Lizzie and I returned our attention to the flowerbed. Will had promised me a rose bush in the middle of the patch of earth and Lizzie and I were turning over the soil and digging in muck. My thoughts were running so much on James Fortescue and his letter, that when I heard hooves coming up the lane and the noise of carriage wheels, I straightened and scooped Lizzie up and set her on my hip to go down to the little garden gate, thinking I would see a hired post-chaise, and James smiling out of the window.

It was a bright morning and I put up my hand to shield my eyes, the other hand clasped around Lizzie’s little body, her chubby arms around my neck. With a shock of sudden surprise I saw that it was not James’s carriage pulling up outside my little gate. It was the Havering crest, and as the footman lowered the steps I saw it was Perry on his own.

‘Sarah?’ he asked in bewilderment. He came down the steps, blinking in the bright sunlight. ‘Sarah?’

I saw he was so bad with drink, that he could hardly recognize me. He was shaking, and his eyes were clogged with sleep and screwed up against the light. The footman was standing like a block, eyes straight forward. A man trained so well that he could appear deaf and dumb, especially when dragged into scandal such as this. Perry put a hand out on the footman’s shoulder and leaned on him like one might lean on a gate.

‘Is that a baby?’ he asked, bewildered.

‘No I ain’t!’ said Lizzie, immediately argumentative.

I tightened my grip to hush her and I said, ‘It’s a little girl, Perry, Will Tyacke is her da. I look after her with him.’

He looked past me and Lizzie to the little cottage. There were a few late-blooming roses still in frozen buds around the front door. A bush of forsythia was yellow as brass at the garden wall.

‘Charming!’ he said uncertainly. Then he paused. It was as if he did not know what more to say.

‘I’ve come to fetch you home,’ he said. His mama’s lesson had suddenly returned to his wandering mind. ‘If you come at once there’ll be no scandal and I’ll say no more about it. I will forgive you,’ he said pompously. ‘We can live in the country all the time if you wish. I’ll give up gambling, and I’ll give up drinking.’

He paused for a moment and screwed up his eyes as if he were trying to recapture some thought. ‘No!’ he said. ‘I’ve given up already. Shock of your leaving us like that. I’ve given it all up already. So you should come back.’

‘Oh Perry!’ I said gently. ‘What is in your pocket?’