‘Sir Rupert is passionate,’ I said. ‘He thinks he is in love with me. He would want his passionate love returned. I cannot do that.’

‘And Perry is content with nothing,’ Lady Clara said, her lip curled slightly.

‘Perry and I are friends,’ I said defensively.

‘You have never kissed, he has never touched you?’ Lady Clara asked.

I felt myself blush slightly. ‘We neither of us want that,’ I said. ‘It is our decision.’

She nodded. ‘Does he have a woman?’ she asked. She rose from the chair and slung her fur wrap down and went to the stairs.

‘No!’ I said, surprised. I had thought of Perry for so long as a man quite without desire that I was almost shocked that his mother – whose view of him was so acute – should have thought him capable of having a mistress.

She paused, one delicate satin-shod foot on the lower step. ‘I suppose he can get an heir?’ she asked crudely. ‘He’s not impotent, d’you think, Sarah?’

My face was as hard as hers. ‘He knows his duty,’ I said. ‘He knows he has to.’

Her face softened and she smiled. ‘That’s all right then,’ she said, as if the inheritance were all that mattered. ‘Good-night, my dear.’

I said good-night and watched her as she went lightly up the stairs to her room and shut her door.

I thought of the show and of the women I had seen with Da. Of Zima and of Katie the whore. And I thought that never in my life had I seen a woman as beautiful and as cold-hearted as the woman who was to be my new mama, when I married her son.

The late nights did not make me weary. I woke every morning when the clatter of the street outside my bedroom started, and the day after the ball was sunny and I was glad to be up early and take Sea out to the park.

The weather was getting colder. I shivered as Sea trotted down the cobbled road towards the park. The groom beside me had a blue muffler around a blue chin and looked as if he would have preferred another hour in his bed.

Sea’s ears were back, as they always were when we were riding in town, but they suddenly went forward and he gave a ringing neigh of welcome as a square figure on a heavy bay horse pulled up as if waiting for us at the end of the road.

‘Will Tyacke!’ I declared, and my heart lifted with delight.

He was beaming, his face bright with joy at seeing me, and I reached out my hand to shake his. If we had not been on horseback I would have flung my arms around his neck and hugged him.

‘How are you?’ he said at once. ‘How are they treating you here? You look pale, are you happy here?’