‘What’s your excuse?’ I asked. ‘You live down here.’ ‘True.’ The charm was deliberate. ‘But I have a feeling I’m going to be climbing The Hill fairly often myself, in the very near future.’

‘Do you know why he gives you that gown? To give life to a ghost.’ I could have used that ghost for company right now, and so I huddled deeper in the blankets, hugging the borrowed chemise all the tighter around me and trying to work the same magic, alone in the dark.

He’d been brusque and short-tempered, as Daniel had warned me he might be, and if I hadn’t known it was his way of showing worry I’d have taken it to heart. As it was, I found it touching, even flattering, that this fierce man had taken on the role of my protector so completely.

The coast path, which entered the woods as a narrow track, broadened a little in here so two people could walk side by side, as though those who came into these woods felt more comfortable walking that way in this place where the shadows fell thick on the ferns and the undergrowth, and the high trees had a whispering voice of their own when the win

Daniel turned back to the merchant. ‘If you are convinced, sir, that this man did rob you, though you saw it not and could not swear an oath to it, by all means take your case before the justice of the peace.’

The constable cut in, ‘That is not Mrs. Butler.’ From his tone it seemed that the suggestion had offended him, and not for the first time I found myself wondering what his connection had been to Ann Butler.

‘I want,’ he answered carefully, ‘to see him with a woman who will love him in the way that he deserves and know the value of the man whose heart she carries.’ In his voice I heard that same fierce challenge I remembered from the first time we had met, when we’d squared off across the corner bedroom with me in my borrowed gown and him as mad as bla

‘I’ve always rather liked the Celtic view of life, that this world and the next one aren’t so separate from each other. My grandmother believed that. She was Welsh, you know—a true Celt, through and through—and if you’d told her you’d heard whispers in your walls, she would have taken it in her stride,’ she said, with certainty. ‘She would have sai

‘Well then, it’s certain I told him the truth, for I’d never tell lies to the constable.’ I couldn’t help smiling. ‘Me neither.’ ‘See then,’ he said with a nod of approval, ‘and did I not say that you were an O’Cleary?’