CHAPTER SEVENAnthea came out of the back door of the cottage and threw a basin of water over the marigolds.
When she had done so, two cats followed her back into the house to sit watching her with unblinking green eyes as she stirred a saucepan on the ancient stove.
“Dinner is not ready yet,” she said to them, “so you will have to wait.”
She found it comforting to talk, to the cats.
Having always lived in a family, she found the silence and the loneliness of Elderberry Cottage at times so oppressive that she felt she could bear it no longer.
And yet, she asked herself, what else could she do?
She had run away from Axminster House because she could not face the Duke.
Afterwards she wondered how it could have been so easy? She had not had to think or plan, but had acted merely on impu
