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‘If you’re thinking in terms of horseflesh then I’m just a moorland pony and there’ll be no thoroughbred as a match for me in Town.’ Leonora had responded without thinking in a light-hearted way but she was shocked that she had spoken thus, admitting to him, and herself, that she still harboured hopes of marriage. Embarrassed at being so frank, she began to run her fingers over the keys from the bass notes to the treble. Glancing up, she said, ‘It seems to be still in tune. Is the top octave a little sharp? What do you think, my lord?’

‘I was just thinking that there’s something irresistibly spirited and sweet about a moorland pony.’ Leonora cast a startled glance at him, met his mischievous gleam and laughed. Their attention returned to the piano-forte and Alistair Rokeby’s voice was once again serious. ‘Perhaps it would be useful anyway to see how you alter the notes. I should learn to care for my own piano-forte.’

Achille padded over from the fireside to lay his head on his master’s knee and Leonora stood up to reach the wrest-pins. As she worked, she was aware that Achille’s and the Earl’s regard did not waver from her face. When she had finished, she sat down again on the stool with a triumphant smile. ‘There! I think that should do. Until I’m back again or you have taught yourself, Lord Rokeby. I can leave you my tools if you would like?’ Leonora met his gaze and for some moments could not look away.

He broke the tension by running his hands over the keys. ‘I feel you’ve begun to retune me, Miss Appleby. The jangling notes rearranged to a kind of music.’ He gave a soft laugh. ‘If not yet a symphony.’

Acutely aware of the beating of her heart, Leonora looked down at their hands, and slowly Lord Rokeby started to play. She recognised the base melody that undulated like a lullaby: it was the duet they had played before. She picked up the treble part that so sinuously intertwined with his.

Sitting so close, their bodies as one, their hands moving together then apart, crossing, brushing fingers, it felt akin to an elaborate courtship. She glanced at him, wondering if their thoughts too had merged, whether he felt the same pulse of recognition, but his face was intent on the keyboard. When they had stopped playing, he said quietly, ‘It’s the inner harmony that matters most; I feel that when we play.’ So sensitised was Leonora, she shivered. They continued to sit side by side, silent, barely breathing. Lord Rokeby took her hands in his. He began to speak with some hesitation. ‘Miss Appleby, I cannot bear…’ But before he could finish his sentence there was a discordant banging of the front door and the moment was shattered. Both looked up as a woman burst into the room, followed by a flustered Stowe. ‘Alistair, mon trésor! Enfin je t’ai trouvé!’

Lord Rokeby sprang to his feet and strode towards the visitor, his hands out. She flew into his arms and they held each other in a fierce embrace that spoke of an intense intimacy. Leonora, roughly awoken from her romantic dream, could barely believe her eyes. She and Mrs Priddy stood up; each caught the other’s startled expression and looked away. Too shocked to think, Leonora placed her tuning tools in the bag and left them on the stool for Lord Rokeby. She removed her apron. Mrs Priddy too folded up her baby shawl, needles and wool, and stowed it all away as they prepared to go.

The Earl whirled round to face Leonora. ‘My apologies, Miss Appleby, and Mrs Priddy.’ He looked across to Nanny P who walked to take Leonora’s arm. ‘Let me introduce Madame Claudette Dupré to you. She was employed by the Grande Armée as a vivandière, running the canteen for the soldiers in the front line. She found me on the battlefield. And saved my life.’

He looked across to the young woman and translated, ‘Tu m’as sauvé la vie.’ His face was alive with feeling.

Leonora gazed with some wonder and despair at this exotic woman who stood so full of life before her. She wore a striped jacket in red, white and blue, in the manner of the Paris revolutionaries a generation before. Her skirt was a simple blue calico, and an Indian shawl was tied round her shoulders and crossed over her breast to be knotted in the small of her back. But it was her face and hair that were most striking. Strongly boned and handsome, she had a fine nose and dark lively eyes. Her olive skin appeared gilded by the sun and she wore her cloud of wavy hair in the most informal manner, merely pulled back and tied in a luxuriant pigtail that reached half way down her back.

She laughed and punched Lord Rokeby playfully on the arm, speaking in a strong French accent. ‘You know I understand Angleesh! And you, Alistair, had embrassé la mort as I drag you off that sanglant field, how you say? Blooded field!’

Lord Rokeby turned to Leonora. ‘She says I embraced death; I was in fact embracing my brother who had just died in my arms. But Madame Dupré is right, when she found me, I did not wish to live.’ He then took Leonora’s hand and squeezed her fingers so lightly she wasn’t sure if she had imagined the pressure. Turning to Madame Dupré, he said, ‘Claudette, I want you to meet Miss Appleby who is about to go to London for the Season, la saison sociale, and her compagne, Mrs Priddy, who will accompany her and my young niece.’

