The next afternoon, Julia went with Mr. Hatton to visit the Whitakers’ farmhouse. This time, she had declined his invitation to take the reins of the curricle, on the grounds that she had no familiarity with the route.
The farmhouse was situated much nearer to the sea than the manor itself, and lay low in a fold of the hills, so that the coast was not visible as they alighted and walked towards the front door. The house was built in roughly cut local stone, with the walls partly covered with a green climbing plant. It seemed that Mrs. Whitaker might have been expecting their arrival, for she opened the old oak door almost as soon as they had knocked.
The ceilings inside were low, and Julia guessed that the house was the same age as the older part of the manor house at Morancourt. The sitting room smelt rather damp, and the paintwork and some of the floorboards were worn and in need of attention. The kitchen and scullery were small and dark, so that Julia did not realise for some moments that there were two small children there. The elder, a girl, she recognised from their visit to the school. The younger, a small boy, was playing on the floor with a little puppy.
Mrs. Whitaker answered Julia’s unspoken question. “My mother looks after him in the village in the mornings whilst I teach at the school, Miss Maitland. Fortunately he is very good.”
After looking around the rooms on the ground floor, Mr. Hatton commented, “Well, Mrs. Whitaker, I am very glad that I came, for it is clear that we need to have some work done here to make your kitchen brighter and easier to use. If you would like to ask Mr. Whitaker to take some measurements, I shall consult Miss Maitland, and we will make some suggestions to discuss with you both.”
Mrs. Whitaker was delighted and asked them to look around the upstairs rooms as well, where Mr. Hatton made more notes whilst Julia talked to Mrs. Whitaker.
“I thought that the children in the school were very neatly dressed.”
“Thank you, Miss Maitland. Some have only one set of clothes, but most of the boys were given new neckerchiefs recently by a man in the village, which made them feel very smart!”
Julia nodded, and Mr. Hatton paused for a moment whilst writing his notes to listen to this remark. After a few more minutes, they said a cordial farewell to Mrs. Whitaker and left the house.
“Now,” he said to Julia, “if we went this way, we would go through the village, but the other way—let’s try that.” He handed her up into the curricle, and then took his own place and turned the horses along the other track. Soon they could see the sea on their right, and in the distance the roofs of some farm buildings straight ahead of them. Suddenly, Mr. Hatton pulled hard on the reins and brought the curricle to a halt.
“What is it?” said Julia, startled by the abrupt action.
“Look down there, Miss Maitland,” said Mr. Hatton very quietly so as not to be overheard by the groom standing on the footplate behind them. He pointed to the east towards the sea, and she saw that there was a well-worn route leading from the track they were following across a field down into a side valley.
“I wonder where that goes?” said Julia quietly in reply. “It looks surprisingly well used.”
“Not to the village, so maybe to the seashore. But,” he said, looking down at his well-pressed breeches and Julia’s neat dress and shoes, “neither of us is dressed for hill-climbing or mountaineering this afternoon. We can look another day, or at least I can,” and without further comment he took the curricle on and pulled up the horses at the end of the track, which stopped short of some more farm buildings by about a hundred yards. There again, there were signs of foot traffic from the end of the track towards the old structures.
“Do you think that we have the beginnings of a mystery here?” Julia whispered.
“Perhaps, or it could just be some of the labourers using the buildings as a shelter in wet weather,” he replied in an undertone, and he turned the curricle with a sure hand on the reins back
onto the route that they had come, and on past the farmhouse again towards Morancourt.
On Wednesday morning, the weather showed a partly blue sky, although a stiff breeze was developing off the sea beyond the crest of the hill. After settling Aunt Lucy in the salon with the help of Martha and Mrs. Jones, Julia fetched her warm white pelisse and her old boots and met Mr. Hatton at the front door, ready to walk with him across the park to the view that he had promised her beyond the hill. He was wearing a long black cloak with several capes over his day attire, as a protection from the wind.
As they made their way together on a rough track alongside a boundary wall leading towards the hill, Mr. Hatton suddenly said, “Do you know Dominic Brandon well? I have heard many things about him—not all of them good. Is your mother very anxious that he should be a serious suitor for you?”
“Perhaps. He is not the only young man she favours. I really prefer not to think about him.”
“There are many other young gentlemen in Derbyshire who you might prefer?”
“Do you include your brother in that?” Julia replied.
