In springtime,
The only pretty ring-time. . . .
William Shakespeare
Once upon a time there was a British Land Army girl who went to work at Castle Ashby, the many-acred estate of the sixth Marquess of Northampton. The girl's name was Virginia Lucie Heaton. She was 22, and she tucked spring flowers in her dark hair when she went into the fields. Even her sack-bottomed corduroy trousers, her straw-snagged sweater and her crushed hunting cap could not hide the fact that she was slim and pretty.
Now the Marquess was a gruff-voiced Lord-of-the-Manor type who had divorced his wife, the Lady Emma, second daughter...