That reassured him and he took my hand and kissed it gently. I held still. Perry had inherited his mother’s diffidence, he would never grab me, or overwhelm me with kisses, or brush against me for the pleasure of my touch. I was glad of that, I still liked a distance between me and any other person. He let me go and I went past him and up the shallow stone stairs to my bedroom to lie on the bed and look at the ceiling and keep myself from thinking.

For the next week I worked at becoming stronger. Lady Clara complained that I never went into society at all. ‘Hardly worth your while to make me take the title of Dowager if you’re going to be a hermit,’ she said to me at dinner one day.

I gave her half a smile. ‘I am too grand to mix with the common people,’ I said.

That made her laugh and she did not tease me further. She was still too busy trying to keep Maria with her husband to waste much time on me. A notice of our private marriage had appeared in the paper but all of Lady Clara’s friends knew that I had been seriously ill. They would hold parties for me later on. I told everyone I met in the park that I was not well enough to do more than ride a little and walk, at present.

Sea was very good. He had missed our daily rides and the grooms in the stables did not like to take him out because he was frisky and naughty. If a high-sided coach went past him he shied, if someone shouted out in the street he would be half-way across the road before they could steady him down, and if they so much as touched him with a whip he would be up on his hindlegs in a soaring rear and they could not hold him.

But with me he was as gentle as if he were a retired hack. The first outing I let the groom lift me into the saddle and I gathered up the reins and waited to see what would come. I would have felt a good deal safer astride, but we were in the stable courtyard and I was in my green riding habit, pale as skimmed milk in the rich colour.

I had a silly little cap perched on my head instead of my usual bonnet – but with only short curls no pins would hold. Lady Clara had been scandalized when I had threatened to ride bareheaded.

Sea snuffed the air, as if wondering whether to race for the park at once, but then he tensed his muscles as he felt my lightness.