He leaped down the bank in one fluid movement, faster than I would have thought he could move. He was in the water and at my side in an instant and Sea shied sideways with a snort of fright. He laid hold of my knee and my waist and then my arm and pulled me off Sea’s back and down so that I tumbled into the stream beside him and my best new riding boots were knee-high in water. He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me so that my head rocked on my neck.

‘What?’ he shouted. ‘What are you saying? What are you saying?’

I blazed back at him, angry and unafraid of his violence. ‘That I’m marrying Lord Peregrine,’ I said. ‘His mother knows. It’s to be announced. It’s true.’

His brown eyes burned at me for one moment longer then he flung me away from him so that I stumbled backwards against Sea. He waded downstream to the shallow part of the bank and stumbled up it, his boots heavy with water. I turned and vaulted on to Sea’s back as easy as if I were in the ring and I wheeled him around like a triumphant cavalryman.

The look on Will’s face wiped the smile off my face with the shock. He looked as if I had stabbed him in the heart. I gasped when his eyes met mine, his gaze was so intent.

‘You will marry him?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said low. All the anger had gone, there was nothing in the world except his brown eyes, dark and narrowed as if he was hurting inside.

‘You’ve told James Fortescue?’

‘I will write today.’

‘This is your wish, Sarah?’

‘Yes,’ I said. I wanted so much to tell him that it was my wish because I did not know who I was nor where I should go. Because I had to have some family, some place where I belonged. Because Perry and I were two of a kind: both lost, both unloved, both unlovable.

‘I’ll leave on your wedding day,’ he said coldly. ‘And I’ll warn the village that everything – all our hopes and plans for the future, all the promises made by the Laceys – everything is all over for us.’

He turned and walked away from the stream. Sea and I looked after him. His waterlogged boots squelched at every step. His shoulders were bowed. I tried to laugh at the picture he presented, but I could not laugh. I sat very still on Sea’s back and watched him walk away from me. I let him go. Then I turned Sea’s head and rode back to Havering Hall.