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Gaynor’s very soul shrank from such an idea. But on the road to Yorkshire, with the top of the car down, the citified sophisticate had blown away, leaving a girl who looked younger than her years and potentially vulnerable, and whose mood was almost fey. She doesn’t want to marry him, Gaynor concluded, seeking a simple explanation for a complex problem, but she hasn’t the courage to back out. Yet Fern had never lacked courage. The house was a disappointment: solidly, stolidly Victorian, watching them from shadowed windows and under frowning lintels, its stoic façade apparently braced to withstand both storm and siege.

He left us this house,” Fern explained. “His relationship to Daddy was so obscure we christened him Great-Cousin. It seemed logical at the time. Anyway, he had several sisters who preceded him into this world and out of it: I’m sure the youngest was an E. Esme … no. No. ” Gaynor said, half-ironic, half-wistful. ” “No,” Fern said baldly. “There isn’t. As far as we know, she was a fluttery young girl who became a fluttery old woman, with nothing much in between. ” “She must have had a lover,” Will speculated.

I must have dropped off, just sitting here. Maybe it was something on the news. Or those bizarre pictures of yours,” she added, glancing up at Will. ” Fern queried sharply. She picked up the remote and pressed On: the screen flicked to a vista of a fire in an industrial plant in Leeds. Behind the commentator, ash flakes swirled under an ugly sky. “That was it,” said Gaynor with real relief. ” And: “I can’t think why I’m so tired…” “It’s the Yorkshire air,” said Will. ” “You don’t want to go watching t’news,” opined Mrs.