His face grew even more closed. ‘What?’ he said.

I had a moment’s intense impatience that I should have to stand in a stable yard and ask a man not to be angry with me for a question which I had not even yet voiced. Dandy’s intense female need had brought me to the slavish role of trying to prepare a man for a request which I myself thought was unreasonable. Something of this must have shown in my face, for Robert suddenly grinned:

‘Not like you to tread cautiously, Merry,’ he said. ‘Are you learning pretty pleasing girlish ways from your sister and the Warminster whore?’

I gritted my teeth and then, unwillingly, laughed. ‘No,’ I said. ‘But it’s a question you might dislike.’

‘Get on with it then,’ he said, weary of this fencing.

‘I want a share in the show,’ I said. ‘If you couldn’t abide strangers coming in, how would it be if Dandy and Jack were to make a match of it? I know you looked higher for him, but he and Dandy working together make a good team. They could make their fortunes. Marriage is the only way you’ll keep Dandy. And where she goes, I go.’

Robert looked at me and I could see the pinched impoverished man looking out of his eyes.

‘No,’ he said blankly. ‘No woman is irreplaceable. If Dandy gets a better offer she can go. You can go with her. There are times when I love you like a daughter, Merry, but I have loved and left a daughter before now, and never regretted it. If you can’t work for me on wages then you’d best leave.’ He nodded at the stable, at the barn beyond where Dandy and Jack were practising the only touring trapeze act in England. ‘I’d change my plans for the season, I’d throw away all my hopes rather than see Dandy wed Jack,’ he said. ‘You’re a pair of draggle-tailed gypsies and she’s as hot as a bitch in heat. I look a good deal higher for my son, I’d see you both dead at my feet rather than have him wed either of you and bring your tainted gypsy blood into my family and into my show.’

I took a deep breath of the cold winter air and I dropped him a curtsey, as low and as slavish as Zima’s broad-arsed bobs.

‘Thank you, sir,’ I said, as if he had tipped me a farthing. ‘I quite understand now.’