‘I don’t know whether you’ve been trying to establish if I’m a worthy sort of a man, the sort of man who drinks only one schooner of sherry in three months, and shakes hands with women instead of kissing them; or if you’ve been trying to find out if I’m a scoundrel, who never wakes up without a hangover, and never in his own bed. But whatever you want me to be, I’ll be, because you’re very pretty, Miss Spooner, and because I am absolutely enchanted by you.’

She opened her eyes again, and stared at him with those huge hazel eyes, eyes he could have lost himself in. He didn’t know for a moment whether she was going to lean forward and kiss him, or whether she was going to slap his face. She did neither. She simply turned to Winifred, her mother, and said clearly, ‘Mr Edmonds has kindly invited me to ride with him on Saturday afternoon, Mother. He has a mare that I may borrow, named Hopeful. Do you think I could go?’

Ida looked at Winifred, and Winifred looked back at Ida. Then Winifred said, ‘Of course, my pet. I hope you thanked Mr Edmonds for his generosity.’

Delphine turned back to Collis and gave him a smile that made the back of his neck prickle with alarm and desire. ‘I shall, Mother. I shall.’

On the way home in the carriage, Collis unexpectedly took his mother’s hand, and he said, ‘Mother, I’ve accused you of many misdeeds in the past. We’ve argued, you and I, over everything and anything. But the evidence of today has absolutely convinced me that, whatever I do, I must never again criticise your taste.’

Ida, shaded under her parasol, said loftily, ‘You liked Delphine, then? In spite of the fact that I had to drag you along to meet her like a six-year-old boy?’

Collis couldn’t help smiling. ‘She is easily the prettiest girl I have seen in two years.’

‘Not the prettiest ever?’

‘Well, there was Edna Rice Perry.’

Ida shivered and retrieved her hand from her son’s grasp. ‘I don’t know how you can compare Delphine Spooner and that Perry trollop.’

But then she turned to Collis with a softer expression and said, ‘Still, if you like Delphine even half as much as you liked Edna, your father and I shall be well satisfied.’

Collis looked back at his mother for a while, saying nothing, but then he settled back on the cushions of his seat, humming quietly to himself, and wishing it were Saturday.