‘Beg pardon, m’m.’

Lady Clara ordered her to sit by my bedside and give me more lemonade if I asked for it. Emily hesitated, but then sank into a chair when her ladyship scowled.

‘Beg pardon, m’m,’ she said.

Lady Clara gave a swift comprehensive look around the room, and at me. I was breathing a little easier now I was higher on the pillows but that eerie rasping noise came every time I drew a breath. I saw a shadow cross her face and I knew she thought I would die and she would have to find another biddable heiress to marry her son, and she would have to find her quickly before his gambling debts ruined them all.

‘I’ll see you in a moment,’ she said shortly and left the room.

Emily and I sat in silence, listening to the awful hoarseness of my breath. Then I was too weary to do anything more but doze again.

That was my last lucid moment for days.

A lot of the time was very hot, but there were also long times when I shivered with cold. There was a man who came from time to time whose touch was gentle, and I mistook him for Robert Gower and thought I was back in the parlour hurt from falling from the trapeze. There was a woman, a nurse I suppose, who smelled of spirits and who rolled me from side to side when she had to change the sheets on the bed. My skin flinched when she touched me with her hard dirty hands and she used to laugh in a loud beery voice when I winced.

Sometimes Lady Clara was there, always asking me if I felt well enough to sign something. Once she actually put a pen in my hand and held a paper on the bed before me. I remember I thought she was going to take Sea from me – an odd fancy from my fever – and I let the pen fall on the white sheets and closed my eyes to shut her out. I remember my hair became matted with sweat and tangled and the nurse had her way and hacked it off. I wandered a little in my mind after that; with the short ragged bob I thought I was Meridon again.

Often, very often, Perry was there. Sometimes drunk, sometimes sober. Always gentle and kind to me. He brought me little posies of flowers, he paid a ballad singer to sing songs under my window one afternoon. He brought hot-house grapes and pineapples and sliced them up small so that I could eat them. When I was rambling in fever I always knew Perry, his hand was always cool against my cheek and the smell of gin and his favourite soap was distinctive. One time when the nurse was out of the room he leaned over me and asked if he could take some guineas out of my purse.

‘I’m desperate short, Sarah,’ he said.