentleman in London and then I came back ’ere as pantry boy and worked my way up. I’m fourth footman now.”

“Are you really?” Carina exclaimed with what she hoped was sufficient appreciation in her tone.

“It’s not a bad job,” the footman said confidingly. “Mr. Newman’s a bit on the ’ard side, but ’e’s just, I’ll say that for ’im.”

“So you like it on the whole?” Carina questioned.

“It’s all right,” the footman admitted almost reluctantly, as if he hated to give praise and would rather have recounted a list of grievances.

“It must be cold here in the winter,” Carina said.

“You should try our quarters. They are up near the roof,” the footman told her with a grin. “They’re like a furnace in summer and the North Pole in winter. It’s really better to be the one who sleeps in the pantry, ’e ’as a fire after everyone’s gone to bed.”

Carina thought with a sudden sense of guilt that she had never until now wondered what discomforts the servants had endured in their private rooms in the attics in Claverly where they slept. She could not remember ever having been inside them.

Then she cheered herself up by feeling sure that her mother would have seen that the servants were comfortable, and if they had not been, Nanny would have carried tales to the right place because she could not bear to see anyone suffer, whoever it might be.

“How many members of the staff are there in The Castle?” Carina asked him as they proceeded down the great staircase that led to the inner hall.

“I’ve never thought of countin’,” he answered. “About twenty-five or thirty, I should say and, of course, there’s the visitin’ valets, ladies’ maids and private grooms.”

‘It seems a lot,’ Carina thought and remembered that her father had never kept more than two footmen, not even in the days when they had been rich and entertained a great deal at Claverly Court.

“A great place like this wants a lot of people to look after it,” the footman said simply.

The candles were lit in the outer hall and they threw into relief the high marble pillars and the Greek statues set in alcoves around the walls.