‘You won’t inherit the farm and I can’t afford to pay someone to take you, so you might as well learn how to earn your own living and make yourself useful,’ were his exact words.

‘I’m sure you’ll make someone a wonderful wife one day, Miss Grace,’ Noah said. His eyes met hers as he wiped his mouth with his napkin.

‘I doubt it, Mr Wells,’ Grace hooted with laughter.

‘You’re too modest,’ her mother said. ‘You have a lot to offer. Your cooking, for instance. She’s a wonder in the kitchen,’ she said to Noah.

‘Am I?’ Grace looked at her blankly. This was the first she’d heard of it. Her mother was forever scolding her for burning things.

Sarah Duffield stood up to clear the plates, then winced and put her hand to the small of her back.

‘Are you all right, Mother?’ Grace asked.

‘Stop fussing,’ her father dismissed. ‘It’s not as if she hasn’t had a baby before, is it?’

‘Eleven children,’ Sarah Duffield smiled. ‘It’s like shelling peas.’

‘It’s what women were made for,’ Grace’s father said, kicking out at Patch, who was scrounging under the table for the gravy Grace had spilled.

‘I think they were made for more than that, Father,’ Grace murmured, staring down at her plate.

‘Hark at her!’ Jessie mocked. ‘Did you hear that, Pa? Our Gracie has turned into a suffragette!’

‘Nonsense, Gracie is a good girl. She doesn’t hold with all that nonsense.’

‘Actually, we have a woman doctor at the hospital now,’ Grace started to say, but her mother drowned her out by clattering the plates as she collected them up.

Grace stood to help her, but her father said, ‘No, let Beth and Jessie help. You stay here, Gracie.’

She stared helplessly after her mother and sisters-in-law, wishing she could join them. But as it was, she had to sit and listen to Noah and her father discussing stock prices and the various yields of arable acres. Then, much to her horror, her father told her to fetch the tobacco and light Noah’s pipe for him, and her hands shook so much she nearly set fire to his shirt front. Luckily, he didn’t seem to mind.

It wasn’t until Noah Wells had finally gone and her father had disappeared off to do the milking that Grace found out what was going on.

‘How do you like Noah Wells?’ her mother asked, as she washed up at the big stone sink.

‘He’s all right.’ Grace shrugged, reaching for a plate to dry.

‘Do you like him enough to marry him?’ Beth asked slyly.

Grace frowned at her. ‘What?’

Jessie sighed. ‘That’s what all this is about, you goose. Why else do you think Pa invited Noah Wells for Christmas dinner?’

Grace swung round to face her mother. But Sarah Duffield’s face was implacable as she rinsed off another plate and set it on the draining board.

‘Mother, is this true?’

‘Noah is keen, and your father thinks it would be a good idea,’ she said, her eyes fixed on the greasy water. ‘Noah’s a good man, and he needs a wife.’