I went to the window; it would be a fine day today. Before me was the prospect of another day of gentle lessons from Mr Fortescue, and a sedate ride with Will. Both of them watching me, both of them seeking to control me so that I would not threaten this cosy little life they had made here in this warm green hollow of the hills. Both of them wanting me to be the squire my mama had promised I should be – the one to hand back the land to the people. I grimaced like the ugly little vagrant I was. They would be lucky, they would be damnably lucky if I did not turn this place upside down in a year. You do not send a baby out into the world with a dying foster mother and a drunken stepfather and expect her to come home a benefactoress to the poor. I had seen greedy rich people and wondered at them. But I never questioned hunger.

Robert Gower was hungry for land and for wealth because he had felt the coldness of poverty. I was a friendless orphan with nothing left to me but my land. It was hardly likely I would give it away because the mother I had never known had once thought it a good idea.

It was early, perhaps about five of the clock. They kept Quality hours in this household, not even the servants rose till six. I went to the chest for my clothes and put on my old breeches and my shirt and swept my tangled red hair under Robert’s dirty old cap. I took my boots in my hand, and in my stockinged feet I crept out of my room and down the stairs and across the floor to the front door. I had expected there to be a heavy bolt and chains but as on the day I arrived, the door handle yielded to my touch. They did not lock their doors on Wideacre. I shrugged; that was their business, not mine. But I thought of the rugs and the paintings on the walls and the silver on the sideboard and thought they should be grateful that some friends of Da had never got to hear of it.