‘Cut along to the dining room and see if you are needed,’ he said briefly to Franklin, and once the young man had gone, he looked at the cook. ‘He’s got it bad, I reckon,’ he said glumly, ‘the young master.’

She nodded and they stared at each other for a moment, before one of the kitchen maids dropped a big pan of hot water that had been soaking on the side all over the floor, thus bringing an end to further conversation.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Alexander was thinking much the same thing as he bowled along in the cold frosty air, the bitter wind slicing into his flesh. Overhead the sky was a dark velvet canopy with hundreds of bright twinkling lights, and somewhere in the far distance an owl was hooting. The night was calm and peaceful, but he felt anything but calm and peaceful inside. He wouldn’t have believed a woman could have the sort of hold over him that Rose had. They had never embraced, he had never kissed her and yet she was in his flesh, his bones, his blood. All the time he had been out of the country in Leipzig as part of a team in Germany supporting two British Army officers accused of espionage, he had been thinking of Rose. The trial of Lieutenant Trench and Captain Brandon had been harrowing, and when they had been found guilty just before Christmas things had got even more difficult, with all leave being cancelled. But now he was here. He breathed in great lungfuls of air. Whether she would see him at this time of night was another matter altogether.

By the time he reached the street where the bakery was he was regretting the impulse to come, but not enough to return without trying to see her. He got down from the horse and trap, tying the reins to a lamp post and throwing the trap’s thick tartan blanket over the animal, and then stood for a minute or two just staring up at the windows of the flat above the shop where lights showed behind the curtains. His heart was pounding like a sledgehammer, and in spite of telling himself that attempting to speak to Rose was nothing compared to some of the things he’d encountered in his life as an army officer, it didn’t help.

‘Come on, man,’ he muttered to himself after a while, ‘it’s getting later every minute. Knock on the damn door.’