He rested his cheek against the smoothness of her hair and the crisp laundered edge of her cap, and thought, but only for a moment, of a warm perfumed riot of dark curls and the erotic scratch of stubble. ‘Praise God,’ he said.

‘It was a blessing,’ she said.

John met Josiah Hurte’s gaze over the top of his wife’s head. ‘No, it was an ill business,’ he said firmly.

Josiah Hurte shrugged. ‘There are many that are calling it a divine deliverance. They are saying that Felton was the saviour of his country.’

‘They are praising a murderer then.’ Inside John’s head he could see Felton’s pale determined face at the moment when John could have called out, and did not. ‘It was a sin, and any that stood by and failed to prevent it are sinners too.’

Elizabeth, skilled with years of experience in reading John’s moods, pulled back a little so that she could see his grim expression. ‘But you could not have stopped it,’ she suggested. ‘You were not the duke’s bodyguard.’

John did not want to lie to her. ‘I could have stopped it,’ he said slowly. ‘I should have been closer to him, I should have warned him about Felton. He should have been better guarded.’

‘No point in blaming yourself,’ Josiah Hurte said briskly. ‘Better thank God instead that this country is spared a war and that you are spared the danger.’

Elizabeth said nothing, she looked into her husband’s face. ‘Anyway, you are free now,’ she said quietly. ‘Free from your service to him, at last.’

‘I am free at last,’ John confirmed.

Mrs Hurte gestured that he should take a place at the table. ‘We have dined because we did not know when to expect you, but if you will take a bowl of broth and a slice of pie, I can have it before you at once.’

John sat at the table and the Hurtes’ maid brought him small ale and food. Josiah Hurte sat opposite him and took a pint of ale to keep him company.

‘No-one knows what will happen to the duke’s estate,’ Josiah said. ‘The family is still in hiding, and the London house is quite shut up. The servants have been turned away, and there’s no money to pay the tradesmen.’

‘There never was any,’ John remarked wryly.

‘It may be that the family decide to sell up to cover their debts,’ Josiah said. ‘If they decide to honour their debts at all.’

Mrs Hurte was shocked. ‘They’ll never refuse to pay!’ she exclaimed. ‘Good merchants will go bankrupt if they renege. His lordship had run bills for years, it would have been called treason to refuse him credit. What of the honest men who depend on his widow paying them?’

‘They say that there is no money,’ J said simply. ‘I have had no wages. Have you?’

John shook his head.