Any woman would have found it difficult to hold her own under such circumstances, but the Countess was persistent in everything she did.
She was quite certain that Bruce really loved her.
He would in fact, she believed, have forgotten his happiness with his first wife were it not for the presence of Alissia.
The Countess had become obsessed with this idea and she thought that every time her husband looked at his daughter and saw how beautiful she was, he was repeating beneath his breath, ‘exactly like her mother’.
Nanny did not make it any better by continually referring to her.
She had been told by Bruce to be very careful as to what she said about Elizabeth and to remember that while the Cromwellians were in power she was always plain Mrs. Dalton.
But Nanny had always spoken to the
