Ashton and Miss Paley hurried to help him up, but Marco was a child who seldom cried; he just got to his feet and ran into his father’s arms.

‘Papa!’ he said, ‘do you know my horse’s name?’

‘Yes,’ said Ashton, kissing his son, ‘I believe I do. I think his name is Pippin.’

‘No!’ said Marco. ‘His name was Pippin, but now it is something else.’

‘Oh,’ said Ashton. ‘Did he not like the name Pippin?’

‘No. He didn’t like it.’

‘And he told you this?’

‘Yes, he did. Because he talks quite well, Papa. You don’t think he can talk, do you, but he can.’

‘On the contrary, I know that he talks very well. So what is his new name?’

‘It’s a secret, but I’m going to whisper it to you.’

‘Are you sure you should – if it’s really a secret?’

‘Yes. Put your ear here, Papa. His name is Trebuchet.’

‘Trebuchet?’

‘Yes. It’s my favourite new word. I learned it from a picture book. It’s a weapon for attacking castles. And Nanny says you have to say it Tray-boo-shay, not Tree-bucket.’

‘Oh,’ said Ashton, laughing, ‘but I rather like Tree-bucket! I think I even prefer it. Why not call your horse that: Tree-Bucket?’

Marco began giggling and Ashton thought that this was one of the sweetest sounds in the world, the happy laughter of his son. He hugged him close, then set him down to return to his rocking-horse.

‘Does Mama know about Pippin’s new name?’ asked Ashton.

‘Yes of course she does,’ said Marco. ‘Mama knows everything in the world.’

Made joyful by being with Marco, Ashton was about to suggest a game of spillikins, when Ellen appeared at the nursery door to tell Ashton that he had a visitor.

‘It’s Miss Adeane,’ said Ellen, ‘Miss Jane. She has some sad news to tell you.’

‘What sad news, Ellen?’

‘I don’t know, Sir. She is in the drawing room.’

‘I like Jane,’ said Marco. ‘She was here last night, wasn’t she, Ellen? She and Mama were laughing. I heard them.’

Ashton noticed that Ellen blushed as she nodded. He knew what all of this suggested, but it was Ashton Sims’s great and secret strength that knowing a potentially troubling thing only inclined him, not to apportion blame, but rather to alter his own perception of the matter, to steel himself to consign it to a part of his mind where it would no longer hurt him.

How many men could have done this? He wasn’t sure that many could, given what rules and constrictions husbands felt justified in laying upon their wives and how angry and violent they could become if these were broken. But Ashton was not of this temperament. And he knew that his love for Julietta had a kind of magnificent largesse about it. It was a world of love, a wide, accommodating terrain of affection. Ashton truly didn’t mind where his beauty of a wife sometimes took her pleasure, if that was her nature’s inclination, provided she did not leave him. That alone would have left him bereft and angry. His greatest hope and expectation was that they could have more children and live in the domestic contentment they had both striven to perfect for many years to come.