‘Don’t thank me, I’m just doing my job. Let me know when you’re finished so I can send Fanny in here after.’ The housekeeper glided out. She had an ability to move in silence, as if on castors.

Effie looked around the salmon-pink bedroom again, at the half poster bed with monogrammed cotton sheets tucked tightly and the satin eiderdown gently puffed. The flowers had been changed from when she’d spent the night here, a new arrangement of snapdragons and foxgloves in the vase. The room looked softer in the daylight, the colours less moody, but for all its beauty, it still gave her the shivers – confirmation of Frank Mathieson’s death, nightmares that had forced her from her bed . . . And now, recovering from a near escape on a spooked horse? She would have far preferred escaping back to her old bedroom at the very least, but Mrs McKenzie had said the new scullery maid had already moved in.

She walked through to the water closet, putting the towels on a small flowery armchair beside the pink-enamelled bath, and undressed. She climbed in and automatically hugged her knees to her chest, braced for the shivers. For her, baths had always been cold (at best, tepid) and shallow, and she had to share her bathwater with dead spiders and fossilized leaves; but this one was warm and deep, the bubbles scented and frothy on her skin, smelling of roses. A small sigh escaped her. It was yet another small luxury she had never known she was doing without, another distinction between her life and theirs.

Her muscles softened like slowly melting butter and she began to realize how tightly she’d been holding herself. For all her protestations of being fine, when the horse had been in full gallop she had compressed her body as tightly as a coil and she would feel it tomorrow, she knew.

She stretched out her neck, dropping her ear to her shoulder on each side, before sinking back into the tub with a sigh. It really did feel so good . . .

‘Knock, knock.’

A voice called through from the bedroom. A woman’s voice.

Effie jolted in the water, twisting back to see Lady Sibyl walking across the carpet. She stopped at the door and looked in without a hint of embarrassment, still wearing her riding clothes.

‘Mrs McKenzie said she had put you in here,’ she said briskly. ‘I am glad.’

Effie didn’t reply. She was completely covered by the rosy bubbles but she felt distinctly disadvantaged to be lying naked in the bath. What was that woman doing here?

‘How are you feeling?’

‘I’m fine. None of this is necessary.’ Effie’s reply was clipped with embarrassment – but anger too.