The gentle rustle of her skirts informed him she was standing on the other side of his desk. ‘I’m busy,’ he said curtly.

‘I want to know why you spoke so harshly to poor Jack earlier today. He did nothing wrong. Luke and Kane often ride on home alone, you know that and allow it. Please, Oliver, don’t take the ill humour you feel towards me out on other people, it’s not fair.’ Kerensa had her hands clasped together and had no intention of leaving without an explanation.

‘Is a man not to be permitted to remonstrate with his own servants?’ Oliver threw down his goose quill, showering ink on his papers, desk and soiled shirt cuffs. He glared at Kerensa with cold eyes above an unshaven face and snapped, ‘It is none of your business!’

‘I think it—’

‘I gave Jack the sharp edge of my tongue because he was idling his time away in the company of a whorish bal-maiden. I don’t waste my time and I do not expect my servants to waste theirs. Now, as I have told you, I am very busy. If you insist on wasting any more of my time I shall have less of it to spend with Ted Trembath.’

It took a determined act of will for Kerensa to hold back an angry retort. In its stead she said coolly, ‘I’ll show Ted in then.’ At the door she turned back and asked tartly, ‘I take it you’re not too busy to have a wash and shave after Ted has gone.’

‘See to it,’ he growled, sprinkling fine sand to soak up the ink blots.

Kerensa had not wanted to be sharp with Oliver but his apparent loathing of her hurt so much. After he’d stormed out of the manor on the day he had learned that Samuel Drannock was his half-brother she had lived in misery and hope both. Misery over his fury and the pain it had caused him, and hope that while he was away on business and at the coronation he would cool down. But after spending several more days away than he’d planned Oliver had arrived home sullen and unforgiving. Kerensa could hardly believe he resented her so much, not after so many years of sharing a loving marriage. She thought it best to try to act normally and hope he would soon come round, but the weeks had passed with no change and he had not once given her a smile, a kind word, or a kiss. She had often tried to talk to him but he had time only for the children; in fact, she thought gloomily as she went back to Ted Trembath, he had time for anyone in the parish but her.