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Anna took it, with a measure of relief. “And the other one? To the connecting door?”

He sniffed. “You won’t be needing that.”

“But—”

“Dinner is served at six,” Marks interrupted, slamming the heavy door behind him as he left.

Anna remained in her room, clasping her hands, feeling somewhat lost.

“Still, it’s a lovely room,” she muttered to herself. Her gaze swept the room and a hint of melancholy rushed through her.

How lonely she must have been, the earl’s mother.

After unpacking her meagre belongings into one of the chests, she stepped up to the wall and placed her ear against it. Either the earl wasn’t in his room, or the stone walls were so thick not a sound came through, for she couldn’t hear a thing. She supposed that was good. With two fingers, she lifted one of the tapestries. But there was merely stone behind it.

It was behind the third tapestry that she discovered the connecting door. It was a narrow, unassuming door. Anna’s heart hammered as she stared at it as if it were a mortal enemy.

Marks had been quite right when he said it was locked. Not with a conventional lock, however, but a wooden bar that was easily lifted out of its latches.

Anna exhaled. At least the bar was on her side. With some luck, St John also had a similar bar on his side.

She tested the bar, and it seemed quite firm. Each party would stay safely on his or her own side. That was all she could ask for.

Anna dropped the tapestry over the door and briefly wondered whether she should shove one of the heavy chests in front of it for good measure but found she couldn’t move the heavy oak chest as much as an inch.

She rubbed her arms. It was chilly in the room. She went to the fireplace and saw a fresh pile of logs in the basket next to it. She knelt on the floor and stacked them into the fireplace and lit them with the tinder box she found on top of the mantelpiece. It was an activity she had to do every day, in each room of the seminary, including the parlour, all the pupils’ and teachers’ rooms. She prided herself that she could make a fire in less than three minutes. She had a lovely fire roaring in the fireplace in an instant and she stood in front of it, rubbing her hands with relief. She stepped up to the coloured windows and looked outside.

There were roses everywhere. This time, real ones. A maze of rose bushes filled the park that spread beneath. To the left were squared patches that looked like remains of a herb garden, now overgrown. In the middle of the rosebush maze was a stone fountain. It was the most magical place she had ever seen.

She could teach Phoebe the various herbs that grew in the garden, Anna mused. They could sit on the little stone benches in the maze and read books. And take walks in the rambling woods beyond the park. They could practise French conjugations as they did so. Was there a library in this big, sprawling hall? Surely, there must be? Some sort of study at least. If there were books with maps and globes, she could teach Phoebe some geography…

Anna thought wistfully of her Uncle James, who had been a gifted teacher and had taught her and Jules. Thanks to him, she had acquired a solid education in Latin, history, arithmetic and geography, but she’d never acquired any advanced embroidery or watercolour skills, nor had she ever had the opportunity to learn how to play the pianoforte. She prayed that St John would never ask her to play on the pianoforte in the drawing room, for that, surely, would be the moment that would reveal her to be a fraud.

Uncle James was not her real uncle, but the Reverend Mr James Newman, who’d married her nursemaid Jeanne, who’d become her ‘aunt’. She’d loved both dearly as if they had been her real aunt and uncle, and she and Jules grew up happily in the parsonage.

She’d been blessed with a carefree childhood and with no memory at all of her real parents. Jeanne had spoken French with them from the very first, so she grew up speaking the language naturally. Then Jeanne and James had died of the smallpox in quick succession, and they had to vacate the parsonage before the new reverend arrived with his wife and five children. They were suddenly orphans again, she and Jules, without a roof over their heads. Anna thought with shuddering horror of how close they’d come to ending up in the workhouse. Thankfully, Mr Brownlow, a gentleman friend of Mr Newman, had stepped forward and offered to take in Jules. He was a middle-aged bachelor who had an apartment in London’s fashionable address the Albany, and Jules had been more than eager to join the ranks of the fashionable gentlemen of the ton. But she, Anna Vale, had no place in those abodes that were meant only for men.

She recalled how Mr Brownlow had looked at her with sorrowful, watery eyes. “I would take you in, you know. Would have no problem at all, you know. But ’tis not the thing to have a young lady share the living quarters of a gentleman. Not the thing a’all.” So, he’d helped her obtain a position as a companion to the Duchess of Puglish, an elderly, half-blind woman, who needed someone to read to her from the daily gossip papers. It was well-paid considering all she had to do was sit around in the drawing room, reading from The Morning Post and La Belle Assemblée, where she was required to describe in great detail the pictures of the fashion plates it contained. Anna had done so for nearly three years, and it had been a boring but sheltered life which she would not have minded continuing for a while longer, if she hadn’t found the woman one morning sitting in her armchair in front of the cold fireplace, staring ahead, stone dead.

At around the same time, Mr Brownlow had contracted pneumonia and died, leaving Jules with his apartment and a small fortune. Jules had gone wild and frittered the entire fortune away in the gambling salons that Mr Brownlow had introduced him to. And Anna had gone knocking door to door for a position as a governess, in vain. She was far too pretty, she overheard the strident voice of one matron once saying, as she sat waiting in the salon. She was far too big a temptation for His Lordship and his son.

With a sinking heart and growing panic, she’d applied at the agency in London, in the hope of a teaching position somewhere, but she was told that all that was available was the position of a maid at a distinguished girls’ school in Bath.

She’d accepted it, anyway.

When Miss Hilversham saw her, she’d pursed her lips. “You appear to be too well-bred to be a housemaid.”

Anna wrung her hands. “Please. Please let me be a housemaid. I beg you.” Her eyes had filled with tears. “Otherwise, I do not know what to do and where to go. I will end up on the streets or in the workhouse.”

Miss Hilversham had pinched her lips together and furrowed her brows. “Is there no one you can go to otherwise? No family, no relative, friends?”

Anna shook her head. She couldn’t stay with Jules. Not at the Albany. Not while he lived his wild bachelor life in the clubs and gambling hells, frittering away every single penny she earned from her hard work, provided she ever found any.

Miss Hilversham sighed. Her eyes softened and the severity of her demeanour relaxed somewhat.

“How old are you, Miss Vale?”

“I am eight and twenty.”