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he turned for a last long look at Eliza.
    â€˜Goodbye, Angel,’ he said.

CHAPTER 5
    As John De Havilland approached fifty, he married his second wife, the unlovely daughter of a banker he met while attending to business in London. When she died in childbirth, he could not say in his heart that he missed her company. He chose not to take another wife. Instead, he decided to concentrate on managing his herd of fine dairy cattle. He had loved farming since boyhood, had bred a formidable herd of pedigrees in the thirty years since he inherited the estate from his father. Indeed, there had been times when he thought he preferred the conformation of a well bred Jersey cow to that of a blushing debutante.
    His second wife left him with two children. Louisa was aged two when her younger brother Harry was born. De Havilland quickly decided he was too old a dog to learn the new tricks of fatherhood. He became downright frightened of Louisa and Harry when they grew old enough to talk with him after dinner. He took to summoning their nanny immediately the table was cleared, and retiring to his study for a port to soothe the nerves overwrought by their boisterous chatter. As Louisa reached the age of eight, and Harry six, the viscount began to think of their future.
    â€˜Be damned,’ he said over dinner to Samuel Hitchens, a landowner who lived a few miles away, and with whom he’d enjoyed hunting since they were young blades. ‘If my children are to grow up half sociable, they need company their own age. But there’s no child of respectable upbringing within a day’s ride of my house.’
    â€˜You do well to be concerned,’ Hitchens said. ‘You’re a man who knows bloodstock. See it as a matter of breeding. If your children are seen as dull country clods, they will have to settle for the rejects of society when they seek a mate. Have you not noticed how a new bull with good bloodlines straightway seeks out the best looking cow in the field? Watch when he’s led through the gate to meet his new herd. He may well ignore those with less in the way of conformation until he has served all the others.’
    â€˜Mmm. Well, I plan to send Harry to Oxford when he is sixteen or so.’
    â€˜Sixteen?’ Hitchens laughed. ‘He’ll be a laughing stock. Those city bred boys will make sport of a country cousin. He’ll be marked for life. As the twig is bent, John... He’ll never acquire the social graces a young fellow needs — well, to win one of those delicious young debutantes disporting themselves during the Season. These days, a young man woos and wins by making ready conversation, flashing his wit, and talking of the latest extravaganza at the theatres. I tell you, if you send a young country boy to London to find himself a wife, he’ll make a fool of himself. Then he’ll come back to the country with his tail between his legs, and find consolation with someone not entirely suitable.’
    De Havilland privately agreed. Hitchens had described his own life’s history exactly. Now he saw that this was why both his wives had been plain, spineless, uninteresting creatures who gave him no companionship.
    â€˜Mrs Hawkins,’ the viscount asked of his housekeeper the next day. ‘I need your advice. I am concerned for my children’s education in, er, matters of conversation and the like. Louisa and Harry are earnest enough pupils, and their tutor an able enough scholar. But I am concerned. I fancy they will grow up dull fish if they cannot exercise their minds, practise theirconversation with someone their own age. Give the matter some thought and see me when you have some ideas.’
    â€˜Why, sir. I don’t need to think further,’ Mrs Hawkins said. ‘In this very house is a child who will suit perfectly.’
    â€˜In this house?’
    â€˜Yes, sir. An orphan child, raised by her aunt. Young Hannah as works in the kitchen. You may