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Ewen Campbell forty minutes later, he couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. Although his grandfather, a formidably shrewd and decisive old gentleman, had laughed, Luke’s papa had not admired this second of his only begotten son’s exploits nearly as much as the first, and for his last few days Luke had been virtually confined to barracks.
    Inevitably, when they returned to London, his mother had been regaled with the episode of the washtub. She had laid a shocked hand over her heart, and Luke had been trying to make it up to her ever since.
    ‘Now, my love,’ she said. ‘We know it will come as a surprise to you, but we are sure you will be pleased. You are going to have a sister.’
    She might have phrased it better. Luke’s eyes goggled. He knew that mothers and fathers had to do what the cattleman at Kinveil had shown him a bull and a cow doing, otherwise they couldn’t become mothers and fathers at all. But to think of his own stately parents engaged on anything so undignified was beyond the range of his imagining.
    Stupidly, he said, ‘When?’ And then, rather less stupidly, ‘A sister ?’
    ‘On Friday,’ Lucy Telfer replied patting his hand.
    He looked up at his father, standing before the fire with his hands tucked under his olive green coat tails and a benign smile on his face. Magnus Telfer was an impressive figure, just an inch under six feet tall, handsomely built, with strong brows over well-opened hazel eyes, the large family nose, full but well-shaped lips, and a nicely cultivated air of distinction. No one would ever have guessed that Magnus’s own father had been born in a weaver’s cottage, but neither would they ever have doubted that he had become a very warm man indeed. Two years at Oxford had put a fine, smooth polish on Magnus’s manners – even if they had made little impression on his mind – and his acquaintances were accustomed to consider him a sound fellow. It was by no means unusual for ladies, especially elderly ones, to murmur to their friends, ‘Such a gentlemanly man!’ His style being lazy and a touch consequential, most people thought him several years older than he was. At this time, in fact, he was just twenty-seven.
    Luke turned dazedly back to his mama, but, as she went on, his blank incomprehension gave way to a strong feeling of ill usage. ‘You don’t remember, of course, because it all happened before you were born. But the gentleman from whom your grandfather bought Kinveil had a little girl, who was just about your age at the time. Anyway, Mr Cameron – that was the gentleman’s name – went to heaven not very long ago, and left his little girl all alone in the world.’
    1811 minus 1803 made eight. Plus seven made fifteen. Little girl?
    ‘So she is coming to live with us, just for a year or two until she is grown up. She must be very lonely and very sad, so you will promise to be kind to her, won’t you, and treat her as if she were really your sister? But I know you will. You are such a good boy!’
    He was a furious boy. A stranger coming to live. An intruder. Someone he would have to be polite to, and put himself out for. Someone he was going to have to share his mother with. And as if all that wasn’t bad enough – a girl! Clothes and hair-styles, giggling and gossiping.
    His mother looked at him anxiously, and with an enormous effort he returned her gaze. For a moment, his voice refused to obey him, but at last he managed, ‘Yes, mama. Of course, mama.’
    ‘That’s fine, then,’ his father intervened jovially. ‘I’m sure you’ll get along famously.’ Then, as if Luke had suddenly become invisible, he went on to his wife, ‘Though I must say I still have doubts about her upbringing. What if she turns out to be a hoyden? From all accounts, she was wild as a gipsy when she was at Kinveil. You remember what Charlotte had to say about her!’
    ‘But that was years ago, my love. Charlotte saw her in the most uncivilized