“Jack? No, I cannot see you marrying him. Chalk and cheese, that would be. But, if that did ever occur, I would not be able to watch you living together.”
That is very close to making me a declaration, thought Julia.
“I hope, Mr. Hatton, that you are not trying to organise my life for me?” she replied, trying to speak lightly.
“I’m afraid that I cannot avoid some degree of self-interest in the matter, Miss Maitland.”
She had been looking straight ahead during this exchange, but ventured a sideways glance, to find that his green eyes were regarding her with an expression that she could not quite fathom.
“I do wish that I had known you for longer, Miss Maitland, as you do the Brandon family. I sometimes find it very difficult to make out what you might be thinking.”
“I have not sought to deceive you, sir. There are few people in the world, I have found, whom I can really rely on and trust—my father is one, and my youngest sister, Harriet, another. And I believe that I have trusted you to tell me the truth from the beginning of our acquaintance. That gives so much ease, does it not?”
He did not reply and, after a short interval of silence, she went on. “Emily Brandon is also someone I can rely on, although I sometimes find that she is easily diverted when I am trying to get her to take matters seriously.”
He laughed out loud. “I agree, for I noticed in Bath that she always said exactly what she thought, whoever was around to hear her. But she is a pretty girl with a pleasant personality, and certainly attracted a great deal of attention from young men wherever she went.”
Julia was annoyed with herself to feel a tinge of jealousy at his comment, which was quite irrational, since everything he had just said about Emily was true and confirmed her own perceptions.
Then he added, “But you are unique, Miss Maitland, in my experience. I have never met anyone in my life before whom I have liked and admired so much.”
Julia blushed to the roots of her hair and could not think of anything to say.
During this conversation, they had been walking closer and closer to the crest of the hill. On their right there were ridges at intervals across the slope of the ground, creating narrow pathways.
“What are those, Mr. Hatton?”
“Lynchets—they are called strip lynchets. Some people say that they arose over time by ploughing the ground. Others take the view that they were created deliberately many years ago to prevent the farmers and their stock from slipping down the slope and to reduce the erosion of the soil. They are quite common in this part of Dorset.”
“Some of the ground above the edge of that lynchet looks as though it has been ploughed recently,” observed Julia, “so perhaps they are still in use.”
They continued to walk further up the hill for a few more minutes. Then, just before they got to the top of the slope, Mr. Hatton asked her to stop walking.
“Now, Miss Maitland, please trust me. Shut your eyes and allow me to take your hand and lead you these last few steps.”
Julia did as she was bid, and the touch of his hand in hers made her pulse race as he led her slowly forward and then stopped again.
“Now you may look.”
Julia opened her eyes, expecting to see the sea. And she could, some way in the distance, perhaps two miles away. But what really caught her attention was what was in the foreground.
For there, about a hundred feet in front of her, was a ruined building built in the same golden yellow stone as Morancourt, glowing in the sunshine. On one side there was a circular building like a castle keep, with parts of the top broken and missing. Behind it, a line of lower outbuildings went in the direction of the sea.
On the other side, there was another substantial tall L-shaped building. To the left, she could see some damaged stained-glass windows with arched tops set in the lower part of the rougher stone wall and, on the right, there were straight walls pierced by arrow slits here and there. But between the keep and that building there was an arch, with a small central section missing. It was the passerelle that she had seen in the library picture at Morancourt.
Julia exclaimed with delight and turned to find him smiling at her with such a happy expression that it made her heart sing.
“Do you like the abbey, Julia?” he said.
And she had replied in the affirmative before she realised that he had used her Christian name and, from his expression, he had himself become aware of that at the same moment.
He took her hands in his, without saying anything, and then very gently took them up to his lips and kissed them, before releasing her fingers. Julia found herself almost overcome by the emotion that she felt at the pleasure of his touch, the urge to reciprocate, and his silent confirmation of how he felt about her. She could not trust herself to look at him, but stood by his side looking at the view and thinking her own thoughts for quite some time.
At last, when she was confident of some control over her voice, she ventured, “Can you tell me something of the history of the abbey?”
There was a pause before he replied, and Julia wondered if he, too, was finding it very difficult to control his emotions.
