‘Jay, my boy. You’ve come home.’

Daisy smiled to see mother and son reunited, and she went to sit beside Hilda on the sofa. ‘Is everything all right at Creek Hall?’

‘Yes, as far as I know, miss. We came with Mary because she didn’t want to stay here on her own.’

‘What about Dove and Linnet?’

‘They’ve got their positions to think of. Dove likes working for the doctor and Linnet is happy where she is. I think she’s got her eye on the schoolmaster.’

Daisy frowned. ‘But I thought that Dove and Elliot would make a match of it.’

‘Everything seems to have changed since that dreadful disease took so many lives. I believe Linnet has been comforting Mr Massey since he lost his mother, and Dove spends all her time helping the doctor. She’s had to step in where you left off.’

Daisy stared at her in astonishment. ‘Are you telling me that there’s something going on between Dove and the doctor?’

‘It’s not my place to say, miss.’ Hilda jumped up to rescue Nate, who had fallen off the toy horse and was howling miserably.

Jay and his mother were deep in conversation and Daisy sat by herself, feeling suddenly alone. The news that Nick might have an interest in Dove had come as a shock. She realised now that she had taken his devotion for granted, assuming in the back of her mind that one day they would join together in matrimony as well as a working partnership. But did she love him? Or was her affection something that had grown from shared values and being thrown together in the desperate fight against the epidemic that had brought misery to so many?

‘Daisy, come and speak to my mother.’ Jay’s voice broke into her reverie. ‘Ma says she’s not sure she wants to live here.’

‘You surely can’t wish to go back to the tiny cottage, Mary.’ Hilda sat down with Nate on her knee, giving him a cuddle. ‘I wouldn’t if I were you.’

‘I don’t know if I can forget who I was,’ Mary said soulfully. ‘I’ll always be the scullery maid, disgraced by the master of the house. He’ll haunt me for the rest of my life.’

Daisy rose to her feet. ‘If you allow him to influence your decision it means you’re letting him win. He can’t hurt you or anyone now, and he must have had a glimmer of a conscience or he wouldn’t have married you.’

‘He only did it because he was afraid of hellfire,’ Mary said gloomily. ‘Everyone knows that I’m not really the lady of the manor.’

Jay put his arm around his mother’s shoulders. ‘Does it mean so much to you, Ma?’

Mary dashed tears from her cheeks. ‘Yes, love. No one knows what I went through before and after I married Lemuel. He called me a whore and he treated you so badly that you took to crime.’

‘Yes, my stepfather treated me badly, and I hated the way he spoke to you, Ma. But it was the squire who started me on the road I took.’ He led his mother to the sofa that Daisy had just vacated and sat down beside her. He patted the space at his side. ‘Come and sit by me, Daisy. You know the story, but Ma doesn’t.’