She blinked again and the world righted itself. It was just a house, although still more ornate than any farmhouse she had ever seen.

‘It’s beautiful,’ she breathed.

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘At one time it was what I supposed you’d call a great house, but the man who owned it two hundred years ago fell on hard times. He had to sell off some of his land, and start farming the rest.

‘The place has changed hands several times. My grandfather bought it and worked himself into the grave to make it prosper. My father gave his whole life to it as well.’

‘And you live in that beautiful house?’

‘Part of it. The rest is shut up. Teresa, who looks after us, complains about how hard it is to keep even a small part clean.’

A door at ground level was pulled open from the inside, but, instead of Teresa, Alex saw a vast dog, of miscellaneous parentage, come lumbering out.

He might have been part Great Dane, part Alsatian. He might have been a St Bernard crossed with a lurcher. He might have been anything.

He ambled towards them obviously so excited to see them that he was getting dangerously near the vehicle. Rinaldo was forced to brake sharply.

A stream of fierce words came from him. The dog either didn’t understand or didn’t care because he reared up to put his head through Rinaldo’s window and cover him with eager licks.

‘That’s enough,’ Rinaldo growled, but he didn’t push the animal away. ‘This ridiculous object is Brutus,’ he informed Alex. ‘He thinks he’s mine. Or I’m his. One of the two.’

He tweaked the animal’s ears and said, ‘Vai via!’ pointing into the distance.

Reluctantly Brutus moved back. But as soon as they were out of the car he surged forward again, this time at Alex.

She gave a yell of alarm. The next moment she was looking down at her elegant pants, now displaying a large, dirty paw print.