‘He’s gone to his rooms, to change I think, and then he’s coming to the yard. He didn’t want it brought round the front.’

Again they glanced at each other and it was the cook who said, ‘He’s taking a chance calling on her this time of night, isn’t he? It’s usually in the day.’ When it had got back to them that the young master was frequenting a bakery in the town, the cook had gone to see her sister who lived a few doors down from the establishment. Her sister had confirmed that Mr Alexander was often seen in the premises when he was home on leave, sitting eating and drinking like everyone else, but that she had never seen him at night – although that wasn’t to say he didn’t call, of course.

It was a young widow with a bairn who’d taken the bakery on, the sister had said over a pot of tea, and she was a real bonny piece. Big green eyes like saucers, she had. She seemed respectable enough, but how a lass her age had come by the means to buy a business of her own, no one knew. This had been said with a knowing look, and although Alexander’s name hadn’t been mentioned it had hung in the air. Then, just a few weeks ago, the cook’s sister had sent her a message saying she had to come into town on her half-day off, and there had been that notice in the window of the bakery. Well, Cook said on her return to Highfield Hall, you could have knocked her down with a feather. And she’d caught a glimpse of the lass in question and she was a looker all right, she could see what had captured Mr Alexander’s fancy.

Not one of the staff believed anything but that the young master had bought the bakery for her – it was what the nobs did when they took a mistress, wasn’t it, setting them up in their own place where they could visit when they felt like it – but it was surprising it wasn’t a nice little cottage somewhere off the beaten track rather than a working bakery in the middle of town.

‘It strikes me the lass is canny,’ the housekeeper had said to the cook one day when they were discussing the matter in the housekeeper’s sitting room over a cup of coffee. ‘If he gets tired of her she’s not left high and dry, not with a little business of her own and a nice income. Gives her that bit of security.’

The cook remembered this now and as the footman disappeared out of the kitchen door to the stables, she said to the valet, ‘Has Mr Alexander ever mentioned the lass when you’re looking after him? Given a hint, like?’