‘You’ve lost your smiles, Merry,’ he said. We were in the stable yard and I was ready to start working Sea. I had decided to treat him as if he were unbroken – train him to a lunge rein, and take him slowly through all the stages of a young horse as if he had never been ridden before. His head nodded to me over the loose-box and I was anxious to begin, but Robert touched my arm.

‘I’d send for the surgeon,’ he offered. ‘He’ll not be working from Christmas Eve tomorrow till Twelfth Night, but if you feel ill, Merry, he’ll come out for me.’

I paused and looked at Robert. His face was kindly, his eyes warm with concern.

‘Robert,’ I said directly. ‘Would you let me be a partner in your business? The ten guineas I have – would you let me buy more horses with them and we could work them jointly? Would you let Dandy and me be joint owners with you?’

Robert stared at me blankly for a moment, as if he could not think what the words meant. Then I watched the coldness spread across his face. It started at his eyes which lost their affectionate twinkle and became as hard and stony as a man driving a bad bargain. The smile died away from his lips and his mouth set hard in a thin line. Even the lines of his profile became sharper, and under the joyful, laughing showman I saw the bones and sinews of the ruined carter who staked his livelihood on his little boy dancing on the back of one horse, and drove away from the woman who had tried to trap him with her love.

‘No,’ he said, and his voice was icy. ‘No, Meridon. This is my show, my own show, and God knows I have worked hard enough for it and long enough for it. There will never be a share in it for anyone but Jack. It will never go out of my family. It is all the kin I now acknowledge. I’ll pay you a better wage, if you’re discontent. I’ll pay Dandy tuppence a show whenever she works. But I’ll not share it.’

For a moment his face was almost pleading, as if he were asking me to understand an obsession. He looked down at me. ‘I’ve come so far to make it my own,’ he said. ‘I’ve done things I’ll have to answer for to my Maker…’ He broke off and I wondered if he could hear in his head the voice of the woman calling him from behind the swaying wagon. ‘I can’t share, Merry,’ he said finally. ‘It isn’t in my nature.’

I waited, then put out a placatory hand to him. ‘Don’t be angry,’ I cautioned. ‘I want to ask you a question but don’t rip up at me.’