‘Please wait, Sas. I see if master free.’
Two wide staircases rose before us to form a gallery above the light and airy hall, its walls lined with black and white statuary like chess pieces massed ready for a game on the black and white marble floor tiles.
Tall doors opened and the footman returned to show us into the drawing room, decorated in pastel shades with a mahogany floor and furniture upholstered in floral fabrics with many tall plants in great terracotta pots grouped together, filling the air with their verdant scent. Their fronds and branches reaching up to the high, dark, wood-panelled ceiling bringing a strange kind of dappled light to the room, occupied by a lone woman. Tiny, very young and startlingly pretty with black curls falling to her waist, she had full lips and hone
