James Fortescue’s look of surprise that I was thinking of such a thing turned into a smile. ‘Now Sarah,’ he remonstrated. ‘You need not puzzle your head with such detail. The corn mill has paid no rent since the setting up of the Acre corporation. The corn mill was obviously a separate business and is run in the same way as the blacksmith’s forge or the cartering business. They charge special rates, or no rates to Acre people and they make their profits with outside customers. They take a share in the profits of the village when they work as labourers, otherwise they are independent. When the village was getting back to work Will’s cousin Ted Tyacke and I decided that the mill should pay no rent so that it could work for free for Acre. Things have stayed that way.’

I nodded. ‘I see,’ I said quietly, then I half concealed a pretended yawn. ‘Oh! I’m tired,’ I said. ‘I’ll go to bed.’

‘Sleep well,’ he said gently. ‘If you are interested in business you can have your first lesson on how to read the estate books in the morning. But you will need a night’s rest for that. Sleep well, Sarah.’

I smiled at him, a smile I had learned long ago from her when she was trying to be charming, an endearing childlike sleepy smile. Then I went slowly towards the staircase.

I had heard enough for one night. James Fortescue might be an astute man of business in Bristol and London – though I frankly doubted that – but in the country here he could have been cheated every day for sixteen years. He trusted entirely in one man who acted as clerk, manager and foreman. Will Tyacke decided what was to be spent and what was to be declared as profit. Will Tyacke decided what share individuals in the village could claim from the common fund. Will Tyacke decided on my share of the profits. And Will Tyacke was Acre born and bred and had no wish to see the Laceys taking a fortune from the village, or even claiming their own again.

My fingers touched the carved newel-post at the foot of the stairs and I heard a cool voice in my head which said, ‘This is mine.’

It was mine. The newel-post, the shadowy sweet-smelling hall, the land outside stretching up to the slopes of the Downs and the Downs themselves stretching up to the horizon. It was mine and I had not come all this way home to learn to be a pretty parlour Miss in that sickly pink room. I had come here to claim my rights and to keep my land, and to carve out an inheritance of my own whatever it cost me, whatever it cost others.