He chewed his lip and thought hard. Perhaps the members of the aristocracy had not been to her taste and she had been drawn to someone of a lower order. But what of Alice’s background? For the first time, he began to seriously wonder about the identity of the girl’s parents. That she could undoubtedly read and write had been unusual. He decided that instead of flying up to Russell Square, he would do what he could to trace Alice’s background. It might even turn out to be respectable! And that would be a pleasant wedding present for the girl.

For night after night, he diligently scoured the countryside, searching in parish register after parish register. It was, at last, when he moved from the county of Sussex and extended his researches into the county of Kent that he at last found success.

He had been flying home after another fruitless night’s search when the squat Norman tower of a church caught his eye. It was, he estimated on the marches of Kent and Sussex and one that he had missed in his earlier searches, for it was partly concealed from above from most directions by a strange knobbly hill.

He landed lightly in the churchyard and floated through the walls of the church. With tremendous excitement, Alice’s name seemed to leap out at him. He was sure it was she. “Born 1793…” Yes, that was the right date. “Daughter of Mary and Paul Lovelace of Hackett’s Cottages, St. Dunstan’s-in-the-Wold.”

He could hardly go around knocking on doors for it was nearly dawn, so he had to content himself until the following night which fortunately for him fell as early as four-thirty in the afternoon.

He decided to call first at the local inn although it was little more than a hedge tavern.

A surly looking landlord was polishing tankards with a greasy cloth. Two local yokels sat hunched over a smouldering fire. The Duke ordered a pint of Lisbon and carried it over to the fire, drawing up a chair beside the two old men.

He gave a preliminary cough but the two men seemed sunk in some sort of bovine trance and did not look up. He noticed that their tankards were nearly empty and drew some silver from his pocket. “What is your pleasure, gentlemen?” he asked.

The two ancient figures turned slowly in their chairs to face him and he waited patiently until his offer should sink into the primeval mud of their slow brains and possibly be lit by the marsh gas of a little intelligence.

“Urrr,” said both in chorus at last, holding out their tankards.

“Very well,” said the Duke, signaling the landlord with a jerk of his head and indicating that his newfound friends would have the same again.

When these brief courtesies were completed, the Duke tried again. “Do you know the whereabouts of a family called Lovelace?”