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wayside inn?’
    ‘No doubt.’ Belinda shivered. ‘I must get a physician immediately to look to poor Miss Wimple. How came she to gash her forehead like that?’
    ‘I think she was thrown against the lamp bracket. How luxurious all this is, and what a great many servants there seem to be.’
    Outriders with flaming torches were riding alongside the carriages.
    ‘We are slowing,’ exclaimed Hannah. To the shivering Belinda’s dismay, she let down the glass and leaned out. ‘Oh, Miss Earle!’ cried Hannah. ‘You have never seen the like.’
    Curiosity overcoming cold, Belinda opened her window and, clutching the edge for support to ease her tortured ankle, she too leaned out.
    The snow had stopped falling. In the lights of the many torches and carriage lamps a great Norman castle loomed up against the sky; battlements and barbican, towers and turrets. They rolled slowly over a wooden drawbridge and under two raised portcullises into a wide courtyard.
    ‘Why have I never heard of this place?’ said Hannah, sitting down again. ‘It is huge.’
    ‘Have you visited many places?’ asked Belinda.
    Hannah shook her head. ‘I have led a quiet and sheltered life, like that of a nun. But I have read a great deal, don’t you see.’
    The carriage rolled to a stop. A footman in green-and-gold livery let down the steps and Hannah and Belinda were assisted down.
    The shivering stage-coach passengers were led intothe castle and all stood blinking in the sudden blaze of light. They found themselves in a great hall with a brown-and-white marble floor. A long refectory table with high-backed Jacobean chairs around it dominated the centre of the hall. There were battle flags and suits of armour and a long gallery running around the top of the hall to form an upper storey.
    A house steward with his tall staff of office stood waiting.
    ‘Convey our unexpected guests to the East Wing,’ said the marquess. ‘Send for the physician to attend us immediately. May I introduce myself? I am Frenton, the Marquess of Frenton, and you are now in my home, Baddell Castle, where I suggest you stay until I find out what has become of your coach. You are …?’
    Hannah stepped forward. ‘I am Miss Hannah Pym of Kensington. May I present Miss Belinda Earle. Miss Wimple is the injured lady and Miss Earle’s companion. Also, may I present Mr and Mrs Judd.’
    The marquess turned to his steward and rapped out a bewildering, to Belinda, series of orders about which apartments were to be allotted to them.
    Again, there were servants everywhere. Belinda clung nervously to Hannah, overawed by the magnificence of it all. They went up a broad staircase and along a bewildering multitude of passages. A housekeeper opened a door at last and said to Hannah, ‘Your apartments are here, madam.’ Oh, the joy of ex-housekeeper Hannah to hear herself called ‘madam’ by one of her own kind. ‘You have a bedchamber asyou go in and you will share a sitting-room with the young lady, who has a bedchamber on the other side. His lordship is sending up your trunks, which the men rescued from the side of the river. The footmen will carry up your baths in a trice.’
    Hannah looked around the apartment in satisfaction. The walls were papered with a heavy red paper. The great four-poster bed had dull red silk hangings. The fireplace was Queen Anne and as unlovely a piece of architecture as anything attributed to that poor lady’s name. It had a heavy overmantel that almost dwarfed the grate beneath. But there was a bright fire burning.
    She helped Belinda through a pretty sitting-room decorated in the Chinese manner and into a bedroom where blue silk, blue wallpaper, and a four-poster bed and fire-place copied the red room in everything but colour.
    Their trunks were brought in, followed very quickly by the baths, which were filled by the footmen, and then the two ladies were left in peace.
    Hannah sat in the bath in front of the fireplace, carefully holding the