Rosie lay in her bed. She could hear her mother and father talking through the wall that divided them, and knew she was the subject of discussion. She’d gone to her room early that night, avoiding any contact with Ethan and the conversation that would follow between her parents. But now she found herself unable to sleep. She imagined the disgust of her mother, at her setting her sights as low as the gypsy stable boy. She recalled all the times Harriet had sighed and said she wished Rosie was more like her cousin Jane. Jane would never do that, Jane would always be a lady and would marry into higher society, so long as everyone forgot her mad moment of fighting for the suffragette cause.

No matter. Ethan had broken their silence, and no doubt she’d be confronted by an irate mother in the morning. It was a pity it wasn’t Harriet’s day helping out at Skipton, for she would have to endure her mother lecturing her all day as she helped her. Whatever happened, her mother must never find out that they had already been intimate with one another, and the terrible consequences it had caused. That would always be her own and Ethan’s secret; no one else must ever know. Rosie pulled her bedclothes up to her chin and tried to sleep, tugging her pillow around her ears. Tomorrow would be hell, but Ethan was worth every minute, she thought, as she gazed into the darkness of the night.

‘I swear this place would go to the dogs if I wasn’t here. I’m gone just a few days a week, and then this happens behind my back. And your father seems to have no more sense than he was born with – saying yes to Ethan! For heaven’s sake, Rosie, you are only sixteen and, of all the lads in the dale, it’s Ethan that takes your eye. Could you not have set your heart on the lad from Woodend or Sowermire? At least their fathers own some land.’ Harriet looked across the table at her young daughter.

‘But they are not the same, Mother. Ethan and I get on so well; we both have the same love of the countryside, and we are happy in one another’s company.’ Rosie lowered her head. She’d had earache from her mother all morning – lecture after lecture on how to behave, and on setting her sights higher than a common gypsy.