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After enduring days of heat, fevered speculation and distress, his facetious tone was the last straw. Leonora grasped a piece of her own writing paper from the table in the hall and scrawled:

No. I’m afraid she would not.

I suggest you find yourself a more amusing and complaisant p-f tuner.

And she signed with her own flourish, LA.

She folded it, not bothering with a wax seal, and handed it back to the groom. Leonora was seething with an anger she did not fully understand. After so many years of grief, when she had struggled for self-reliance, armouring her vulnerability with a steel band around her heart, she had finally offered it again to a man. Was she so hurt because he appeared to have treated her gift with scant regard? She removed her apron and catching sight of herself in the looking glass in the hall, was astonished by how untidy her hair was and how pink her cheeks, flushed with the heat of the day and the emotion of the hour. She had just managed to clean the dust of the cellar from her face, her hair still damp and tendrilled round her face, when there was the sound of cantering hooves.

Leonora went to the front door and there stood the Earl, his face dark, his hair wild. He was coatless, just wearing his shirt and breeches, and he too was flushed with the heat, sweat standing out on his forehead and glistening on his exposed collarbone. Achille came panting up and pushed through into the shade of the house. ‘Lord Rokeby, to what do I owe this visit?’ Leonora asked with a cold voice.

He flourished her note. ‘To what do I owe this rude riposte? Why the sulky tone?’

‘I’m not sulking, I’m irritated and disappointed.’

‘How so?’ he said, raking his hand through his hair, making it even wilder.

‘Perhaps your behaviour with your friends over the last days might give you a clue,’ she said, horrified at the edge of sarcasm in her voice. He took a step towards her, fury in his face, and Leonora realised this argument was being conducted in full hearing of the servants. ‘Come into the morning room, my lord. I don’t think we need to advertise our disagreements to the world.’

She closed the door behind them and he whirled around to face her. ‘Pray tell me, Miss Appleby, how do you know how I behave with my friends?’ His face contorted with anger and incomprehension. ‘Did you come and visit me? Or were you by chance spying?’

Leonora recoiled from his words for he was right, and she felt suddenly very much in the wrong. She scrabbled for an explanation that did not implicate her. ‘The whole village was agog!’ she said.

He was contemptuous. ‘So you prefer to hark to the clacking of old wives’ tongues than to trust in my character?’

‘How could I not? A carriage full of women was reported as being seen in your drive.’ Her own outrage was on stronger ground as she saw him blink in shock.

‘So I’m now guilty of entertaining a carriage-load of harlots, am I? Did it not occur to you this may have had nothing to do with me?’ He had paced in his lopsided way to the window and back, then turned and said in an exasperated voice, ‘If a friend of mine, a comrade in arms, chooses to invite some of his female friends, do you expect me to humiliate him, and them, by barring their entry? I’d hope you would have done as I did and treated them with respect.’

Leonora was still upset, not least by the desecration of her favourite swimming spot that these visitors had prevented her from visiting. ‘If it was all so respectable, my lord, why were these friends cavorting in semi-undress around my—I mean your—lake?’

His visage suddenly lightened with amusement or triumph, she was not sure which. ‘Ah ha! So you were spying! Miss Appleby, you are back to your old trespassing ways. You say you are disappointed in me, well I am disappointed in you.’ His voice continued, more in sorrow, ‘Why not think the best of me? And if you could not do that, then ask for an explanation. I thought you knew my heart.’ In an involuntary movement, his hand went to his chest. ‘But perhaps I was mistaken in that too? Instead, you damn me, again unheard.’ Leonora hung her head. Lord Rokeby was right. She had jumped to conclusions that had hurt them both.

‘You had not fully declared yourself to me. What was I to think? How was I to know this was a lark thought up by one of your gentlemen friends and not something you had organised for your own gratification?’

‘I’m sorry you have been concerned, but I’d hoped you would be less quick to judge.’ He was still frosty.

In a quiet voice she asked, ‘Was the war comrade you mention Lord Dearlove by any chance?’

Alistair Rokeby met her eyes with lofty hauteur. ‘I do not intend to answer that. Dearlove is an officer and a gentleman, as am I, and I will not deign to tattle like a fishwife.’

Leonora thought, That spoilt Rufus Dearlove may be an officer and a gentleman but he’s left you with this mess. She looked at the distinguished, irascible man who stood before her and he turned his head to meet her gaze, a softer, sorrowful expression on his face.

‘I thought I’d met in you, Miss Appleby, the love I’d waited for all my life, but I fear that you do not feel the same certainty. Instead, you offer so suspicious a mind, thinking the worst and rushing to judgement.’ He then flared up with indignation. ‘You admonish me for my behaviour – and you’re not even my wife!’

In any other situation, Leonora would have laughed. To hear him admit to having thought of marrying her just a week ago would have filled her disbelieving heart with joy. But that innocent time had passed. Overcome by distress at her own behaviour and suffocated by the heat, Leonora snapped, her eyes flashing, ‘Your wife? What presumption, my lord! Why on earth would I wish to marry you?’

Alistair Rokeby looked stricken. Even Achille gazed at her with an aghast expression. His lordship turned on his heel and walked straight for the door, his hound at his heel. Leonora was appalled at what she had said, how opposite it was to any truth she felt, and yet she had uttered the unsayable and it could not be undone. She dashed after him, but he was mounted on Jupiter and they were disappearing at a fast trot down the drive towards home.

Unbearably agitated by the emotion of the day, Leonora rushed back into the house and opened her piano-forte. She banged out the most clamorous of the Clementi sonatinas. The house rang with the notes and Mrs Priddy bustled in, her hands over her ears. ‘Nora dear, can you play a little more quietly? You’ll make my head break!’

Leonora rose from the stool and walked across to sit beside her old nanny. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve just been such a fool and I don’t know what to do to try and make it right.’

Mrs Priddy looked at her and asked, ‘I presume this involves Alistair Rokeby?’

‘I’ve done such damage not trusting him, not trusting myself. Oh, Nanny P, I’ve been so afraid of loving anyone again, fearing that my heart asks more than life can give.’

‘It’s not surprising my dear, given the deaths you’ve had to endure.’