“I was very sorry to hear about your parents, my dear. Your father and I were close as children, although we grew apart when he married your mother and came here to the North-East to live. I have only just learned of the dreadful circumstances…”

Although her light-blue eyes shone with unshed tears, she had snatched her hand away from his. “I neither want nor need your pity.”

“Martha! You must apologise at once for your rudeness…” The abbess had hurried forward to remonstrate, but Mr. Delacourt held up his hand.

“It is I who should say sorry for wounding you with my crass words, child. As your nearest relative, I have come to take you home to live with me alongside my own children.”

“I’ll not accept charity, sir. From you or anyone else. Sister Mary—” her eyes flickered over to the nun who stood to one side, watching their interaction anxiously, “—told me you seek a governess for your daughter. I am well educated. I believe I can fulfil your requirements.”

Her pride, although sadly misplaced, was touching nonetheless. “Then I have indeed come to the right place. It is my belief we will deal well together, my dear.” The profound sigh of relief uttered by the abbess was audible and left Mr. Delacourt wondering just what his family’s future might hold once this strange girl became part of it.

Their journey south had begun the next day, and they had arrived at Delacourt Grange as evening was falling over the beautiful Derbyshire countryside six days later. Martha, alighting from the carriage, had viewed in silence the warm, golden manor house with its curtain of honeysuckle draped lovingly around the door. As she gazed at this idyll, Rosie came tumbling out of the open front door, closely followed by a tearful Harry.

“Papa, oh, Papa! Do come quickly. The most dreadful thing… Harry was climbing on the bookshelves in your study, and when I tried to lift him down, we both fell backward and we knocked over the inkwell and ink has spilled out all over your new books.”

Before Mr. Delacourt could summon up an answer to this catastrophe, Martha responded in brisk tones. “We will have to go and clear up the mess in your papa’s study, of course. First of all, let me fix your sash, which is sadly awry, and straighten your hair. Good heavens, it looks like you have been playing in a hedge. You have? Well that explains the matter. There, that looks so much better. Now, you must be Rosie. I am your cousin Martha, and this—” she turned to address the stout, ink-and-tear-stained little figure on the doorstep, “—is Master Harry, I presume?”

Mr. Delacourt watched in some bemusement as his children went, with unaccustomed decorum, hand in hand with the new arrival back into the house. Some ten minutes later, there had been a knock on the parlour door. At Mr. Delacourt’s command, Martha entered.

“The children wish to see you, sir. If that is convenient?”

A subdued, and considerably neater, Rosie had led her brother into the room. “We are very sorry, Papa, for going into your study without your permission. It will never happen again.” She cast a quick look at Martha, who nodded encouragingly. “Oh, and Cousin Martha cleaned up the mess and there is no damage to your books, although Harry’s shirt is quite ruined.”

“Shall I speak to Mrs. Glover about the children’s dinner now, sir? Do they spend some time with you before their bedtime or do they follow a different routine?” Mr. Delacourt realised then that, until the descent upon it of this odd, taciturn girl, his household had no fixed routine. But Martha’s arrival changed that. Order had arrived at Delacourt Grange.

During the intervening ten years, he had won some battles. They stood out in his memory because they were rare. Martha now called him “Cousin Henry” instead of “sir”. She could look him and a few of the men she knew well—like Tom Drury—in the eye, although she continued to flinch nervously away from strangers. He had been amazed at the beauty of her shy smile the first time he saw it tremble into life in response to Harry’s silliness. He had even heard her laugh once or twice. She had filled out a little and, although still very slender, had lost the gaunt, haggard look that used to worry him.

Martha had fallen instantly, irrevocably and stubbornly in love with the old dower house. Mr. Delacourt, for his part, had categorically refused to allow her to take up residence there alone.

“It is not necessary for you to do so, my dear. Delacourt Grange must be your home. We are your family now. Besides, you are too young to live alone. ’Twould not be seemly. And, in any case—” his voice held a note of triumphant finality, “—the house is not fit to be lived in.”

He never quite knew how it happened. All of his objections were unarguably sound, and Martha had not raised a single argument. Yet within six months, the old dower house was not only restored to its former glory, it had become Miss Martha Wantage’s home. Mr. Delacourt was forced to agree that it was an arrangement that suited everyone. The children spent the day at the old dower house for their lessons, and Martha often ate with the family at Delacourt Grange in the evenings. She was able to preserve the veneer of independence that was so important to her. Mr. Delacourt, meanwhile, was able to reap the benefits of her considerable organisational skills whilst still indulging his reclusive tendencies.

Mr. Delacourt occasionally knew a moment or two of trepidation. When the day arrived that Rosie married and left Delacourt Grange, he believed that Martha would feel under an obligation to go with her to care for her children. But he dismissed such fears as nonsensical. Rosie, although the reigning belle of the neighbourhood, was young and showed no signs of flying the nest just yet. And it wasn’t as if Martha herself was likely to receive any offers of marriage!

“I think the one upstairs is definitely sleeping easier,” Rosie said, as she joined Martha at the kitchen table for a late breakfast. “Are you quite sure there are no signs of life from the other one?”

The question struck them both as so funny that they began to laugh uncontrollably. It was into this scene of mirth that Tom strolled some minutes later.

“I take it he is not dead, then?” He pulled another chair forward so that he could join them.

“Which one?” Rosie asked, mopping her eyes on her handkerchief as Martha signalled frantically to her. They had decided not to tell anyone about the inconvenient appearance of the second rebel. Martha’s reasoning was that, if he regained consciousness, they could speedily send him about his business by warning him that he must leave Mr. Delacourt’s property immediately or risk be handed over to the redcoats. The fewer people who knew about him, the less chance there was of attracting the soldiers to their home and the fact that they were sheltering the first rebel being discovered. Rosie had been unconvinced. A man bold enough to break into a house in the dead of night might not be cowed by feminine threats, she had reasoned.

“Don’t worry,” Martha had said, with more assurance than she felt. “He will be too pleased to escape the hangman’s noose to try any further nonsense.”

If he died, of course, the situation was altered. Martha would be guilty of murder, and a whole new subterfuge, such as burial of a large and cumbersome body, would be required. Even if he was only a Scotsman, Martha pointed out, murder was a sin. She would rather not advertise her crime to the world.

“If he dies, it will take the two of us a week to dig a hole large enough to bury someone that big,” Rosie had said, with a glum expression.

“Rosie is being nonsensical.” Martha frowned in her young cousin’s direction. “We were trying to fathom how many rebels may be lying low around the countryside in houses like ours. But do tell us, Tom, what news is there of the prince?” She poured milk into a tankard for Tom and cut him a thick slice of bread.