Kate was silent now. He was right. About everything. And there was something else that even Danny didn’t know. The solemn promise which her mother had extracted from her that she would never – ever – let Danny touch her. Behind that promise had been the awful truth her mother had known.

‘God, how I hate her!’ she muttered through her teeth. ‘It’s all my mother’s fault. If she hadn’t come here – if she hadn’t married Matthew, then – then . . .’

‘Then,’ Danny said softly, ‘you wouldn’t have been born.’

Gently, he cupped her face in his hands. ‘Oh, Kate,’ he said, his voice deep with emotion, ‘we can’t ever marry, or be lovers . . .’

‘Why? Why not? We could go away where no one knows us. We have different names. We’re not related in the eyes of the law.’ She was clutching at straws.

‘You know we can’t!’

She drew back from him suddenly, pushing him away. ‘You don’t care. You don’t love me. Not as I love you. You can’t, or you wouldn’t be giving in so – so easily.’

He flinched as if her words were physical blows. He caught her by the arms and held her fast so that she could not turn away from him, held her so tightly that she was forced to listen to him. ‘Katie, don’t say that to me. Not to me. Me dad wouldn’t lie to me. He must know . . .’

‘Mr Eland, ya mean,’ she said cuttingly. ‘He’s not ya dad, is he? Any more than Mester Godfrey’s mine. We’ve both got stepdads – now.’

Danny winced and Kate was immediately contrite. She was lashing out blindly in her pain, and hurting the one who was already suffering along with her.

She closed her eyes but fresh tears forced themselves from under her eyelids and coursed down her cheeks. ‘Oh, Danny, Danny. I can’t bear it. It – hurts so much.’ She flung herself against him, wrapping her arms around his waist, burying her head against him again.

‘I’ve always loved you, Katie, and I always will,’ he said gently.

‘But – but can’t we be together? Somehow?’ She raised her head to look into his face, her mouth slightly open, hanging on to his words like a drowning woman reaching for the hand of her rescuer, willing him to make it come right.

But Danny could not make it come right; there was only one thing he could promise her and it was all they had left to cling to. With dreadful finality, he said again, ‘We can’t marry, but they can’t stop us loving each other. Not ever, Katie, not ever!’

‘Oh, lovey, do you hate me?’