‘Come round to the other side of the church,’ he said, and for the first time Helen heard from his voice that he was close to breaking down.

They walked away, the unclipped grass brushing at their ankles. The shadowed north side of the church was cooler. The tombstones here were ancient, leaning crazily over sunken slabs mossed with yellow lichen. Beyond the drystone wall was open pastureland and the bulk of Mere House against its yew-dark setting. ‘Come and sit on the wall. I used to spend hours here when I was a kid.’ Darcy led her to the place, and they sat on the flat stones with their backs to the churchyard. Ahead of them Mere’s acres spread under the lazy fingers of sun.

Helen listened to the superficial silence of rural peace, underscored by the hum of insects and the rustle of grass and leaves.

Darcy said, ‘It isn’t any use, is it?’

Away somewhere behind them a blackbird launched into a torrent of liquid song. ‘I wish it could have been,’ she whispered.

The bird sang on, its own exultant fountain.

She turned to look at him, and her eyes travelled over the lines of his open face, exactly as familiar and dear to her as it always had been.

‘I’m sorry.’ She offered him the honesty of her heart.

‘Don’t be. There’s no reason. It shouldn’t have taken me so long to find the courage to face it. Peculiar, isn’t it, that losing Oliver should have given it to me?’

‘I think I understand,’ Helen told him.

Darcy lifted her hand and surprised her with his old, half-smothered laugh. ‘You always hated this, didn’t you?’

The Viscountess’s blood-red ruby shone in its net of diamonds.

‘I’d never have made a viscountess for you. Somebody else will.’ She slid the heavy weight off her finger and gave it back to him. He dropped it into his pocket without looking at it. His eyes were on the meadows and the plain grey face of Mere House.

‘I hope so. I need that.’

‘I know so,’ she promised him. ‘But it couldn’t have been me.’

‘No. I was wrong to try to convince us both otherwise.’

They sat for a moment longer looking out at the view. Nothing to do with me, any longer, Helen told herself, these fields and stones and all the centuries of tradition lying behind and ahead. Relief lifted a heavy weight from her shoulders like a stifling blanket. Her hand felt as if it could fly up from her lap, weightless.

She wanted Darcy to know something, a truth that seemed vitally important now. ‘I love you,’ she said, knowing that he would understand.

He smiled back at her. ‘I love you too. I always will.’