Archie laughed, but then began coughing, and their progress was halted for a few minutes until it subsided. He had become so frail, a hollowed-out husk bearing little resemblance to the man that she had first seen here not so many months ago. The rapidity of his decline was terrifying to behold, the disease consuming him voraciously and without pity, merciless in its ferocity.

‘I am sorry to be putting you through this,’ Archie said to her once they had managed to get him into bed. Raven had left them, sensing that they needed to be alone.

‘I would not have had it any other way,’ she replied. ‘These have been the best days of my life, times I never thought I would have – marriage to a doctor, in charge of my own household. Mistress of my own domain.’

Archie looked at her with a sad smile.

‘I know there is a question that troubles you,’ he said. ‘But you are too kind to ask it.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said. But she did.

‘You wonder whether love would have been allowed to blossom between us had we met under different circumstances. Would I have asked you to marry me had I not been ill? I know this, because I am equally troubled by the question of whether you would have accepted my proposal had I been well.’

‘How could I have refused?’ she replied, laughing, but Archie remained serious. She sighed, sitting down on the bed beside him. ‘I suppose neither of us can answer that question, for the truth is we can never know.’

‘I was very nearly married to another,’ Archie said.

Sarah had never considered this before and realised that she should have done. Archie was handsome and successful: it was unusual that he had not married before now.

‘What happened?’ she asked, curious but also afraid of what he might say.

‘For various reasons we had a long engagement. Too long, as it turned out. Her affections were transferred to another. She claimed that she had never really loved me. I felt that I had been subject to an unforgivable deception. I was deeply hurt by it. It felt like a physical wound that would never heal and I did not think that I would ever let myself love another as I had no desire to experience that kind of hurt again. But then I met you.’

Sarah wondered at the events upon which fate could turn. How different might things have been if Will Raven had returned from his travels a few months earlier than he did. Or was she deceiving herself to think he would ever have rushed back from abroad into her waiting arms?