Hurt showed in her eyes before she nodded and said quietly, ‘Of course it is. I ain’t never laid wi’ no one else, you know that.’

She was disappointed at his reaction but then she supposed she should have known that it would come as a terrible shock.

He moaned deep in his throat and began to pace up and down, kicking up the loose straw that lay about the floor, causing a storm of dust to rise into the air.

Hurrying to him she took his large hands in her rough, calloused ones. ‘Look, this won’t be so bad,’ she told him urgently. ‘You allus said we’d be together one day. Happen this can just make things come about sooner than we’d thought.’

Something about his stiff stance disturbed her and she felt the first stirrings of panic. Surely he wouldn’t turn his back on her when they meant so much to each other, especially now he knew that she was carrying his child?

Barnaby, meanwhile, was shaking his head as he struggled to come to terms with what she had told him. He turned away, running his hand distractedly through his thick thatch of hair, and when he turned back to her the look on his face made her heart skip a beat.

‘I-I know what I promised,’ he said. ‘But the thing is . . . something has happened and I can’t leave Louisa.’

Amber recoiled as if she had been slapped in the face. ‘What do you mean? Of course you can, we’re going to have a baby . . .’

He shook his head regretfully and she watched him fumble in the pocket of his smart trousers before handing her a shining gold sovereign. It seemed to burn into her skin as she stared down at it.

‘I’m so sorry, Amber,’ he told her in a choked voice. ‘But I think it might be better if you got rid of it. There’s a woman on the outskirts of the town, I believe, who helps women in your position.’

In that moment all her hopes and dreams turned to ashes and tears sprang to her eyes. She knew immediately who he was speaking of: Lil Bentley was an old lady who the townsfolk said was a witch. She had helped many young women out of the plight Amber found herself in but some of them had ended up in an early grave because of it, and Amber knew that she would never do as he asked, although she wasn’t quite brave enough to tell him so.

‘So you never meant any of what you said?’ she whispered dully as she felt her heart break. ‘You just used me!’

‘No, no, I do care about you, really I do but . . .’ He spread his hands. How could he make her understand what he had to lose?

She backed away from him as if she was suddenly seeing him for the first time.