“A little. The site was originally occupied by an old castle—nothing grand, but a stronghold nevertheless—hence the circular keep. Later the site was given to an order of French monks, who came from Morancourt, and they extended the buildings to create their abbey, and lived happily enough here for two hundred years. But in the 1530s, King Henry the Eighth dissolved and closed all the monasteries, so that he could raise money from selling their buildings and land. Either that, or the abbey and the village were raided for slaves.”
“Slaves?” exclaimed Julia.
“Yes. Pirates from northern Africa regularly raided coastal villages in northern Europe for many years—Spain, Portugal, France, Ireland, and other countries—to find white slaves to be taken back.”
“I knew nothing of that.”
“Many people have forgotten, but it is said that thousands of men and women were taken over the years from the coastal villages in Devon, Cornwall, and Dorset, and that the trade continued in some areas until the early part of this century.”
“What would have happened to those unfortunate people?” said Julia, shivering at the thought.
“Some became labourers, perhaps in quarries, or building palaces for the rulers in cities such as Tunis. Or they were taken to be galley slaves, condemned never to set foot again on land, and the women were sought after as concubines. The wealthy amongst them were held for ransom. Whether the monks were taken as slaves, or whether the abbey was sold off by the King in the sixteenth century, local history does not say. But the monks did abandon the abbey here at Morancourt, and eventually the manor house was built further away from the coast, out of sight of the sea.”
“When did the raids stop?”
“Much of the trouble came from Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers, Algiers being the worst. That city was bombarded from the sea by our sailors in 1804 to try to stop the invasions. The American navy also assaulted the city, to prevent their ships that were trading with Europe from being boarded by the pirates. And many nations in Europe paid bribes to the North African rulers to call off their boats or seek their slaves elsewhere.”
“I had no idea about such things!” exclaimed Julia.
“However, since Napoléon’s blockade in the English Channel during the past few years, the invasions along the south coast have had a different character—smugglers—some call them free traders—bringing in contraband goods that cannot be obtained at present from Europe by any legal means.”
He then led her by the hand underneath the arch to view the abbey from the other side and to look into several of the buildings that were more robust, and then out again to look down at the view of the coast and the sea.
“I do intend to renovate the manor house at Morancourt, but my long-term plan is to live here in the abbey. It has, as you can see, the most wonderful view and there is a track to the village down there on the right, which could be improved to be the main access. My late godmother was very fond of this place, but she did not feel justified in spending very much money on it. I hope, one day, to live here with my family.”
Julia did not reply; she was busy thinking how she would love to live in the abbey. If only she could persuade Mama that would be a much happier outcome than any marriage with Dominic Brandon.
Mr. Hatton broke into her thoughts. “Now, Miss Maitland, we could go back the way we came, or, if you prefer, we could turn left here and go through the woods, which you can see over there, where we would be more protected from this wind.”
“Let’s go through the trees,” said Julia.
As they walked along a path towards the woods, the sun disappeared because a dark cloud was fast advancing on them from the sea.
“We are going to get wet, Mr. Hatton, but perhaps it will be less damp under some of the trees than if we were walking in the open.”
“Yes,” he replied, “but we must be glad that you have your pelisse, and I my cloak, as some protection.”
As they had anticipated, they only walked for a short distance through the woods before the rain began to fall, first lightly as a shower, and then with increasing weight, until it was so torrential that they had to take shelter under a particularly dense tree. It was only when they had paused there for a short while that Mr. Hatton suddenly put his finger to his lips and said, very quietly, “Listen! Can you hear anything?”
Julia strained to see if she could discern a noise above the wind in the trees and the sound of the rain hitting the leaves. Yes, he was right, she could hear low voices, the sound of feet, and the rattle of something metallic.
Suddenly Mr. Hatton pulled her back behind the trunk of the tree, then between the shrubs in a hedge and below into a narrow ditch beyond. He pushed her down out of sight and laid next to her, spreading his black cloak over them both to conceal her light-coloured clothing. Then he clasped her close in the narrow space and whispered to Julia softly to be quiet, and she found herself shaking, though whether from fear or delight she could not tell.
The sounds were coming nearer now, and through the shrubs of the hedge she could see several dark figures moving steadily ahead along the path, some carrying boxes and others with pairs of tubs or barrels linked by lengths of wood bent by the weight of the contents into curves resting on their shoulders. One of the figures was carrying a metal box with a chain attached, which clanked as he walked along the track, with his boots squelching in the mud.
