Effie nodded, aware of a murmur of muffled conversation at her back as Billy led her round to the wooden staircase off the main passage. He turned to go up and as she went to follow after, she heard the sound of boots on the floor and saw the gamekeeper come round the corner at the far end. He had a cocked shotgun in one hand and a bag over his shoulder. Like everyone else, he stopped dead, as though he’d found the countess herself down here.

Effie could only raise her hand in silent, distant greeting before she disappeared from sight, trailing after Billy.

‘Well, I guess now I’ve got my answer,’ he said, several paces ahead of her and opening the door at the top that led onto the great hall.

‘Answer to what?’

‘Whether you’re servant or guest. Us or them.’

‘I told you, I’m neither.’

‘Doesn’t look like that from where I’m standing,’ he shrugged as she passed by. ‘You even smell like them.’

It was true. Effie had smelt it too as she pulled on the gown; there was still a trace of scent lingering from the previous owner. She smelt rich.

The door to the adjoining room, the dining room, opened and Henry walked out. He looked at them suspiciously, his eyes narrowing at the sight of Effie.

‘Would you take Miss Gillies to the parlour, Henry?’ Billy asked, knowing he could go no further at this time of the evening. The hallboys were very much to be not seen and not heard.

There was a pause. ‘Certainly.’

Effie swallowed, feeling ever more nervous. Did Sholto understand what his simple dinner invitation entailed for her? Not just a full-scale mobilization of the ladies’ maids to get her appropriately attired, but then having to endure a parade before the servants that underlined her dislocation here in the most blatant terms.

Henry led her the short distance across the hall to the parlour. ‘Good luck,’ he murmured, one eyebrow arched and suggesting she would need it, as he put a hand on the brass knob and turned it.

‘Miss Euphemia Gillies,’ he announced in a formal voice, stepping back so that she might pass.

‘Ah good, good!’ She could hear Lord Dumfries’s voice before she could see the man. ‘Miss Gillies, I was just telling—’

His words fell like stones as she rounded the door and stepped into the room. The walls were the same thick, rich white as in the great hall, but every chair and gathered drape was stitched from a bold canary-yellow silk so that the room appeared to glow from the inside out.