‘We will not dine for hours yet!’ Lady Clara said airily. ‘We keep town hours now! We will dine at six today, even later when we start entertaining. Mrs Gilroy can bring a slice of bread and cake up to you in your room.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. Peregrine held the door for me and then followed me out. The parlourmaid appeared from the back of the long corridor where I guessed the servants’ stairs were, dipped a curtsey to both of us and waited. Perry’s gaze was blurred, he had been drinking as he rode and the gin in the mulled wine had added to his haziness.

‘I’ll fetch the cake,’ he offered. ‘We’ll have a little picnic. It can be like it was in the woods that first day when I thought you were a stable lad, and we said we’d be friends.’

‘All right,’ I said desolately.

I followed the maid down the corridor trailing my new bonnet by the ribbons so that the flowers on the side brushed on the thick pile of the carpet. The maid threw open a panelled door and stood to one side. It was a spacious pretty bedroom which I guessed had belonged to the vixen Maria before her marriage. There was a white and gold bed and matching dressing-table with a mirror atop and a stool before it. There was a hanging cupboard for dresses and cloaks. There was a window which was painted tight shut and looked out over the street where carriages went to and fro and errand boys and footmen sauntered. It smelled of indoors as if clean winds never blew in London. I wrinkled my nose at the stale scent of perfume and hair-powder. I could not imagine how I would ever manage to sleep there. It would be like living in a prison.

There was a great crash outside my door as Perry stumbled against it, tray in hands. I crossed the room and opened it and he weaved unsteadily in. The open bottle of wine had tipped over and was rolling on the tray, wine streaming out over plum cake, fairy cakes, little biscuits and slices of bread and butter. The little dish of jam had skidded to the back of the tray and was sticking, unnoticed, to his waistcoat. The tray was awash with red wine, the food sodden.

Perry dumped the lot on the hearthrug before the fire, quite unaware.

‘Now we can be comfortable,’ he said with satisfaction.

I giggled. ‘Yes we can,’ I said. And we toasted each other in the remainder of the wine and we ate soggy plum cake and redstained biscuits, and then we curled up together like drunken puppies and dozed before the fire until the maid tapped on the door and told me it was time to dress for dinner.

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