St Martin's Summer by Rafael Sabatini

In the great hall of the Chateau de Condillac sat the Dowager, her son, and the Lord Seneschal, in conference.

It was early in the afternoon of the last Thursday in October, exactly a week since Monsieur de Garnache all but broken-hearted at the failure of his mission - had departed from Grenoble. They had dined, and the table was still strewn with vessels and the fragments of their meal, for the cloth had not yet been raised. But the three of them had left the board - the Seneschal with all that reluctance with which he was wont to part company with the table, no matter how perturbed in spirit he might to - and they had come to group themselves about the great open fireplace.