He shook his head wonderingly. ‘What is it about you, Esther? God, I hate you for what you’ve done this day, yet I can’t stop mesen wanting . . .’ His lips were on hers, crushing, bruising, revengeful, but Esther did not flinch or try to pull away as he half-carried, half-dragged her beneath the trees. He put his hands into the bodice of her dress and ripped the thin material the full length from neck to hem. He took her for the first time, there on the roadside, in a mixture of passion and rage, the culmination of months of pent-up frustration and longing. Esther lay submissively beneath him with her eyes closed, the only sound she uttered being a gasp as he thrust deep within her and she felt a searing pain shoot through her groin. The damp ground was cold to her naked back and small stones bit into her skin. In a final humiliation, as the breeze rippled through the undergrowth, she felt the sting of a nettle on her cheek.

Esther did not see Matthew the rest of that day. Her wedding day, she thought, and here she was milking the cows, feeding the pigs and churning the butter like any other day of the week. Thoughtfully, she rubbed her cheek. It had not been the way she had imagined becoming a wife, the way she had pictured giving herself to her husband and certainly not the way she had wanted it to be.

By nightfall, Matthew had still not returned to the farm. A little after ten o’clock, when Esther was about to give up waiting for him and take her candle up the stairs, she heard his footsteps in the yard. He stopped outside the back door and it seemed a long time before he opened it and stepped inside.

She was sitting near the table mending her stocking by the light from the oil lamp. She looked up as he appeared in the kitchen doorway. They stared at each other. Then Matthew shifted his gaze and moved, a little unsteadily, towards Sam’s Windsor chair at the side of the range. For a moment he stood looking at it and then, as if making up his mind, he turned around and sat down in it. Slowly he turned his head and looked towards Esther.

‘Well, are we having any supper, then?’

Esther laid aside her mending and moved to and fro between the pantry and the kitchen laying out bread and cheese and mashing a pot of tea. She glanced across at Matthew but he made no move to come to the table, so with a small smile of amusement – for it was obviously Matthew’s way of assuming his role as master of the house – she cut him a slice of bread and a lump of cheese, poured a cup of tea and took it to him.