Clarissa’s fine eyebrows arched. ‘You included, if I remember rightly, and that being the case it would make her even more spiteful and malicious. Human nature, Edward. I seem to recall you tired of her rather than the other way round?’ As was always the case with her brother.

He flushed, opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it and then flung himself down into a chair. ‘Damn the lot of them,’ he muttered angrily. ‘There’s not one worthy to lick her boots.’

‘I give you that too, but unfortunately it makes not the slightest bit of difference.’

‘What about Nancy Astor, the woman all your lot hold up as the shining light?’

She sat down opposite him, saying calmly, ‘If by “my lot” you mean those determined to bring equality between the sexes about sooner rather than later, I don’t think we hold Lady Astor up as anything but what she is.’

‘That’s just it, she’s a Lady and as upper class as they come, but in all the elections she’s fought she sets up like a street preacher, standing on a box, and in the roughest districts there are, and she wins them over. She shouts and struts and harangues her Labour opponents and the common people love her for it. She cuts through the divide of class like a knife through butter.’

Clarissa sighed. ‘Edward, Nancy Astor is a tornado, one of a kind and no one respects her programme of social reform more than I, but she has no relevance to what we’re discussing. She can talk the language of the working class and break down class barriers while she does it, but when she goes home it’s to wealth and opulence and her own kind and she makes no apology for it. That’s simply the way it is. Ruby would be like a fish out of water in your world, and you would be the same in hers.’

Edward said nothing for a few moments. Then, as he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, he whispered, ‘I love her, Lissie. I’ve never felt like this before and I know I never will again.’

The use of his old childhood pet name for her melted Clarissa. She stood up and moved to sit on the arm of his chair, hugging him as she murmured, ‘Oh, Edward. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it can work out, I don’t know, but unless Ruby feels as strongly as you do I do know it wouldn’t be possible. And I’m sorry, my dear, I really am, but as yet I see no sign of that. But who knows what the future will bring? If you are prepared to wait, of course.’

‘I have no other choice, do I? Not feeling as I do.’