He waited for a moment in case I should say something more. ‘I’d not discourage you from anything you set your heart on,’ he said hesitantly. ‘But I’d not be doing my duty by you, nor showing the love I still bear your mother, if I let you go on into this without speaking once more with you.’

I put the back of my hand against my forehead. It was hot though I felt cold inside. ‘Go on then,’ I said unhelpfully.

He pushed back his chair and looked at me as if he did not know how to start. ‘I keep thinking what I should say and then it all comes out wrong!’ he said with sudden irritation. ‘I have been planning and planning how I would speak with you and then you look at me as if it does not matter at all how you live or whether you are happy or sad. I won’t tell you things. I will ask you instead. Sarah…how would you like to live?’

I paused for a moment and thought of her, sprawled under the fine silk of her flyer’s cape, her dark eyelashes sweeping her pink cheeks. I thought of the smell of her – part cheap toilet-water, part sweat. I thought of her smile as she slept and her certainty that the world would keep her well, and how for all the years of our childhood she had poached and thieved and stolen and never been caught. Not once. And how the very same night that I had come to the life which she would have loved was the night she was gone.

‘I want nothing,’ I said. My voice was husky because of my throat.

‘D’you think Lord Peregrine will make you happy?’ James asked.

I shrugged. ‘He will not make me unhappy,’ I said. ‘He has no power for that.’ As I saw James scowl, I added: ‘There are not many women that could say that. It’s not a bad start. He will never make me unhappy. I will have Wideacre and I will put my child in the squire’s chair at Havering and Wideacre. It’s a sensible arrangement. I’m content with it.’

James’ brown eyes stared into mine as if he were looking for some warmth that he could grasp and beg me to care for love and passion like an ordinary girl. I knew my look was as opaque as green glass.

‘You want the marriage put forward,’ he said, and I knew by his voice that he had accepted it.

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘We want to be married before Christmas. I want to be home then.’

James raised an eyebrow. ‘Why the sudden hurry?’ he asked. ‘It was to be spring, I thought.’