‘Oh yes, I remember,’ he said with quiet satisfaction. ‘Good lad. I’ll give you a shilling. That’s two I owe you. Don’t forget.’

I smiled. ‘I won’t,’ I said.

‘When we get there, if it’s early morning…’ he broke off. ‘Is it early morning?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘About six I should think.’

‘Still?’ he said interestedly. ‘When we get there, you shall come round to the kitchen with me and we can have breakfast together. You’ll like the kitchen at my house.’ He paused. ‘Because I am a lord,’ he said confidently, ‘I can eat anything I like!’

‘Gracious,’ I said.

‘I haven’t always been a lord,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘When Papa was alive and George was alive I was only a second son. That was a dead bore. But then George died of the typhus fever and Papa was drowned on his way to the Americas. So then there was just Mama and me and the girls. That made me a lord and since then I have always done whatever I wanted.’

I nodded, but said nothing.

‘What about you?’ he asked, demanding some information in return.

I shrugged. ‘I think we are some sort of cousin,’ I offered. ‘I’m not a stable lad, I’m Sarah Lacey of Wideacre Hall. I’ve come home. I was just wearing these clothes because I haven’t got my new ones yet.’

‘You’re a girl?’ he asked.

I nodded. He leaned to one side and tapped me on the shoulder so I turned my head so that he could see my face.

‘Stop,’ he commanded. ‘Get down.’

I shrugged and checked Sea and we both dismounted. He put his hand up to my hat and I let him take it and pull it from my head. My hair tumbled down in a shower of red and bronze and I laughed at the amazement on his face as he saw me properly for the first time.

‘Then you can’t come to the kitchen,’ was all he said. ‘You’ll have to come into the parlour. And I thought we could have been friends.’

The disappointment on his face was so great that I could have laughed.

‘I’ll put my cap back on and come to the kitchen,’ I offered. ‘No one need ever know I’m Sarah. Or you could go into the larder and bring some food out. I am hungry.’

He brightened at once. ‘I’ll do that!’ he said. ‘You wait here. I won’t be long. It won’t take a moment. Go down that way – ’ he waved to where I could hear the sound of water, the river where Sea had stopped the first night, ‘go and find us somewhere nice to sit and I’ll bring back a picnic!’