“Come on now, young Jem,” said a voice in a local accent. “Stop making so much noise with that box, and just follow me as fast as you can.”
There was a muttered reply that Julia could not make out as the figures passed just above where she and her companion were hiding, their feet making the leaves and twigs rustle on the track.
It seemed a long time to Julia before they had all passed, and the sounds began to recede into the distance. There must have been at least six men, perhaps ten, each carrying something heavy.
At last the rain eased and Mr. Hatton whispered in her ear, “I think that they have all gone, and we had better be on our way.”
He helped her gently to get to her feet, and Julia brushed her dress clear of some of the leaves and most of the earth attached to her skirt. Then he took her arm and helped her up out of the ditch, through the hedge, and back onto the rough track.
Neither of them spoke for the first two hundred yards; they walked as silently as they could along the path until the trees in the woods began to give way to more open ground, and then they found themselves well below the ridge of the hill and looking down the slope towards the manor house at Morancourt.
“Who were they, Mr. Hatton? Smugglers?”
“Yes, I believe so. They were probably on the way to store the goods in the abbey, or in some of those farm buildings that we saw yesterday. It looks as though I will need to investigate what is going on here very soon. I won’t be able to restore the abbey as I wish to if my land is infested with smugglers.”
“May I help you?”
He paused and turned to look at her. “It might seem like an exciting adventure, Miss Maitland, but there is a lot of money involved in smuggling, and the last thing that I would want is to put you in any danger.”
“The same applies to you, sir. Why is it that men always think that they have to do everything themselves?” She was only partly joking.
“Miss Maitland, of course I would like you to help me, but I would never forgive myself if any harm came to you.”
“Unless you want me to call you Mr. Hatton forever, sir, you will have to treat me as an equal.”
He looked at her steadily for quite a few moments, and then said, “That must be the ultimate threat—if my father could hear you, he would have an even higher opinion of you than he already has.”
This reply was so unexpected that Julia had to laugh. “Indeed, Mr. Hatton. We cannot possibly disappoint your father, or indeed me. So please may I help you investigate?”
“Very well, as long as you will listen to me when a situation seems to be getting too dangerous even for a spirited young lady from Derbyshire.”
As she ran her fingers through her hair, Julia realised that she must be a very untidy sight. Mr. Hatton also looked dishevelled, with twigs clinging to his cloak and tendrils of his hair hanging down over his green eyes, and suddenly they both began to laugh at their situation.
Eventually Mr. Hatton said, “We had better walk back now, or your aunt will be wondering where we have got to.”
When they entered the house, they tried to tidy themselves up in the hall before going into the salon to see her aunt. Mrs. Jones took their damp outer garments, and the footman went to fetch a change of shoes for both of them. However, Aunt Lucy had heard the noise, and was concerned to see how wet parts of their other clothing had become, as she had seen the downpour outside the windows. It took some conversation before they were able to calm her, and Julia concentrated on describing the delights of the old abbey and the pleasant views down towards the sea. Nothing was said about what she and Mr. Hatton had encountered in the wood.
“Have you heard, Julia, that James Lindsay is coming with his mother to visit us tomorrow morning? I am sure that your mama would approve of your meeting a baronet again!”
Julia gave her aunt what she intended to be a withering stare.
Mr. Hatton was not deceived by Aunt Lucy’s remark, or by Julia’s reaction. “Mrs. Harrison, I have had sufficient acquaintance with you to know that you intend Miss Maitland to bridle at that!”
Aunt Lucy smiled and then excused herself to take a short rest.
“As long as neither of you is serious,” said Julia after her aunt had left the room. “Although he is quite the most pleasant baronet that I have met so far, in my limited acquaintance, I do not find myself with a personal partiality for your friend Sir James.”
This idea did not seem to have occurred to Mr. Hatton, and he looked rather taken aback until he caught her expression and realised that she was joking with him in her turn.
“He does seem to me a very agreeable man, and I’m sure that my aunt would approve, but I suspect that he may not like my sometimes rather practical turn of mind.”
“You judge him too severely, Miss Maitland. James does not have a narrow view of new farming practices, such as those used at Holkham Hall.”
“How long has he been in charge of the family estate?”
“For about five years. He really had no choice, following the early death of his father, as he is the only son. I daresay that Lady Lindsay, who is a very competent person, could have kept the estate going for a while if James had decided to become an officer in Wellington’s army. He used to talk of that when we were at school.”
