I put my hand down and touched the top of his head. He looked up at me, and reached up to lift me down from Sea’s back, his hands on my waist for a brief moment. Then he released me as soon as my feet touched the ground.

‘I didn’t like seeing that at the village,’ he said.

I shook my head. ‘Me neither,’ I replied.

Perry turned from me and swung his jacket down on the heather. We sat side by side looking down into the Fenny valley. Havering Hall woodland was a dark mass to our right, Acre was over to our left. My home, the home I had longed for but seldom even visited was below us, hidden in the trees at the back of the house.

‘It’s Mr Briggs’s doing,’ he said. ‘I have no say in how the place is run until I am married, or reach my majority.’

‘Twenty-one?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘Four years,’ he said.

‘It’s even longer for me,’ I said. ‘I’m only sixteen now. I’ll have to wait five years.’

Perry looked sideways at me. ‘I know it is what my mama wants,’ he said carefully. ‘And to be honest, Sarah, she told me to ask you. In fact,’ he said with scrupulous honesty, ‘she said she’d pay my gambling debts if I asked you.’

‘Asked me what?’ I said. But I knew.

‘Asked you to marry me,’ he said without any heat at all. ‘I tell you why I said I would.’ He lay on his back, as idle and as lovely as a fallen angel, and counted his white fingers up at the clear sky.

‘One, I would get hold of my land and capital. Two, you would get hold of your land and capital. Three, we could run them together and we could make sure that Wideacre is run sensibly but that people are not treated so badly as they have been on Havering. Four, we would not have to marry anyone else, or court, or go to London parties unless we wanted.’

I stretched alongside him and leaned my head on one hand so that I could watch his face.

‘Why don’t you want to court girls?’ I asked. ‘I’ve lived with you for months now and I’ve never even seen you sneak out late at night except to get drunk. Don’t you like girls, Perry?’

He turned his head to face me and his eyes were clear and untroubled.