‘If he wanted his society friends, what’s he doing in Winterbourne in December?’ her bosom enemy Widow Clare enquired tartly. ‘The nobs are all off visiting, or at their big country houses. What’s an earl doing hiring that old barn of a place? Outrunning his creditors, that’s what. I tell you, ladies, it’ll be cash on the nail for any eggs that household wants to buy from my hens!’

‘Oh, and nobody’s seen him,’ Mrs Johnson squeaked, her eyes popping at the thought of an earl in the village, even one fallen upon hard times. ‘I’ve seen his butler, mind-I thought it was his lordship himself for a minute, so grand and starched up he was-talking to poor Bill Willett. “I will trouble you, my man,” he said, all frosty-like, ‘l will trouble you to remember that only the freshest milk and cream is fit for his lordship’s table and that cream is fit only for the cat.” And have you seen the horses?’

The other ladies nodded. Not only had they seen them arrive three days ago but had been bored to death at dinner by their husbands and sons carrying on about the splendour of his lordship’s stable. But, to everyone’s chagrin, it seemed that his lordship had driven himself down from London and had managed to arrive at the one moment of the day when not a single curious eye was focused on the Green, but instead was watching the spectacle of the Mail sweeping through.

‘He’ll have to come out sooner or later,’ Mrs Thorne prophesied comfortably. ‘Even if the bailiffs are after him.’

She broke off as a gig turned off the main road and was driven at a spanking pace around the far side of the Green. It was a modest but somewhat rakish vehicle-the sort that a sporting curate might favour, perhaps-drawn by a neat Welsh cob.

The ladies stared as best they could from the shelter of bonnets and hoods as the gig turned through the gates of the pretty little house that faced the red brick façade of the Old Manor.