“So he might have chosen to serve with you in Spain?”
“Yes, that is true. He did discuss the possibility with me after his father’s death but, bearing in mind the circumstances, he did not feel that he could lay that burden on his mother.”
“What were those circumstances, Mr. Hatton?”
“His father volunteered to serve in Portugal when Wellington was short of experienced officers at the very beginning of the Peninsular Campaign. Sadly, Gervase Lindsay was killed by a sniper soon after he reached the conflict. He was only forty-five years old; James was away at school with me at the time. His two sisters, Anna and Helena, are younger, and he has no brothers. So James inherited the baronetcy, the house, and the land with it. With the help of a good steward and the farm manager, Lady Lindsay kept the estate going until he had enough experience to take charge.”
War, thought Julia, exacts a heavy price wherever you look. How many families now had lost fathers, brothers, and sons, or seen them injured, all in the cause of the conflict against Napoléon?
Lady Lindsay arrived promptly at the manor house on the following morning with her son and was introduced to Aunt Lucy, with whom she soon began an animated conversation in the salon. Mr. Hatton invited Julia and Sir James to join him in the library, where they could have some private conversation.
“Miss Maitland, please sit down,” said Mr. Hatton. Julia did as she was bid, then he continued. “Well, James, what have you been able to discover for me?”
“First, that my cousin Patrick has been in Bridport visiting his half brother, Frank, at least twice in the past month. On one of those occasions, he was accompanied by a friend from London, but I could not find out who he was. Second, that Frank Jepson has recently moved house again. It seems that he fell afoul of Isaac Gulliver by trespassing on his territory near Burton Bradstock. However, Jepson has since bought a sizeable property on the west side of Bridport, so he is obviously not short of money.”
“Mr. Hatton, may I say something?”
He turned and looked at Julia with surprise, but it was Sir James who replied, “Of course, Miss Maitland, what is it?”
“Mrs. Harrison’s personal maid, Martha Fisher, comes from near Bath. On the journey down here, she told us that her brother, Jem, had given up mining coal there in Radstock, and had travelled some months ago with other men to work in well-paid jobs near the coast.”
Mr. Hatton was suddenly alert. “Jem, did you say?”
“Yes. You may remember that we heard that name mentioned when we were—we were walking in the wood.” Julia turned her face away, knowing that she was blushing.
“Why is that important?” asked Sir James.
“A young man of that name, said to be a farmhand, was brought into Mrs. Jones’s kitchen here at Morancourt the other day, having hurt his leg. By chance, I came across Mrs. Harrison’s maid; she was very upset. Martha told me that it was her brother Jem Fisher, who had been working as a coal miner near Bath until recently.”
“A miner should get much better pay than a farmhand, so why would he want to change jobs?”
“Martha told me that her brother had never worked as a farmhand, as far as she was aware.”
“I wonder?” said Mr. Hatton. “Do you know where he is living now?”
“No, but Mrs. Jones said that her husband had brought him in to have the wound dressed. And she said that most of the farmhands lived in the village or in estate cottages.”
“Something odd, Kit?” said Sir James. “Or just a coincidence, perhaps?”
“Let me think about it, and I will speak to Mr. Whitaker, for he will know the names of all the men that I employ on the estate. Miss Maitland, please do not do anything concerning this unless I say so. Frank Jepson has come to the attention of the authorities several times in the past, I understand, and I have been told that he has been known to use a weapon when crossed.” He looked for confirmation at Sir James, who nodded in agreement.
Julia suddenly remembered what the mysterious man on Eggardon Hill had said, and felt sick.
“Come now, Miss Maitland, let us rejoin your aunt. I am sure that my mother would like to speak with you before we leave,” and Sir James led the way back to the salon.
That afternoon, the sun was shining in a clear blue sky, and Mr. Hatton suggested that Julia should find her walking boots and a dark-coloured jacket, to walk with him past the Whitakers’ farmhouse on the well-worn track that they had seen towards the sea. It took them about thirty minutes to reach the place where Mr. Hatton had paused the curricle previously.
“Now, Miss Maitland, shall we do a little exploring together? We will try to avoid the ditches this time! And we had better be circumspect about speaking too loudly.”
