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surroundings, being dragged up by servants. I am sure she will have learned London manners by now.’ Lucy Telfer always thought the best of everybody. It was one of the things that made her so soothing to live with. ‘After all, whatever his faults, Mr Cameron was a gentleman and knew what he owed to his position. You will be charmed to find how correct and ladylike she has become.’
    ‘I hope so.’ Magnus didn’t sound convinced.
    ‘And she is probably feeling quite crushed, poor girl. Never to have known her mother, and now to lose her father when he had scarcely passed forty. We must try very hard to make her feel at home.’
    ‘Mmmm. I only hope we don’t find ourselves wallowing in a vale of tears, that’s all. Dashed depressing!’
    ‘I will take care you are not inconvenienced, my love. You know that your comfort is always my first concern.’
    He nodded absently. ‘I know I have asked you before, but are you quite, quite sure it is not going to be too much of an imposition? There is still time for you to change your mind.’
    She smiled. ‘Indeed, no. She will be no trouble. She will be like a sister to me, as well as to Luke.’ There was a pause, and then she said with an expression that, in another woman, might have been ironical. ‘And what else can we do, in any case? If your father wishes it...’
    Entranced, Luke wriggled on his perch, which had the unfortunate effect of attracting his papa’s attention. ‘Ah, yes, my boy,’ Magnus said. ‘You needn’t stay. Off you go, back to Mrs Weekes.’
    Dragging his feet a little, Luke departed. But he was rewarded with another nugget of information as, slowly, he closed the door.
    ‘...still don’t understand why he wishes it! Dash it all, if Cameron has drunk and gambled his way through all the money my father paid him for Kinveil, it can hardly be laid to the Telfers’ charge...’
    ‘Master Luke!’ said a minatory voice from the stairs.
    Luke turned away from the door. ‘Hullo, Weeky,’ he said with a brave attempt at nonchalance. ‘Did you know there was a girl coming to stay with us? We must try to be very kind to her.’
3
    At noon on Friday, Magnus’s town carriage drew up outside 14 St James’s Square and decanted the master of the house and three females of assorted shapes and sizes. To Luke’s jaundiced eye, they all appeared thoroughly shabby-genteel. However, he was primed to be gracious and perhaps a touch patronizing. He had no idea what to expect of Miss Cameron, but in view of the gipsy upbringing and the drunken father, he didn’t expect much.
    Magnus, looking surprisingly benevolent, led one of the females forward. She was of middling height, very pale, and as far as Luke could see under the shadow of her hood, very fair-haired. Her eyes, cast down towards the front steps, were not immediately visible.
    Beside him, Luke heard his mother give a faint gasp – not, he suspected, of sympathy, but of stark horror at the girl’s clothes. Unrelieved black bombazine was not the most becoming of fabrics, especially on a thin, wan, fifteen-year-old. Luke was just deciding that she looked like a crow when she raised startling green eyes and he suddenly wondered what she had done with her broomstick. She was precisely his idea of a witch. And a witch who had never shed a tear in her life, which was probably why his papa was looking so pleased with himself.
    Lucy Telfer stepped forward, her arms half outstretched, but if she had thought Miss Cameron was going to rush to their shelter she was sadly mistaken. The girl’s face didn’t change, nor did she recoil, but her rejection couldn’t have been clearer if she had put it in words.
    She curtsied politely, and held out a slim, black-mittened hand. ‘This is most kind, Mrs Telfer. I promise I will not be a trouble to you.’
    The other two females had now been joined by a lanky, red-haired boy who had been seated on the box. He had the most astonishing collection of freckles Luke