I closed my eyes and tried to think. It was possible. Robert Gower could not have taken more care of me if I had been his own child. The surgeon’s fees alone would run into pounds. It was true that I trained horses better than anyone I had ever seen. I had won him a fortune that day in Salisbury. There were other shows looking for horses and trainers. I had only Sea, but he could be made into a wonderful act if I wished. Dandy was only an apprentice, but there could not be a prettier girl flyer in the world. She was certainly the only girl flyer in the country.

But…I stopped and opened my eyes. Dandy had tucked away her little bag of herbs inside her shift and was tying her pinny around her waist. ‘You’d never persuade Robert,’ I said. ‘Not in a hundred years, not on your own. The only person who could turn him around would be Jack. And you will never get Jack to stand up to his da.’

Dandy’s face was as clear as a May morning. ‘I will,’ she said confidently. ‘When he’s my lover he’ll do anything for me.’

If I had been stronger I should have argued more. Even then, as I closed my eyes against the dizzy hazy pain of headaches and old bruises, I knew that I should sit up and make Dandy see sense. That she needed my protection more than she had ever done in her life. But I failed her. I leaned back against the wall and rested until she had pinned her cap and was ready for us to go to dinner. Even then, as the three of us walked over to the house, I should have told Katie that the promised guinea was mine and not Dandy’s, and that I should not pay it. She could have Jack with my blessing.

But I was tired and ill and, I suppose, lazy. I had not the strength to go against Dandy’s overpowering conviction. I did not even have the wit to keep my eyes open to see if she palmed the herbs and got them into his cup of tea at dinner. I just let her go her own way, even though there was something in the back of my mind which told me that I had let the dearest person in the world slip through my fingers and had not put out a hand to save her.

My sense of miserable foreboding stayed with me so long that Robert spoke of sending for the surgeon again.