Mr. Hatton led the way along the narrow path down towards the little valley, and round the slope of the ground until they could see the seashore some distance ahead of them. There were low cliffs on each side of the coast guarding what seemed to be a small bay. On the left of the track, the route they were following led to a gate in a low stone wall that encircled a group of stone barns with old thatched roofs.
“Do you think . . . ?” said Julia.
He anticipated her question. “Not being used for farming, I believe, as the worn track is too narrow for carts. Let us get a little closer, but remember to listen as we walk.”
Nothing was heard, however, as they reached the barns and went through the gate to peer through a crack in one of the shuttered openings. Beyond, in the gloom, they could just make out stacked piles of small barrels and metal boxes on one side, and on the other some bales of fabric resting on a low table.
“We’ve seen enough,” said Mr. Hatton. “I’ll wager that those are all contraband goods, brought direct from the shore and made ready for moving on further inland when they can. Come back with me now, Miss Maitland, before anyone sees us here.”
“Could we not go down to look at the coast before we return?”
He hesitated, then pointed to their right, where there was a band of trees beside the track. “Very well, but we will walk that way, not on the path, so that we are less visible.”
As they advanced through the trees, the sound of the sea became audible at last, breaking on rocks along the coast below them. When they emerged from the wood, they found themselves still close to the track and on a slope overlooking the beach. There was no one in sight in either direction, although to the west the buildings on the coast at West Bay could just be seen in the far distance.
“What are those objects?” said Julia, pointing out to sea directly ahead.
Mr. Hatton looked carefully at the indistinct shapes breaking the surface of the water between the waves, and then replied, “James Lindsay is a local magistrate and he has told me that the smugglers sometimes need to keep their goods offshore until the revenue men have passed by. So what you can see may be markers or floats.”
“For what, Mr. Hatton?”
“They sometimes sink casks of spirits, having put them on rafts or roped them together in groups, all attached to large stones. Then at night they can be pulled up to the surface of the water and taken to shore by small fishing boats like that one below us there.”
Julia looked down onto the beach where he was pointing, and eventually she managed to glimpse a small fishing boat that had been pulled back from the water’s edge and partly concealed between some rocks.
“Do they ever get caught by the revenue men?”
“Not often, as they can be out-numbered by the smugglers. Even if someone is caught, the jury of local people often acquit them. There is a lot of sympathy in Dorset for the smugglers, because the goods they bring in keep prices down, and would often not be available otherwise. Did you or Mrs. Harrison purchase any lengths of silk as gifts whilst you were staying in Bath?”
“Only one,” she said, surprised, “for my mother.”
“Well, that was probably smuggled into Dorset not far from here! Now, Miss Maitland, we had better not linger, just in case anyone thinks of coming by. Let us go back through the trees as far as we can, and then rejoin the track closer to the farmhouse.”
On the walk back to the manor house, they discussed the various options open to Mr. Hatton, and concluded that he needed to make further inquiries now of Sir James, and anyone else who could be trusted not to disclose that the smuggling was being investigated.
When she descended the stairs the next morning, Julia was surprised to see that her aunt was not in her usual place for breakfast in the dining room, and found her walking slowly and steadily across the salon with Mrs. Jones and Martha in close attendance. Indeed, her aunt seemed anxious to venture out of doors for the first time.
“I do believe that I shall be well enough to travel home to Bath in a few days, Julia, perhaps on Monday. So, if there is anything else that you wish to do before we leave here, please do not delay in asking Mr. Hatton.”
Julia’s hidden reaction to this news was considerable dismay at the thought of leaving Morancourt and all that it had come to mean to her, and having so little time left with their host. But she replied quite calmly to her aunt.
“He did suggest that he could teach me to dance the waltz in the ballroom, Aunt Lucy, if you would agree to that.”
Julia knew that, if the same question were to be addressed to Mama, the answer would be no, and that Aunt Lucy would be aware of that. But she also knew that Aunt Lucy shared some characteristics with her niece Sophie, and that she did not always choose to do exactly what people expected of her.
As Mr. Hatton came into the hall from his study to join them, Aunt Lucy replied, “I don’t see why not, my dear, in a private setting such as this. Don’t you agree, sir?”
When Mr. Hatton heard what Julia’s question had been, he turned to her and said in a very level voice, “That is very good news, Miss Maitland.” It was only when she saw the expression in his green eyes that she realised how much the answer meant to him.