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  “He refused to do anything for anybody,” Christina said, “but I do know that she will be thrilled to come to The Hall and perhaps – ”

  Christina looked at the Marquis anxiously,

  “ – perhaps you could have – her cottage repaired – while she is not in it.”

  “It will be the first one to be done!” the Marquis asserted firmly.

  Christina gave a little cry of joy and he added,

  “Surely you realise that you and I are going to tidy up the whole place and make certain that everyone is happy? There will not be a person in the whole of the village who is unemployed, unless he wants to be!”

  Christina clapped her hands together.

  “That is exactly what we want. Oh, thank you, thank you! How can you be so – wonderful! You have come just – when we were beginning to – despair.”

  “I should have come before,” the Marquis muttered.

  Christina was not listening.

  She had jumped up and was running to the door.

  The Marquis was aware that while they had been talking there had been a sound outside in the hall.

  Then he heard Christina cry,

  “Nanny, what do you think? His Lordship is here, and we are going – to stay at The Hall – and everything is going to be perfect again, just like it was in the – old days when Papa and Mama – were alive, and everybody was happy!”

  The excitement in Christina’s voice was very moving.

  As the Marquis joined her, he saw that she was talking to an elderly woman with grey hair.

  She looked, he thought, exactly as a Nanny should look.

  He held out his hand and Nanny curtseyed.

  “I’m that glad your Lordship’s back!” she said.

  There was just a note in her voice as if she would like to have added,

  ‘And about time too!’

  The Marquis was reminded of his own Nanny. It was exactly what she would have said.

  “As Miss Christina has told you,” he said, “I have invited you both to The Hall to help me put things straight. Christina and I are going to call on Miss Dickson to see if she will leave her leaking cottage and come with us as well.”

  Nanny stared at the Marquis as if she could not believe her ears.

  Then she said,

  “You be a real gentleman, my Lord, just like your father, and now that ’orrible war’s over, we needs you ’ere.”

  “Go and pack your clothes, Nanny,” the Marquis smiled. “I am sending a carriage and someone to help you.”

  There was a sudden glitter of tears in Nanny’s eyes and the Marquis knew how desperately worried she must have been about the lack of money and also Christina’s involvement with Sir Mortimer Stinger.

  Nanny’s next words confirmed that this was the truth.

  “I saw that unpleasant gentleman’s carriage goin’ through the village as I was comin’ back,” she said to Christina. “Has he been here again?”

  “His Lordship saved me, Nanny,” Christina answered.

  “I told you not to open the door!” Nanny said sharply.

  “I did not know it was him,” Christina said. “In fact, I thought it was his Lordship.”

  “He will not trouble her again,” the Marquis interposed firmly. “Just as my father would not allow him on the estate, I will do the same!”

  He saw the relief in Nanny’s eyes, and added,

  “Do not worry. She will be safe enough at the hall. There will be plenty of people there to look after her.”

  “I’m thankin’ God, my Lord,” Nanny said fervently, “that you’ve come just in the nick of time!”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Marquis helped Christina into his phaeton.

  Then, as he drove off, he said,

  “I think we will call on Miss Dickson on the way. You must tell me which cottage she is in.”

  “It is right at the very end of the village,” Christina answered. “It was very pretty when she first went into it, but nothing has been done to it for a long time. The thatched roof needs repairing and the windows painting, but Mr. Waters would not listen, even when Papa spoke to him.”

  The Marquis did not say anything.

  But Christina was aware that his lips tightened and she knew how angry this revelation would made him.

  “Now that you are – back,” she said in a soft voice, “I know that – everything will be different.”

  “It will take time,” the Marquis cautioned, “but the most important thing is to employ the men who fought so bravely in the war.”

  “That is what Papa thought about those who grew up during it,” Christina said, “but when the farmers on the estate asked for them, Mr. Waters would not allow them to employ any more men than they had already.”

  The Marquis could explain the reason why, but he thought it was a mistake.

  He wanted to forget what had happened and concentrate on what should be done immediately.

  Christina pointed out to him the cottage where Miss Dickson was living.

  He could see that it had once been very attractive, but now the gate was off its hinges, the door and the windows had not been painted and the whole cottage looked dilapidated and forlorn.

  The groom went to the horses’ heads and the Marquis helped Christina out of the phaeton.

  As they walked up the path to the front door, she said in a whisper,

  “This is going to be very exciting for Miss Dickson! She has been – longing for – you to come home.”

  The Marquis knocked on the door and a voice he knew so well called out,

  “Come in!”

  He opened it.

  Miss Dickson, looking very much older and somehow smaller, was sitting by the fire.

  Her hair was white and there were lines on her face that he did not remember, but at the same time her smile when she saw him was just as it had always been.

  “It’s you, young Master Mervy!” she exclaimed. “You are back!”

  “Yes, I am back, Dickie,” the Marquis said, “and I know that you are going to say ‘better late than never’!”

  Miss Dickson laughed.

