‘You’re American,’ he said on a note of discovery. ‘But you’re…’

‘I’m the castle relic,’ she told him. ‘Hang on a minute. I need to check something.’

She limped across to the closest window, hoisted herself up and peered through to where Rose snoozed in her cot.

‘Nope. Still fine.’

‘What’s fine?’ he asked, more and more bemused.

‘Rose. My daughter.’ She gestured to the headphones now lying abandoned in the mud. ‘You thought I was listening to hip-hop while I worked? I was listening to the sounds of my daughter sleeping. Much more reassuring.’ She turning and starting to walk toward the conservatory. ‘Relics are what they used to call us in the old days,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘They’re the women left behind when their lords died.’

‘And your lord was…’

‘Rory,’ she told him. ‘Your cousin. He was Scottish-Australian but he met me in the States.’

‘I don’t know anything about my cousins.’ She was limping toward a glass-panelled building on the north side of the house, moving so fast he had to lengthen his stride to keep up with her.

‘You don’t know anything about the family?’

‘I didn’t know anyone existed until I got the lawyer’s letter.’

‘Saying you were an earl.’ She chuckled. ‘How cool. It’s like Cinderella. You should have been destitute, living in a garret.’ She glanced over her shoulder, eyeing him appraisingly. ‘But they tell me you’re some sort of financier in Manhattan. I guess you weren’t in any garret.’

‘It was a pretty upmarket garret,’ he admitted. They reached the conservatory doors, and she swung them wide so he could appreciate the vista. ‘Wow!’

‘It is wow,’ she said, approving.

It certainly was. The conservatory was as big as three or four huge living rooms and it was almost thirty feet high. It looked almost a cathedral, he thought, dazed. The beams were vast and blackened with glass panels set between. Hundreds of glass panels.