‘What do you dream of in your bunk, Meridon?’ he asked softly. ‘When you lie in your bunk and daydream and the ceiling is rocking above you. What d’you dream of then? Do you think of a lover who will take off your clothes, strip those silly boy’s breeches off you, and kiss you and tell you that you are beautiful? Don’t you dream of a clean bed in a warm room and me, lying in bed beside you? Is that what you think of?’

I left my hand under his warm clasp and I met his eyes with my steady green gaze.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I dream that I am somewhere else. That my name is not Meridon. That I do not belong here. I never dream of you at all.’

His handsome dark face turned sulky in an instant. ‘That’s twice you’ve said that,’ he complained. ‘No other girl has ever turned away from me, not ever.’

I nodded fairly. ‘Then chase them,’ I said. ‘You’re wasting your time with me.’

He turned on his heel and left me abruptly. But he did not go back to the lighted wagon. I nearly bumped him as I came around the wagon with a hay net to hang on the side. He had been leaning against the wagon, brooding.

‘You’re cold, aren’t you?’ he accused. ‘It is not that you don’t like me. I’ve just been thinking. Dandy smiles at the old gentlemen and they chuck her under the chin and give her a ha’penny. But you never smile, do you? And now I think of it, I’ve never seen you let anyone touch you except Dandy. You don’t even like men to look at you, do you? You won’t come out to cry-up the show with me because men might look at you and desire you, and you don’t like that, do you?’

I hesitated, a denial on my lips. But then I nodded. It was true. I hated the fumblings and the giggling. The dirty hands questing inside lice-ridden clothes. The tumblings behind hedges and haycocks and emerging shame-faced. It was as if my body had a pelt missing, my skin was too sensitive for a stranger’s touch.

‘I don’t like it,’ I said honestly. ‘And I’ve never understood how Dandy can bear it. I hate the old men who want to touch me, I hate the way they look at me.

‘I don’t dislike you, Jack, but I will never desire you – nor anyone, I think.’ I paused, turning over in my mind what I had just said. ‘I’m not even sad about it,’ I said. ‘I’ve no father to care for me, and I wouldn’t know how to keep house for a lover. I’m better off as I am.’

‘Cold,’ he said, taunting me.