‘Wideacre is not an ordinary estate,’ he said gently. ‘And Miss Lacey is not an ordinary young lady. She needs to learn and approve the plans for the land before anything else. There will be plenty of time for fashionable trifles later on.’

Lady Clara raised her arched eyebrows in surprise. ‘Plenty of time?’ she exclaimed. ‘But the child is sixteen! When do you propose she should be presented at Court?’

James blinked. ‘Court?’ he asked, and his surprise was real. ‘What should she want to go to Court for?’

Lady Clara put her cup down and flirted her fan open. ‘For her London season, of course,’ she said reasonably. ‘She must have a London Season, and who is to present her?’

James ran his hand through his hair. ‘I had not thought of a Season,’ he said. ‘It is hardly something which matters. The most important thing is to teach Sarah how to go along in the country, to learn her way around, to understand what is being done here on her land, and to prepare her for when she is twenty-one and comes into her own fortune.’

Lady Clara laughed a delicious tinkling laugh.

‘The most important thing!’ she exclaimed. ‘Mucking about on a little farm!’ She broke off. ‘Oh! forgive me! I did not mean to be rude! But who spends all their life in the country except working people? You would hardly condemn Sarah to being stuck down here with some dreary little companion, I daresay, when she could be living the life of a young lady in London.’

‘It is hardly incarceration!’ James said heatedly. ‘She will come to love living here.’

‘You don’t live here,’ I observed. ‘You live in London!’

Lady Clara flirted her fan to hide her face for a second and behind the shelter of it shot me a wink.

James got to his feet and took a turn about the room. ‘Sarah!’ he appealed to me. ‘Surely you don’t want a life with the Quality in London. It’s not what you were bred to, you cannot wish it?’

I looked at him thoughtfully. He had run my estate to favour the workers and to profit them. He had not claimed my rents as he should have done. He had not sought for me, and he had not found me. By the time I came here she was gone; and all the benefits of the life here could not help her.

‘I want the best,’ I said, and there was no softness in my voice at all. ‘I have not travelled this far and worked this hard to live a life which is second-best. I want the best there is. If that is London then that is what I want.’

There was silence in the pink elegant parlour. James was looking at me as if I had taken some long-beloved dream away from him.