‘Oh, but would you—?’

I was saved by the butler announcing Mrs Merringway, Johanson, and Parn. Introductions were made. Judging by the expressions of these married women in their middle-years, it was they who felt ambushed. I was very much aware of my singular masculinity in a parlour full of many-layered dresses. I was not unused to the company of women – it certainly didn’t render me a panicked mute as it did Christophor – but I was not typically the lone representative of my sex. It was quite the burden.

When the butler entered once more I felt hope again, stronger this time, strong enough to recognise its provenance. I wished Rebecca to walk through that door. I wished she would do so wearing a finer dress than her market clothes, her hair arranged in some unexpected way – ringlets, perhaps, cascading down one shoulder. I wanted to both recognise her and find her new there, in a relative stranger’s parlour. But it was not to be. Four more names, none of them hers. Four more married women, none of them discernible from the next.

‘She won’t be joining us,’ Mrs Channock said, cornering me by the little tree. ‘Not that she was invited.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said.

‘No? Most of the town does.’

‘You make a simple friendship sound so sordid, Mrs Channock.’

‘I wouldn’t take it to heart. You’re not the first, and you won’t be the last.’

‘Mrs Channock—’

‘And who would blame Rebecca? None in this parlour, certainly. We all appreciate a pretty little thing brought from far away.’

I tried to stop myself and not rise to the goading of a magistrate’s wife. But I was weak. ‘Some of us have to impress without a uniform and sabre.’

It took her half a breath to catch my meaning. ‘Yes, Second Lieutenant Matherson was handsome, little good it did him.’

‘I imagine no event of note in Drekenford escapes you, Mrs Channock.’

‘We live in a fairly small town.’

‘Come now, no need for modesty,’ I said, determined to make use of this vile woman, and to move the conversation away from gossip of which I was the subject. ‘What, for interest’s sake, did you make of the arrest of the Harsson boy?’

‘The Eder servant? Only that it had little to do with silverware.’

‘So I’m beginning to understand. Warming beds was perhaps beyond his duties? Especially that of Lou—’

‘Don’t,’ Mrs Channock said, raising a hand to cut me off. She glanced around the parlour in what I took to be a genuine state of anxiety. But there was only the polite chatter of women taking tea. Suddenly my mouth was quite dry. ‘Don’t. I’ve found certain names have a kind of power of late.’

‘I would not have taken a magistrate’s wife for a superstitious woman,’ I said.

‘And what of a constable? One who said a few names until someone put more permanent words in his mouth.’ She looked at me with a chilling calm. ‘That floppy-haired girl and her southern gander were the reason the Harsson boy was sent north in chains. My husband signed the papers, but they were the reason.’