‘Yes.’ Clancy saw that the promise Maria had exacted was a gift to her husband too. ‘I bet you ten guineas Rose can find ten plants in a day that you’ve never noticed.’

‘Luckily I have a remittance man’s allowance,’ said Ethelred. He hesitated. ‘I know Maria encouraged you. But have you truly thought what this marriage will mean? Not just to you, but to your children?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you are still sure?’

‘No,’ said Clancy honestly. ‘I am sure of my love for her. Sure no other woman could ever meet the heart of my life as she does. But giving up all chance of society, seeing our children, if we have any, shunned? No, I’m not sure. But nor can I imagine any other future than asking her to be my wife.’ He hesitated in his turn. ‘Ethelred — what did you truly feel about Maria’s . . .’ He could not say the word.

‘Disfigurement?’ Ethelred suggested the word with a twist of anguish mixed with humour. ‘It horrified me, at first, though I hope she never knew it. I was lucky that I first knew her while I was too dazed to react; that by the time I could speak to her I could see beyond what the tumour had done to her.’

‘You really never regretted the deformity?’

‘Of course I did,’ said Ethelred gently. ‘Never to go to Sydney to lectures with my wife? To choose only the most . . . tactful or oblivious . . . of my friends to visit? See the look on each new servant’s face? I regretted it many times. But I never once felt I had made the wrong choice. I . . . I have been privileged well beyond the lot of normal men, to have had a woman by my side who shared my life in every way possible, matching my passions and visions with her own.’

As Rose will, if she agrees to spend her life with me, thought Clancy.

‘I think, perhaps, that love is dealt out justly. For every love we must pay an equal price in pain, or deprivation.’ Ethelred was silent for a moment, looking at the river, a flight of herons sweeping to the sky. ‘I will never have another love like hers, nor a companionship like ours, even if I marry again, as I promised her I would. That too is the price of all those years of love.’

‘You truly would welcome Rose here?’

‘Most certainly. As would any friend I might have here.’ He smiled, a true smile for the first time since Maria’s death. ‘An articulate native woman who knows the plants and traditions of her people? I know men who would like to engage your Rose in conversation for a dozen years.’

‘That is not the same as dining with her.’