Robert nodded. ‘Always horses for you, isn’t it, Merry? I’ll be buying a new work horse. You can come with me to help me choose it. At Salisbury horse fair the day after tomorrow.’

‘Thank you,’ I said guardedly.

He shot a hard look at me. ‘Like the life less now we’re in winter quarters?’ he asked.

I nodded, saying nothing.

‘It has benefits,’ he said judicially. ‘The real life is on the road. But only tinkers and gypsies live on the road for ever. I’ve got a good-sized house now, but I’m going to buy a bigger one. I want a house so big and land so big that I can live just as I please and never care what anyone thinks of me, and never lack for anything.’

He looked swiftly at me. ‘That make any sense to you, Merry?’ he asked. ‘Or is the Rom blood too strong for you to settle anywhere?’

I paused for a moment. There was a thin thread of longing in my heart which was my need for Wide.

‘I want to be Quality,’ I said, my voice very low. ‘I want a beautiful sandstone house which faces due south so the sun shines all day on the yellow stone, with a rose garden in front of it, and a walled fruit garden at the back, and a stable full of hunters on the west side.’ I broke off and looked up at him, but he was not laughing at me. He nodded as if he understood.

‘The only way I’ll get my house is work, and hard trading,’ he said. ‘The only way you’ll get to yours is marriage. You’d better make haste and get some of your sister’s prettiness, Meridon. You’ll never catch a squire with your hair cropped short and your chest as flat as a lad.’

I flushed scarlet from my neck to my forehead.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said turning away, angry with myself for saying too much; and that to a man I should never wholly trust.

‘Well, take your walk,’ he called genially, to Dandy and me together. ‘Because tomorrow you start work in earnest.’

I knew what Robert Gower’s idea of earnest work was like, and I kept Dandy’s saunter to a minimum – just up and down the wide main street – so that I could be home before dinner in time to muck out the stables and groom the horses. Ignoring Dandy’s protests I insisted we leave the kitchen straight after our dinner, so that we could turn the horses out in the paddock just as it was growing dark. In the corner of the field stood the barn which Robert Gower had ordered to be ready, where Dandy’s work would start tomorrow.

‘Let’s go and see it,’ Dandy said.