She nodded as if she understood. ‘And the people who brought you up?’ she asked. ‘Those that you have been living with, you’ve ditched them all?’

I met her bright look without wavering. ‘All of them,’ I said.

There was a tap on the door and a dark-gowned maid came in with a silver tray and a pot of chocolate. Lady Havering threw back the bedcovers and rose from her bed and swished over to take her seat at the window. She gestured me into the seat before her so that I faced her and the clear light.

‘What will you do?’ she asked. ‘You’re rather alone. Unless you have taken a fancy to the little Bristol trader.’

‘I haven’t,’ I said. I felt a moment’s discomfort at my disloyalty. But then I remembered the quiet house and the noise of my drinking soup and my heart hardened. ‘I don’t know what to do. Mr Fortescue talks of teachers of elocution and dancing, and tells me I should have a lady companion.’ I grimaced. ‘Then there’s the land,’ I said. ‘I need to know what’s being done on it and yet there is no one to ask but Mr Fortescue and Will Tyacke.’

Lady Havering poured the chocolate and then sat back and looked at me again. ‘Do you disapprove of his guardianship of your land?’ she asked, her voice very neutral.

‘Yes I do,’ I said firmly. ‘It is being run for the gain of the working people, that means the Hall makes a loss every time we sow and reap. The village is doing well out of it, but the estate gets a share of what it ought to have entire.’

Lady Havering nodded grimly. ‘I’ve not seen the estate books,’ she said. ‘But I have eyes in my head and I have seen them undersell me in the Midhurst market for season after season until the price of food has been forced down and held down. It’s revolutionary! It destroys the value of property.’

I nodded.

‘How old are you?’ she asked.

‘Sixteen or thereabouts,’ I said.

She nodded and tapped her teeth with her long fingernail. ‘Five years until you can run the estate for yourself,’ she said softly. ‘A long time to have to endure Mr Fortescue’s amateur farming.’

‘A long time to live with a lady companion,’ I said with feeling. ‘Life with a lady companion in that house, with Mr Fortescue coming to stay.’