Scammell giggled with pleasure. “Indeed and indeed.” Now, perhaps, Campion would marry him with a glad heart. They would be rich as few in this world are rich. “You’re surprised, my dear?”

Campion shared her brother’s disbelief. Ten thousand pounds! It was an unthinkable sum. She was grasping for understanding and failing, but she remembered the words of the will and ignored Samuel Scammell. “Mr. Blood? Do I comprehend the will to mean that the money becomes mine when I am twenty-five?”

“Quite so, quite so.” Isaac Blood was looking at her with a new respect. “Not, of course, if you are married, for then the monies will be your dear husband’s, as is proper. But should he predecease you,” here Blood made an apologetic motion toward Scammell, “then, of course, you will take the seal into your own keeping. That much, I think, is clear from the will.”

“The seal?” Ebenezer had limped close to the lectern.

Blood was pouring the last of the malmsey into his glass. “It merely authenticates the signature on any paper dealing with the Covenant.”

“But where is it, Mr. Blood? Where is it?” Ebenezer was unusually animated.

The lawyer drank the sweet wine, then shrugged. “How would I know, Master Ebenezer? I assume it is in your father’s belongings.” He stared regretfully into the empty wine glass. “You should look for it. I recommend a diligent search.”

He left, after expressing perfunctory but profound sympathies for their sad loss, and Ebenezer and Scammell escorted the lawyer to his horse. Campion was left alone. The sun slanted through leaded windows on to the polished, waxed floorboards. She was still a prisoner here; the fortune of the Covenant changed nothing. She did not understand all the legalities; she only understood that she was trapped.

Samuel Scammell came back into the hall, his shoes squeaking on the boards. “My dear? Our fortune surprised you?”

She looked wearily at him. “Leave me alone. Please? Leave me alone.”

It was August now, a high, ripening August that promised better crops than for years past. Campion walked through the scented fields, avoiding those where anyone worked, seeking always the solitary places where she could sit and think. She ate alone, slept alone, yet her presence pervaded Werlatton Hall. It was as if her father’s force, his ability to impose a mood upon the house, had passed to her. Goodwife Baggerlie resented it most. “She’s got a devil in her, master, you mark my words!”

“Grief is hard,” Scammell said.

“Grief! She’s not grieving!” Goodwife crossed her arms and stared defiantly at Scammell. “She needs a beating, master, that’s all! A good beating! That’ll teach her her place. Her father would have beaten her, God rest his soul, and so you should.” Goodwife began vigorously dusting the hall table where Scammell was finishing a lonely lunch. “She’s lacked for nothing, that girl, nothing! If I’d been given her advantages…” She tutted, leaving it to Scammell’s imagination what heights Goodwife might have scaled had she been Matthew Slythe’s daughter. “Give her a beating, master! Belts aren’t just for holding up breeches!”