I nodded. She could be damned for her curiosity. And I did not want to think of Perry, or Lady Clara, of the doctor who had been promised the Dower House on my land, nor of the rector who had married me while I could not speak. All I wanted to do was to hear the robin singing and look at the clouds moving across the white winter sky, and to feel the joy of my hand which was no longer clenched and sticky with sweat and a breath which came smoothly to me, like gentle waves on a light sea. I had come through typhus. I was well.

I was weary enough though. In the weeks that followed it was as if I were a chavvy again, learning to walk. It was days before I could do more than sit up in my bed without aching with tiredness. Then one day I made it to the chair by the fireside on my own. A little later on and I bid Emily help me into a loose morning dress and I made myself walk out into the corridor and to the head of the stairs before I called her and said I was too faint and would have to go back to my room. But the next day I got downstairs, and the day after that I stayed downstairs and took tea.

It was not little Miss Sarah who had come through the fever. It was not that faint shadow of a lady of Quality who had fought through. It was not little Miss Sarah who ordered Emily through gritted teeth to damn well give her an arm and help her walk, even while her legs turned to jelly beneath her.

It was the old strength of Meridon, the fighting, swearing, tough little Rom chavvy. A lady of Quality would have died. You had to be as strong as whipcord to survive a fever like that, and nursing like that. A lady of Quality would have been an invalid for life if she had survived. But I would not rest, I would not have a day bed made for me in the parlour. Every day I went a little further, every day I stayed up for a little longer. And one day, only a week after I had first walked across my room, I had them bring Sea round from the stables, up to the very front door, and I walked down the steps without an arm to support me and laid my white face against his grey nose and smelled the good honest smell of him.

It was that smell, and the sight of him all restive in a London street which took me back in to the parlour, to rest again, and to ready myself for a talk with Peregrine.