Kerensa moved to face him fully. It was time to be serious. ‘A lot of things have changed here, Oliver. We have another child and we’re going to have to help Luke grow up and cope with a possible disability. Ameline is contentedly married to James Mortreath. Rosie Trenchard is to marry Matthias Renfree very soon. But I want to know how you have changed. Can you tell me? Some of it? All of it? Or do you just want us to forget all the bad things that have happened and make a fresh start?’

Oliver let his hands fall away from Kerensa and clasped them on his firm stomach. ‘We won’t be able to have a completely fresh start if I don’t tell you all about my months away and I want you to know everything, my love. My story is quite simple. I couldn’t come to terms with myself or my reaction to learning about Samuel until I got away on my own. So I sailed with Hezekiah, leaving the Free Spirit at Roscoff. In France Hezekiah passes as a Frenchman, as you know. I had to be very careful, I didn’t want to run the risk of being executed as a spy or putting Hezekiah into any danger. So from there, so as not to be conspicuous, I wore peasant clothes for the journey to— You’re frowning, Kerensa. What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing is wrong, dearest, but it can’t be easy to go unnoticed when you’re six feet, five inches tall, broad-shouldered, dark-featured – and exceedingly handsome.’

‘Well, yes, all right,’ Oliver conceded lightheartedly. ‘I don’t know about the handsome bit but I did occasionally attract attention. I moved on, working for my food and passage until I arrived at Dettingen in the Low Countries.’

‘The place where Arthur Beswetherick died in battle…’ Kerensa said softly.

‘I needed to lay Arthur’s ghost. You were right about that. I stood on the very spot where nineteen years ago he was hit in the throat by a splinter of metal that had shirred off a wagon’s wheel.’

‘My dear Oliver, was it very awful?’

‘Much less awful than what you were going through at the same time, but yes, it was painful to visit the place the field hospital had been. To go back over every minute as I watched his lifeblood ebb away while the Army surgeon was too drunk to be of any use at all.

‘I camped out for days in the place where he was buried beside the river. There is no mass grave as is the custom when burying the military dead after battle. Ironically there was only one man killed in my regiment at the battle of Dettingen – my friend Arthur.’

Kerensa knelt up on the bed and hugged Oliver to her breast. ‘It seems all the more terrible for that.’