She dried the long fair hair that reached below her waist piece by piece, rubbing it with a towel, holding it up to the warmth of the fire and then bending forward so that the top of her head could be dried too.

“Never go to bed with wet hair. It’s dangerous, that’s what it is,” she could hear Nanny admonishing her ever since she had been small.

How impatient she had been with her long hair, with the tangles and the interminable brushing that made it shine and the hours she had to spend getting it dry when it was washed once a week.

But now it felt clean and smelt fresh and she threw the long tresses back over her shoulder with a sigh of relief.

‘Perhaps next week I will ask one of the housemaids to help me,’ she thought and wondered at the same time whether she would still be here.

Anything might happen in a week. Perhaps the Dowager would have her way and send Dipa back to Java. Perhaps more frightening and sinister things might happen – an accident!

‘Oh, no!’ Carina thought and jumped up suddenly.

She was not even going to think of such things – there was no possibility of them, none.

She lifted the oil lamp from the nursery table and carried it into her bedroom, put it down and then turned up the second oil lamp, which the footman had left just inside the door. After that she went to look at Dipa to see if he was well tucked in.

He was sleeping peacefully and his skin was cool.

Carina closed the window a little more, feeling that having come from an Eastern country he would not be used to the English way of sleeping in a cold bedroom with as little covering as possible.

Then she went to her own room. She was just about to take off her dressing gown when she remembered what Mrs. Barnstaple had said the first night about locking her door.

She turned the key, thankful as she had been the night before to see how strong the lock was and that the door itself was of heavy oak.

‘Extraordinary what a sense of security it gives one,’ she thought.

She turned out the light and, with a little yawn that seemed to come from the very depth of her being, she slipped between the cool lavender-scented sheets and put her head down on the pillow.

She must have fallen asleep almost immediately, because she woke with a start, wondering what had happened and then realised that she had, in fact, been asleep.

As she opened her eyes, she saw with a sense of guilt that she had been so weary as she had climbed into bed that, while she had turned out the lamp by her bedside, the one the footman had brought her was still alight.