Leonora and Claudette Dupré were guarded as they met each other’s gaze, each uncertain of the character of the other or the nature of her relationship with Lord Rokeby. Leonora was struck by how free the Frenchwoman appeared in dress and manner, astonished by her vitality and comradely ease with the Earl. She so envied her that. Madame Dupré’s courage and competence as a woman working on the front line was almost unimaginable to her and made her own life seem so small in comparison.

Claudette Dupré grasped her hand with disarming spontaneity. ‘M’selle Appleby, perhaps I see you à Londres? I go there in charge of the cuisine for the new French ambassadeur, le marquis de La Châtre. Pouf! Il est vieux but he likes parties and dancing.’ She shrugged and then laughed.

Leonora was surprised yet again. Here was a woman with a job who seemed full of the kind of breezy confidence she expected from ennobled men. She found this joie de vivre immensely attractive and responded in as friendly a way as possible, ‘I should like that, Madame. We will be staying with the Earl’s grandmother in Brook Street.’

‘La! He is not “the Earl” to me!’ She laughed. ‘He’s un vilain coquin, how you say, Alistair? A rascal, who spent too much time with his horses, the cards and les filles de la nuit.’

Lord Rokeby interjected in mock indignation, ‘Madame! Do not blacken my name.’ He caught Leonora’s eye and continued, ‘’Tis true, as an officer, there were certain freedoms, but not all the ones Madame Dupré suggests!’

His words were serious but his expression more roguish than Leonora had seen before. This unconventional visitor had reminded him of his spirit of old and a life Leonora could not know. She was shocked by the envy she felt of Claudette Dupré’s part in this life. It had been many years since Leonora had experienced such a tumult of emotion and she was ashamed of her jealousy. Uppermost was the sinking feeling that she could never know Lord Rokeby as well. Claudette Dupré had saved his life; how could she, a naive countrywoman, with only their shared love of Hasterleigh, of music and swimming, ever compete with such a momentous history as that? How could a well-behaved Englishwoman like herself ever compare to such a force of nature with her free and easy manner, her unembarrassed passions, her animal energy and joy?

Leonora just wanted to get away and taking Mrs Priddy’s arm, bade her farewells, inclining her head to Lord Rokeby. ‘Thank you, my lord, for warning of the pitfalls that await Miss Charlotte and me in London.’ They collected the gig and set Clover off at a brisk trot for home. Only once out of sight did Leonora feel she could exhale. Nanny P glanced across at her and gave voice to her outrage. ‘Well, what a hoyden girl! Her hair! Her clothes! And the way she embraced Master Alistair! Who does she think she is?’

Despite her own tremulous heart, Leonora could not suppress an amused gasp. ‘Oh, Nanny P! She’s French and they’re all revolutionaries now.’

‘That may well be, my dear, but who is she to burst into the Abbey and treat him as if she has rights over his life and limb?’

‘Well, he owes her his life. That is a considerable bond, you know.’ Her light-heartedness had receded and her voice was flat.

Mrs Priddy gave her a sharp look. ‘Nora! I understand you well enough by now to know your feelings are stirred by Lord Rokeby, but you are not to feel cast down. He’s not proof against your charms, my dear; I’m experienced enough in the ways of men to know that at least!’

‘But what presumption that a no-longer-young woman from Hasterleigh could ever think such a man would love her.’ The full absurdity of the idea struck Leonora with greater force as she made her thoughts public; at the same time, she was aware of the cruel irony that in the incandescence of Claudette Dupré’s arrival, her own amorous heart, so long denied, had sprung to life and settled unequivocally upon Lord Rokeby. With that precious gift of clarity, however, came the pain of jealousy and fear of loss.

She pulled up the gig in the stable yard at the Manor and as she helped Mrs Priddy down, her beloved nanny said, ‘There’s no accounting for the human heart. And we cannot know what life has in store for us. You are off to London in two days where every kind of adventure awaits.’

‘To believe Lord Rokeby, it’s more where every kind of predator, fortune hunter and libertine lies in wait!’

The two days that remained sped by in a flurry of activity. Leonora had no time to think of what had transpired at Rokeby Abbey and what might be happening there now. She had overheard some scurrilous servants’ gossip about a wild French lass but for the sake of her own peace of mind, had tried to suppress any lurid imaginings.

Her only letter from Captain Worth had been her constant companion and a reminder of how much she had once been loved. Read and reread countless times, the folds were beginning to tear, so she decided not to take it with her to London. Leonora sat at her dressing table and drew it from the drawer to read one last time before she left.

My Beloved,

Death is ever near. Bleakness everywhere and I so far from all I hold Dear. My Thoughts of You, the glowing centre of my Nights, the Reason I can face the Day. How I long for this War to be over. And at last I can hold you in my Arms to never let you go. I fear I can no longer Live without You near – my Soul’s a Desert, my Heart in Flames. I long to kiss your Hands, your Lips, your Throat. Oh! how I lose my Wits in Longing.