Seigneur

"Then you're not - " "Darling," I said, "do you really see me in the position of a seigneur, driving my serfs and villeins before me with a whip - even if the triffids haven't overrun me first?"

There was less and less love lost between peasants and seigneurs. The services which the latter had provided for the peasant community in the past had diminished in value.

Beaumont lives on Sark, a small, autonomous island twenty-five miles off the coast of Normandy, with her husband, Michael, the island's seigneur.