She was half out of bed, throwing back the covers and throwing open the window, her hand still cupped over her mouth as if she did not want the smallest breath to escape. John reached out for her but did not pull her to him. His fear of the illness was as great as his love for her. ‘Jane! Where are you going?’

‘I’ll get them to make me up a bed in the new orangery,’ she said. ‘And you must put my food and water at the door, and not come near me. The children are to be kept away. And my bedding is to be burned when it is dirty. And burn candles around the door.’

He would have held her but she turned on him with a face of such fury that he recoiled. ‘Get away from me!’ she screamed at him. ‘D’you think I want to give it to you? D’you think I want to tear down this house which has been the joy of my life to build up?’

‘No …’ John stammered. ‘But Jane, I love you, I want to hold you …’

‘If I survive,’ she promised, her face softening, ‘then we will spend weeks in each other’s arms. I swear it, John. I love you. But if I die you are not even to touch me. You are to order them to bolt down the coffin and not even to look at me.’

‘I can’t bear it!’ he cried suddenly. ‘This can’t happen to us!’

Jane opened the door and called down the stairs. ‘Sally! Make up a bed for me in the orangery, and put all my clothes in there.’

‘If I take it, I will join you,’ John said. ‘And we will be together then.’

She turned her determined face to him. ‘You will not take it,’ she said passionately. ‘You will live to care for Baby John, and for Frances, and for the trees and the gardens. Even if I die there is still Baby John to carry your name, and the trees and the gardens.’

‘Jane –’ It was a low cry, like a hurt animal’s.

She did not soften for a moment. ‘Keep my children from me,’ she ordered harshly. ‘If you love me at all. Keep them from me.’

And she turned, gathered up all the clothes she had brought from the city, went down the stairs into the new-built orangery, lay down on the pallet bed which the maid had thrown on the floor, and looked up to where the warm summer moonlight poured in the little window in the wooden wall, and wondered if she would die.