She walked down the main street, past the shuttered tollbooth and the busy Cross Keys Hotel, on past the Corn Exchange, shuddering involuntarily at the spot marking the site of the last public hanging there. At the railway station on the outskirts of town, which her father had steered through an Act of Parliament to construct, she huddled for shelter in the doorway of the ticket booth.

If she didn’t marry at all, she was destined to become what Louise feared most, the family hausfrau, as she called it. A maiden aunt, at the beck and call of her brothers and sisters and their offspring, shunted from pillar to post as required. She would be a perpetual guest in others’ homes, expected to be nothing but dutiful and grateful until the end of her days.

Exasperated, she scooped a handful of snow into a ball and hurled it across the tracks. What she wanted was to stop the questions endlessly circling around and around in her head. What she wanted was to prove to her parents that she was indeed fit for purpose, not a selfish, feckless child.

Could she play the role expected of her, as Rufus Ponsonby’s wife? She could never love him, but love wasn’t part of the bargain. You must resist the urge to let your heart steer your actions. Louise’s words had stung, but she was right. Margaret should be asking herself whether she could learn to respect him, to hold him in some sort of affection. Every instinct screamed a resounding no, but look where her instincts had landed her.

Duty involved sacrifice and hard work. Her sister had successfully managed it, albeit, in Victoria’s own words, with a determined effort. If she could find the strength of character to emulate her sister, she would be redeemed in everyone’s eyes. And if she was fortunate, she would be rewarded, as Victoria was about to be, with a family of her own, even if she cringed to think how that family would come about.

If Victoria wasn’t example enough, she could look to Louise. Bored senseless, deprived of her friends, denied a proper debut, forced to listen to the queen’s endless lamentations and outpourings of grief, Louise did so with such grace and restraint that her mother believed she relished the task. Lou vented her feelings in her letters to Margaret, and she enjoyed her own, private little acts of rebellion, but she was otherwise a stoic.

Yes, Louise was the example she would follow. She would accept her place in the world, and she would make the best of it. She would have to wrap her heart in chains, suppress her true self in order to do so, but she would do it.