I looked at him, I was too weary for anger. I looked at him and I saw him as he was. A weakling and a drunkard. A man too fearful to stand up to his own mother and too foolish to stay out of gambling and off the bottle. A man no woman could fall in love with, a man no woman could respect. And I thought about myself – a woman spoiled from the earliest childhood so she could not stand a man’s touch, nor accept a man’s love. A woman who had dreamed all her life of living in a certain way, of seeking a certain place. And when I had found it, it had meant very little.

I was no longer little Miss Sarah with her hopes of a brilliant London season and her eagerness to learn how society people lived, her belief in the best. I was Meridon who had been cheated until my heart was hard all my childhood, and had been robbed in adulthood by the people I had thought of as a refuge.

‘We’re well suited,’ I said wearily. ‘But I don’t have a lot of hopes for us.’

Perry looked dashed. ‘You wanted to go home…’ he offered ‘Home to the country. When you’re well enough for the journey, we could go to Havering,’ he glanced at me. ‘Or Wideacre if you’d prefer.’

I nodded. ‘I would like that,’ I said. ‘I would like to go to Wideacre as soon as possible. I should be well enough to travel in a few days. Let’s go then.’

He gave me a little smile, as appealing as a child.

‘You’re not really angry are you Sarah?’ he asked. ‘I didn’t mean to make you angry, or disappoint you. It was Mama who was sure. Everyone was certain that you would die, I didn’t think you’d mind doing it. It would have made no difference to you, after all.’

I got to my feet, steadying myself with a hand on the mantelpiece.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t really mind. There was no one else I wanted to marry. It is not what I planned, that’s all.’

Perry stumbled as he went to hold the door open for me. ‘You are Lady Havering now,’ he said encouragingly. ‘You must like that.’

I looked down the long years to my childhood to where the dirty-faced little girl lay in her bunk and dreamed of having a proper name, and a proper home, and belonging in a gracious and beautiful landscape. ‘I should do,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘I’ve wanted it all my life.’