She turned to him; but in his embarrassment, he did not see her. He was digging the heel of his riding boot into the corner of her little square of hen-scratched dust.

‘What would you have said, if you had written?’ she asked and her voice was very soft and tempting. It was a voice which a man would turn to and rest upon. John resisted the temptation to spin on his heel, snatch her up and bury his face in her neck.

‘I would have said I was sorry,’ he confessed gruffly. ‘Sorry to have been ill-tempered on our wedding night, and sorry that I had to leave you that very morning. When I was angry with them for making a noise I had thought that we would have the next day in peace, and that anything troublesome could be mended then. I had thought to wake early in the morning and love you then. But then the message came and I went up to London and there was no way of telling you that I was sorry.’

Hesitantly she stepped forward and put a hand on his shoulder.

‘I am sorry too,’ she said simply. ‘I thought these things were easier for men. I thought that you were doing just exactly what you wished. I thought that you had not bedded me because …’ her voice became choked and she ended in a thin whisper ‘… because you have an aversion to me, and that you went back to Theobalds to avoid me.’

John spun around and snatched his wife to his heart. ‘I do not!’ He felt her whole frame convulse with a deep sob. ‘I do not have an aversion!’

She was warm in his arms and her skin was soft. He kissed her face and her wet eyelids, and her smooth sweet neck and the dimples of her collarbone at the neck of her gown, and suddenly he felt desire sweep over him as easy and as natural as a spring rainstorm across a field of grass. He scooped her up and carried her into the house and kicked the door shut behind him, and he laid her down on the hearthrug before the little spinster’s fire where she had sat, alone and lonely, for so many evenings, and loved her until it grew dark outside and only the firelight illuminated their enfolded bodies.

‘I do not have an aversion to you,’ he said.

At suppertime they rose from the floor, chilled and uncomfortable. ‘I have some bread and cheese and a broth,’ Elizabeth said.

‘Whatever you have in the larder will do for me,’ John replied. ‘I’ll fetch some wood for the fire.’

‘I’ll run up the road to my mother’s house and borrow a jug of beefstock,’ she said, pulling her grey gown on over her head. She turned her back to him and offered him the ties on her white apron. ‘I’ll only be a moment.’