The pleasant smile on her face never flickered. She spat in her own and shook hands. ‘Done,’ she repeated. Then her face changed and she turned my hand over, palm up, so that she could see the deep hard lines and the callouses and rope burns.

‘Gracious me,’ she said. ‘Turning you into a young lady will be no sinecure. We will start with your hands! Whatever have you been doing to get them into this state? I doubt we’ll ever get them soft.’

I looked at my palms for a moment. The bulge at the thumb and at the base of the fingers was as tough as old leather. I thought of the reins I had held and the ropes I had pulled and the trapeze bar.

‘I was working,’ I said, taciturn.

She nodded. ‘You needn’t tell me,’ she said. ‘As long as no one from your past comes pestering me, then it is none of my affair and it can stay that way. But tell me one thing: Is there anyone who would recognize you or follow you?’

‘No,’ I said. Robert Gower would let me go. Jack would run a mile rather than face me.

‘Did you commit any crimes?’ she asked bluntly.

I reviewed the poaching and the gambling, the horse-breaking and the little cheats. I looked up and her eyes were on me.

‘Nothing spectacular,’ I said.

She threw back her head and laughed at that and the bows on her cap bobbed.

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Nothing spectacular. I shall ask no more. Have you told Mr Fortescue all this?’

I shrugged. ‘A little,’ I said. ‘Enough to prove to him who I am. Nothing more.’

She nodded as if she were pleased. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘As your duenna I shall make rules for your behaviour. The first is that you will wear gloves all the time, and the other is even more important.’

I waited.

‘You’ll speak of your past to no one,’ she said bluntly. ‘What you have told me you will tell no one else. When you move in society we shall say merely that you were living quietly in the country with humble people before you were found by the trustees. Your background will be obscure but deeply respectable. Have you got that?’

I nodded. ‘Obscure but deeply respectable,’ I said turning the words over in my mouth. ‘Yes, I’ve got that.’

She shot a sideways smile at me. ‘Good,’ she said.

There was a tap at the door and she turned her head and called: ‘Enter!’

Lord Peregrine put his head tentatively around the door. ‘It’s me, Mama,’ he said.

‘Excellent, you can come in,’ she said briskly.