As Mrs. Barnstaple had said, it was a warm evening. It was very quiet and peaceful in the gardens. The birds were going up to roost and she could hear them chattering in the shrubs and watched them wending their way across the sky towards the high trees.

She tried to enjoy the beauty of the autumn flowers and not to think of her problems, but somehow they seemed to encroach upon her insidiously, like a mist rising from the water.

What was she to do? How was she to make it clear to Sir Percy that he was to leave her alone? How was she to find it possible to live in a house with Lord Lynche, who dared to think that she could seek out or enjoy the embraces of such a roué as Sir Percy Rockley?

It was all too complicated. Carina longed to run home to Nanny and to be a child again so that she could lay her troubles in someone else’s arms and know that she personally need do nothing about them.

The gardens were deserted, the gardeners had gone home, and after a while the peace and quiet began to make her feel soothed.

‘These gardens were made for love,’ she thought and wondered at her own fantasy.

‘But The Castle,’ she went on in her own thoughts, ‘has a hostility about it that makes me believe that no one has ever been very happy here.’

She heard a Church clock strike and thought that it was time she returned.

She found the door through which she had come into the garden, but when she turned the handle it was locked.

“How stupid of me,” she said aloud. “I should have told somebody that I was going out this way.”

But she remembered that there had been nobody there to tell.

She was not anxious to go into The Castle through the main door. She did not want to encounter either Sir Percy or Lord Lynche and even less did she wish to see their guests.

She moved round the back of The Castle, feeling that sooner or later she must come to the servants’ quarters.

There were various doors, but they were all locked and finally she came to what were obviously the kitchens and decided that it would be better to go in that way.

There were two or three servants moving about, but they took no notice of her. She found an open door and a long stone-flagged passage leading straight into the centre of the house, with the kitchens, sculleries, game larders and dairies leading off on each side of it.

There was a chatter of voices from what was obviously the big kitchen and the fragrant smell of cooking, and through a half-open door Carina could see the white shape of a chef’s hat and a number of great copper saucepans sizzling on the stove.