‘Kerensa, Shelley and I are about to discuss her taking over full responsibility of the charity school. Would you like to sit in with us? I’m sure you’d agree her first action should be to remonstrate with the men over its leaky roof. It was an unforgivable act to use broken slates.’

‘Very well,’ Kerensa replied at once, coming back. ‘I’m sure Kelynen will make a very good job of anything you allow her to do on the estate.’

Oliver felt a little hopeful that she was thawing towards him. To make the discussion less formal he did not sit behind his desk.

Then Kerensa muttered in tones steeped with meaning, ‘Now what was that you said about the builders? An unforgivable act?’

‘Kerensa.’ Oliver knew she was awake. There was a long silence. ‘Kerensa, please speak to me.’

In the lavish bed, where she had given birth to her children, Kerensa lay with her back to him, as far away as she could without falling over the edge and making the long drop to the floor. Miserably hot, her head aching, she had pushed the light covers off her body long before, in the small hours of the night, but she had kept her hands wrapped round herself in a cutting-off gesture.

Oliver usually rose before this and Kerensa longed for him to leave the room. She felt him move and his hand come to rest on her upper arm. She stiffened.

‘Please, beloved.’ He leaned over her and looked down on her face.

Unwillingly, Kerensa turned round to him.

Oliver was careful not to put his weight near her.

‘We can’t go on like this, Kerensa. Surely it’s not what you want? You’re hurting yourself too. Samuel will suffer if he becomes aware his parents are estranged, and Shelley’s desperately unhappy. I beg you, sit up and talk to me.’

Sir Oliver Pengarron begging? This was a rare occasion, Kerensa wanted to snap at him. She had never thought she could feel this way. The depth of her bitterness over Oliver’s contemptible actions rivalled Jessica’s.

‘I don’t want to speak to you now,’ she replied, unyielding.

‘When then? Just say.’

Another flashback of Kane and Harry plunging down the steps outside, possibly to their deaths, slammed into her mind. Kerensa couldn’t bear it and leapt out of bed. Kane did not deserve to be laid up in terrible pain, possibly crippled, fighting off infection, missing out on so many joys with his new son. Kane might be able to forgive quickly, but she could not.

‘Maybe never. Leave me be. I’ll go over to see Kane early today. I’ll take Samuel with me and stay all day. I might stay all night. In fact I might never come back! Now Luke and Cordelia are leaving, and with Kelynen spending all her time with you, there won’t be any reason for me to be here.’