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‘Come and sit down,’ Alex urged. ‘Get warm. Harry’s one of the VIPs I had to guide and he’s in a position to help me with the chocolate venture. He can get hold of vanilla for me at some very good rates. Isn’t that so, Harry?’

He didn’t show his astonishment but a slight hesitation suggested he was impressed by her outrageous fib.

‘I’ll certainly help you source any products you need,’ he replied. ‘The tour was excellent. Have you taken it yet with your daughter, Lady Frobisher?’

‘I keep meaning to and I suppose I’d better hurry. She leaves this week, you know. Oh, tomorrow isn’t it, darling? They don’t encourage married women, you see.’

‘Harry heard all of this during the tour, Mother.’

‘Do you know Matthew?’ Alex watched her mother frown at Harry, feigning an innocence.

‘No, but I’d like very much to meet him. Alex has told me plenty about him.’

‘Such a delightful man. We’re so happy he came into our family and he makes a great husband for our beloved girl. Now all we wait for is the patter of tiny feet.’

‘I’m sure,’ Harry replied.

If Norma hadn’t interrupted proceedings to serve coffee, Alex was sure she might have said something she would have regretted to her mother. Instead she speared Harry a jagged look of horrified apology.

‘So what’s a dashing captain from London doing up here in the north?’ Charles asked, changing the subject as Norma left a plate of cake on a table within Minerva’s reach.

Alex closed the door on Norma and returned to seat herself near her mother.

‘Lovely coffee, darling. Just what I needed. Pass me a tiny piece of that garden cake, would you? Don’t let your father eat too much,’ she added, and they noted him leaning down to take a slice.

Alex smiled and waited for him to retrieve a wedge before she reached for the plate to offer to her mother.

‘So, Captain Blake, tell me, how is it that you came to be at Rowntree’s?’ Minerva pressed.

‘The guesthouse I’m staying at recommended a visit,’ he replied. ‘And I wanted to contact the factory anyway.’

‘And there I was thinking it was just to enjoy the VIP tour services,’ Alex quipped.

Harry grinned for her. ‘I was hoping to ask around after a particular worker connected to Tom Fletcher; I just didn’t have the right opportunity.’

‘Oh, well, you’re with the right person,’ Charles chimed in, another small slice of cake halfway to his mouth. ‘Alex knows every inch of that factory and I am convinced she is on first-name basis with every member of staff.’

She smiled. ‘I have a good memory,’ she confessed. ‘But then I was a tour guide and I made it my business to get to know every process.’

‘I have no doubt it was an inspired way to acquire the relevant skills too,’ Harry offered.

‘Quite so,’ she admitted. ‘I spent hours learning how to temper chocolate. For instance, a skilled chocolatier knows when the chocolate is tempered by touching a dab of the liquid to his or her lip. It’s all about consistency and temperature, you see. The lips are incredibly sensitive to touch and heat.’

‘Sounds very sensuous,’ he remarked, and stared at her in such a way that Alex was convinced he wanted to cross the floor, drag her up from her seat, into his arms and carry her away. She couldn’t help the small smile of delight at that mental image of tall, strong Harry sweeping her away in front of her parents. Now that would be romantic, and she’d spent years believing she’d never know or even understand what that meant. Here it was, standing in the room with her. It had taken a form. It had a name. It possessed hot blood and urgent lips.

Harry Blake was the romance that had been missing in her life.

This is what Nel had been talking about that day in the chocolate tin packing room when she’d described falling in love as though you’re walking in a different world to everyone else. How right she is, Alex mused. It was as though while she could see her parents, watch this familiar scene of being in her sitting room, hear their voices . . . it was as if they and everything around them had blurred slightly while the shape of Harry had been heightened in its clarity and colour. She was so intensely aware of him, she could swear she could smell soap on his chin from shaving this evening. She could recreate the taste of his lips on hers, of his mouth skimming the overtly sensitive area beneath the lobe of her ear. She could swear right now that while she could hear him speaking to her parents about Tom’s chocolate tin, that he was speaking separately to her about how she should have waited and that he was always going to come along, fall in love with her, marry her, make her life happy . . .

We’re falling in love. Is that what’s happening here, Harry? Is that why you came to York?

Alex blinked, noting the three others turn towards her. She swallowed. Had she uttered those words aloud? They all seemed to be hanging off a question. A distant alarm bell sounded. What had she said? What had she revealed?

‘Yes,’ Harry answered, and she wasn’t sure if she was blanching or blushing. ‘I’m trying to find her.’

She frowned and with intense gratitude to the angels who watched over her, Alex realised she’d only spoken aloud the query, not the realisation she’d come to beforehand. Fate had ensured that query make sense to Harry’s discussion about some woman now, she realised.

‘Sorry, Harry. I was miles away. Forgive me.’