  “It seems a very long time since you went away, but God has heard my prayers and you have come back home, safe and sound!”

  “That’s true,” the Marquis said, “and now I want your help.”

  Miss Dickson looked surprised.

  “I have just rescued Christina,” the Marquis informed her, “from that abominable man, Sir Mortimer Stinger. I am taking her and her Nanny to The Hall, but as you will readily understand, she must be chaperoned.”

  The twinkle in the Marquis’s eyes was echoed by those in Miss Dickson’s.

  “Of course!” she said demurely, “and if those are your orders, my Lord, I am only too willing to oblige.”

  The Marquis laughed outright.

  “They are not my orders, Dickie. You were the one who gave those, but we need you to help me put right everything that has gone badly wrong since my father died.”

  “They have indeed,” Miss Dickson agreed in a serious voice, “but if you dealt with Napoleon, you can certainly deal with what has happened here lately on the Melverley estate.”

  “I will do my best,” the Marquis said, “but I need both you and Christina to assist me.”

  Miss Dickson smiled at him and he added,

  “I will send a carriage to collect you in an hour’s time. I would expect you can be ready by then?”

  “I shall not only be ready, but waiting impatiently,” Miss Dickson replied. “It is the most exciting thing that has happened to me since I was first made your Governess when you were seven years old!”

  There was a moving note of sincerity in her voice.

  The Marquis thought how much she must have disliked being pensioned off in a small cottage after she had ruled the schoolroom with a rod of iron for so many years.

  A quick glance round the room showed him that the paper was peeling off the walls and damp was
percolating through the ceiling. And the floorboards creaked ominously when he walked across them.

  “Well, hurry, Dickie,” he said, “and get packed. Christina and I need you and we cannot afford to waste any time.”

  “It’s just like old times to hear you talking like that,” Miss Dickson enthused. “You always were in a hurry and would never listen when I told you ‘more haste, less speed’.”

  The Marquis laughed.

  Christina bent and kissed Miss Dickson.

  “Everything is going to be – wonderful now that his Lordship is – back,” she said, “and he really is taking Nanny and me to The Hall to – escape from that – horrible Sir Mortimer.”

  “That man is a menace!” Miss Dickson said angrily.

  “He will not come again now that I am home,” the Marquis told her reassuringly, “but I think Christina will be safer at The Hall with you and Nanny to look after her.”

  “Of course she will,” Miss Dickson agreed, “but, all the same, Sir Mortimer is a nasty man, and there are many unpleasant tales told about his behaviour in the County.”

  “I wish we could be rid of him,” the Marquis sighed, “but there are more important matters to be attended to first.”

  He took Christina back to the phaeton.

  Miss Dickson managed to rise to her feet to wave goodbye to them as they drove off.

  “Is she really ill?” the Marquis asked Christina.

  “I think if she had good food and a house that is not damp so that it affected her rheumatism, she would be just like her old self again.”

  The Marquis wanted to say how angry it made him to think that anyone who had meant so much in his life should be left in such appalling conditions on his own estate.

  He was wise enough, however, to recognise that it was no use going on obsessing about Waters’s wickedness and dereliction of duty.

  What he had to do now was to start the wheels turning in the other direction and he had already made a note of the cottages in the village that were to be seen to immediately.

  They reached The Hall and stepped out of the phaeton.

  The Marquis gave Johnson orders that a carriage was to be sent to Four Gables for Nanny and the luggage and also to pick up Miss Dickson.

  “I don’t expect they will be here for at least another hour,” he added, “so tell the chef that dinner is to be later than usual.”

  He remembered that his father had always dined at seven o’clock.

  In London the Prince Regent had made it fashionable to dine later and it was sometimes nine o’clock before His Royal Highness actually sat down at the table.

  While the Marquis was giving his orders, Christina had gone ahead into the room at the end of the hall.

  She had always thought it was the prettiest room she had ever seen.

  It had a big bow window looking out over the garden at the back and she loved the exquisitely carved fireplace, which had been put in when the house was renovated during the last century.

  It was Robert Adam who had undertaken the restoration.

  He had managed to keep some of the older rooms the same as they were in Tudor times and at the same time he had made the house extremely impressive with a new facade.

  He had added East and West wings to the main building, which had increased its size and importance and, in Christina’s eyes, its beauty.

  But she still liked some of the older rooms with their low ceilings.

  She enjoyed, too, the twisting staircases and the secret passages she had played in ever since she was a small child.

  As she looked round the room she thought that Melverley Hall was a Fairy tale Palace with a magic all of its own.

  When the Marquis had given his orders, he joined her.

  “Now, where shall we start?” he asked. “You have already told me two issues of great importance – that Waters was crooked and that almost every cottage in the village is in need of repair.”

  “Perhaps you may feel that you have done enough for one day,” Christina smiled.

  “Now you are underestimating my powers of endurance,” the Marquis replied.

  He went to an exquisite secretaire in the corner of the room and brought back some crested writing paper and a pen.

