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her. 'Do you ever get tired of it?'
    'Never!' She smiled wistfully, took his elbow again, and began walking. 'Do you ever wish that nothing should change?' She looked up at him. 'That everything would just stop?' She waved at the Castle. 'Perhaps next summer? On a day of perfection? If we could just leave it like that for ever?' She laughed at her own fancy.
    He stopped walking, took her face in his long, thin hands on which, perversely, he still wore his bishop's ring, and kissed her solemnly on the forehead. 'Dear Campion, may I say something offensive?'
    'Uncle?'
    'This is serious advice.'
    'Oh dear.' She smiled.
    'It is time you grew up.' His face, thin and intelligent, was extraordinarily attractive. He was the cleverest man Campion knew, the most interesting, the most unexpected. The lines of age seemed delicately etched beneath the powder on his face. He smiled. 'I've offended you.'
    'No.'
    'I should have offended you, then.' He took her elbow and walked on with her. 'Lazen is not yours, my dear. It will go to Toby and Lucille. You will lose Lazen just as I lost Auxigny. You have your own life to make and the sooner you make it, the better. You should not be here adding up columns of figures and worrying about the harvest and paying the wages; you should be in London. You should be dancing.'
    'That doesn't sound like growing up.'
    He walked in silence for a few paces. 'Experience is growing up, Campion. What's your family motto?'
    'Dare all.'
    'And you dare nothing! You stay here like a nun in a convent. Of course you're happy here. You live in the greatest house in western England, you live off the greatest fortune in the realm. You want for nothing, you only have to lift a finger and the servants trample each other to provide for you. I know!' He raised his gold topped cane to ward off her reply. 'I know! You work hard. Yet you chose to do that, just as you could have chosen to do nothing. But you exercise your choice in safety. You are like a ship that must leave harbour, a beautiful ship, well built, splendidly rigged, and you dare not leave the quay.' He stopped and smiled at her. 'Yet one day, my child, there will be no more harbour, no more quay, no more safety.'
    She stared at him, sensing the seriousness in him, then smiled. 'Lazen will go?'
    'Of course not. It's eternal.'
    She smiled. 'Toby will be here.'
    'Ah.' He mocked her with faked comprehension. 'So the nun will grow old in her brother's household? When you are really old your great-grandnephews and nieces will be brought to look at you; "See the old lady! See how she dribbles!"'
    She laughed. 'It isn't true.'
    'Then marry.'
    She said nothing for a few paces. 'Marriage will come, uncle.'
    He tutted irritably. 'You make it sound like a disease!'
    'I don't want it to be an escape.'
    'How clever you are, niece.' He smiled at her as they climbed the gentle bank towards the driveway. 'My beautiful, clever niece with a clockwork heart.'
    'Nonsense!'
    'Then I expect to find you drowning in love's illusion when I return. I demand it! I expect you to be sighing and writing excessively awful poems about your love's eyes.'
    She laughed and they turned into the driveway, walking directly towards the great house. The huge stable block was visible now to the right of the Castle, its entrance busy as the outriders' horses were prepared for her uncle's departure.
    Hooves sounded on the gravel behind and Campion turned to see who approached.
    At first she thought it was one of the grooms returning from exercising a saddle horse, but then she realized that not one of Lazen's grooms rode like this man.
    This was a horseman. She had grown up in a house that prized horsemanship, that knew a thing or two about men and horses, but never had she seen a horseman like this. This was a horseman.
    The horse, big, sleek and black, trotted superbly on the gravel, while the rider, long-legged and straight-backed, seemed arrogantly at home in his saddle.
    The rider was dressed entirely