‘Good girl,’ he said as though I had agreed rather than been forced into it. ‘And you’ll have plenty of learning with the horses. I’ll have you dancing bareback, aye, and going through a hoop of fire before the next season.’

I thought that was ambitious and I glanced at Jack but he had never in his life spoken one word against his father.

‘Can I learn it that quick?’ I asked.

‘Going to have to, lass,’ Robert replied with finality. ‘I’m not housing you and feeding you all winter for love of your green eyes. You’re going to work for your living at Warminster as you do now. Training the horses, and learning a bareback act, and doing what the trapeze man tells you. And you, miss,’ he turned sharply to Dandy. ‘You will get yourself off to a wise woman in the village and have her tell you about how to avoid getting a belly on you. I’m not spending a fortune training you how to swing from a trapeze to see you up there fat with a whelp. And you keep away from the village lads, too, d’you hear? It’s a respectable village, Warminster, and I go there every winter. I want no trouble with my neighbours.’

We both nodded obediently. But Dandy caught my eye and winked at me in anticipation. I smiled back at her. I had never slept under a roof but always a wagon, always in a narrow bunk within touching distance of four other people. It would make me feel like Quality to get into my own bed. It would be like being a lady. It would be like being at Wide.

I took that thought with me to bed, after I had rubbed down the horses and eaten my supper nodding over my bowl with weariness. That thought took me in my dream to Wide.