  “Now tell me what else needs doing,” he enquired.

  Christina immediately began with a list of farms that should have made a reasonable profit like most other farms during the war, but they had been deprived of workmen, of implements and livestock.

  “The farmers begged Mr. Waters almost on their knees to be allowed to cultivate more land,” Christina told him, “but he always refused.”

  Christina paused for a moment before continuing,

  “Now, as I expect you know, the bottom has fallen out of the market and the farmers are having a very hard time.”

  The Marquis had in fact heard this in London, but he had, however, imagined that everything was well at Melverley.

  Now he knew he had to learn a great deal about what was saleable and what was not and he must certainly restock the farms with chickens, cows and sheep.

  He had also to decide which crops would be most in demand in the market.

  “Things have been very very bad,” Christina said in her soft voice, “because, on top of everything else, there was a disastrous harvest last year.”

  The Marquis then learnt that The Hall’s large kitchen gardens had been sorely neglected and this meant that most of the village was without vegetables. Even potatoes, which in many large families were the staple diet, were unobtainable.

  It had always been understood that the Big House provided vegetables for the whole village at a reduced cost.

  The Marquis did not need to be told that a large number of the villagers had gone hungry. They had been unable to afford meat or chickens and there were no longer the large array of vegetables they had always relied on.

  He had already given his Head Gardener permission to employ as many men as were necessary and the situation, therefore, would soon re-adjust itself.

  Equally he made a note to send to the nearest market for vegetables and see that they were made available in the village shop.

  There were so many subjects to talk about.

  It was with a start that Christina suddenly realised that it was nearly time to dress for dinner.

  “I must go upstairs and find out which room Mrs. Dartford has prepared for me,” she said.

  The Marquis remembered that this was the name of his housekeeper and he replied quickly,

  “I too must come and see her. I know now I should have gone to see the kitchen staff before I returned to your house. But I brought my London chef with me and did not think of it.”

  “I am sure that they will forgive you if you go and see them now,” Christina said, “and I know they will all want to say how glad they are to have you back at The Hall.”

  Mrs. Dartford curtseyed to the Marquis, at the same time leaving him in no doubt as to what her feelings were when he went down to the kitchen.

  Mrs. Boswin the cook had been at The Hall since before he was born.

  She was getting old, but she had managed, she told him, to keep going, although she was having trouble with her legs.

  “I am looking forward to your gingerbread biscuits, Mrs. Boswin,” the Marquis told her.

  Mrs. Boswin laughed.

  “You was always a greedy little boy when it comes to me cookin’,” she answered, “but I ’ears now you ’ardly eats enough to keep a mouse alive!”

  “That is not quite true,” the Marquis laughed. “But I like to ride light and you know as well as I do that too many gingerbread biscuits can put on pounds.”

  “Nevertheless, I’ll make them for you, my Lord, and it’ll be me ’eart that’s singin’, even if me legs won’t carry me!”

  The Marquis looked round the huge kitchen with its large stoves and he could remember seeing hanging from the beams every sort of game fowl besides haunches of ham and long strings
of onions.

  He told himself that he must soon make it look as it used to do.

  As if Mrs. Boswin was following his thoughts, she piped up,

  “It makes me blood boil, my Lord, when I thinks of the days when there was so much food we could ’ardly eat it all. But these past years there was an ’ole in all our tummies, as you used to say when you were a little lad.”

  “I am sure, Mrs. Boswin, I shall not say that again,” the Marquis replied. “I am looking forward to dinner.”

  “I’ll do somethin’ special for you this evening,” Mrs. Boswin replied, “’though, of course, your Lordship’s brought down a fancy chef with you from London.”

  The Marquis realised that this was a sore point and something he should not have done.

  He therefore said quickly,

  “It was only a precaution, Mrs. Boswin. I was not sure if there would be anybody here to cook for me. I will send the chef back to London as soon as you have no further need of him.”

  He saw the light come into Mrs. Boswin’s eyes.

  She had not, as she thought, been usurped by a ‘foreigner’ from London.

  As the Marquis left the kitchen, he saw his London chef and another man whom he knew was his assistant, going towards the kitchen.

  He stopped them and said to the chef,

  “Mrs. Boswin has been here ever since I was born and I thought perhaps she had retired, otherwise I would not have brought you here with me. Be as tactful as you can and let her cook any dish she pleases.”

  The chef, who was a sensible man, nodded.

  “I understands, my Lord.”

  “I was sure you would,” the Marquis replied, “and as you know, the people who have lived here for so many years think of this as their home.”

  The chef smiled in agreement.

  The Marquis hurried back to the front of the house and up to his bedroom.

  Yates was waiting for him and he said as the Marquis entered,

  “You’ve caused a flutter, and no mistake, my Lord, they’re talkin’ about you as if you were an Archangel from Heaven what’s dropped down amongst ’em!”

  The Marquis smiled.

  He was used to Yates commenting on everything that happened in his life and it had often cheered him up during the war when they had been in a particularly tricky situation.