I was not even sorry. Not even sorry that I would die and not see my seventeenth year. I could not find it in my hot shivering body to care a ha’pence either way. Ever since she had died I had been marking my time out, waiting. Now I was going too and if there was such a thing as the gorgio God, and a gorgio heaven, then I would see her there. I thought of her with her hair tumbled down, dressed in shining white with pink fluffy wings rising up behind her. She would be lovely. I wanted to be with her.

‘The kitchenmaid can do it,’ Rimmings said decisively.

‘Em’ly?’ my maid asked. ‘Of course! The kitchenmaid should do it. Will you wake her la’ship and tell her about this?’

‘This’ was me on my deathbed, not a fit subject to broach to Lady Havering before she had woken in her own good time and rung the bell for her morning chocolate.

Rimmings hesitated. ‘I suppose so,’ she said slowly. ‘She’ll have to send for the doctor for her, I can’t take the authority. But I doubt he’ll be able to make much difference, she’s that far gone.’

She looked at the clock on my mantelpiece. ‘I daren’t wake my lady before eight,’ she said. ‘Not even if she was breathing her last already! It won’t make much difference to her whether she waits till nine or later. I’ll give Emily some laudanum to give her.’

She came back to my bedside and stood a judicious three feet away. ‘Can you hear me, Miss Lacey?’ she asked. I gave a painful nod.

‘I shall send Emily to nurse you, she shall give you some laudanum. That will make you feel better.’

I nodded again. Emily or Sewell, it made little odds. Sewell was right. The fever had me in its grip like a hard rider forcing a horse at a gallop towards a cliff. I did not expect to leap across.

They took themselves off then, still fretting, and I lay in the throbbing hot pain of the stuffy little room and let my red eyelids close on my hot eyes, and I dozed.

At once I dreamed of a girl who looked like me and rode like me, but dressed in bulky uncomfortable clothes. She had a riding habit of grey velvet, but thicker and heavier cut than my smart outfit. She had eyes even greener than mine, as green as mine are when I am happy. She looked happy enough. She looked as if she had never shed a tear in her life.