I stopped laughing for a moment. ‘That’s a bit hard,’ I said. ‘It’s a high price to pay for being a bit of a flirt.’

Dandy’s face was stony. ‘Who cares?’ she demanded. ‘I won’t have her hanging on Jack. If Jack goes with any one of us, he goes with me. I’ve been ready enough to keep things cold between us because his da ordered it and you begged me; but if she is crawling all over him I’m damned if I see him taken away from me!’

‘Now Dandy, it’s nothing,’ I said swiftly. ‘It’s probably as you say – that she was trying to tease me, to put me in my place. She doesn’t know that none of us court Jack. That none of us work like that. I’m back sleeping in the stables tonight. I’ll tell her then.’

Dandy tossed her thick black hair and looked mulish. ‘I’d rather we just told Robert that she was chasing Jack and let her go back to wherever she came from,’ she said unkindly. ‘I don’t like having her in my room. I don’t like her hanging on Jack. I saw him first. He saw me. He’s had eyes for me from that first day, Merry. We only did nothing to please his da. You know that.’

I thought a moment. I remembered Jack’s hot eyes upon me, and how he had asked me if I dreamed of him. I thought of him watching me as I swam and being angered by my indifference.

‘He’s a coquette as bad as her,’ I said without sympathy. ‘He’d go with any girl who flattered his vanity, and he’d be challenged by any girl who kept him at a distance. I’d not be surprised to see him take up with her.’

Dandy grabbed my arm. ‘I mean this, Merry,’ she said rapidly. ‘I’ve held off from him because I wanted to see how the land lay with his da, and it’s been so different here. I wanted to see if there was any chance of this damned future that Robert plans for him. But I wanted him when I first saw him. And I want him still.’