Jane Adeane had now drained the last dregs of tea left in her cup, as if she yearned to make some diversion from the subject of contrivances and hand-holding by drinking it. Then, she’d looked round the room and her gaze had taken in the dog now yapping fretfully at his mistress’s feet. The dog wanted to escape and this was also now what Jane desired – to be far away from Valentine Ross. As for him, he must surely have understood that his proposal had been a mistake of the gravest consequence and that his life – and Jane’s – in Bath would never be the same again.

Jane had adjusted her posture, raising her head as high as she could make it go, and looked down upon Ross.

‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘I am truly sorry that you should feel ill on my account, but there is nothing to be done about it. The cure you want is not within my power to give.’

She unfolded herself from the chair and stood up. Any short-sightedness she may have betrayed on entering the tea room, was no longer apparent. She glanced back at Mrs Morrissey waiting at the cake counter and nodded politely to her. Then she strode quickly to the door.

That night, Valentine Ross pondered his behaviour and Jane’s prior to the tragedy (or perhaps it was merely a farce?) that had occurred in the tea rooms. For a long time, he’d believed that there was an absolute logic to this marriage and that no man had ever been more certain about where his future lay. He had even congratulated himself on holding back from asking for Jane’s hand for several months after coming to the realisation of all that she meant to him. He had held back in order to look for signs that his affection for her might be returned – and he’d thought he’d found them. But he now saw that what, in fact, he’d found was not much more than Jane’s polite respect for him as a doctor and a fondness for teasing him, which he’d foolishly mistaken for sublimated passionate regard.

He cursed himself for being blind and dumb. And yet there had been one or two occasions when Ross believed he’d caught a glimpse of romantic feelings in Jane.

One of these had been the night of the Chopin Recital at the Assembly Rooms – so ineffectually referred to across the cake stand. Before this, he had always remembered the evening with furious joy. Jane had appeared so magnificent in her blood-red dress and her bird’s feather that the eyes of many other concert-goers had lighted on her, as they walked through to the concert salle, and, as if to shelter herself from these admiring looks, Jane had taken his arm and when he’d placed his hand upon hers, tucked into the crook of his elbow, she hadn’t taken it away. Indeed she had smiled at him. Smiled! As if to say, ‘yes, we are comfortable like this. You understand it and I understand it. So perhaps this is how we might remain?’