‘I’m sure I won’t be playing what you’re accustomed to, marm,’ said Mr Casterwick.

‘It’s the violin, Mr Casterwick! Whatever you play will be a lament.’

Some of the cheer left the room, for a mistress among her servants is like a fox among hens: no one knew whether to sit or stand, and even the cat slid out from under the table, shook its backside and nosed out through the open door. Mr Casterwick kept glancing up and losing his place, violin clipped between shoulder and jaw. Linux got up, poured another glass of sherry, cut a slice of the cake. She brought both across the room and set them on the table, swooping her hands above the plate like sea-birds.

‘Where is Mr Benham, Madame?’ she said.

Madame ignored her, gazing about as if she’d never seen the room before, and perhaps she hadn’t: the lady of a house like that never has cause to visit her own kitchen.

‘The master, Madame?’ Linux repeated.

She laughed and shook her head. ‘That is a very good question, Mrs Linux. I suppose you know as well as I do.’

Linux straightened, dusted her hands. ‘Well. Here’s a bit of cake. Shall I send Pru with it, upstairs?’

Madame crossed the room to where the bellows hung on the wall beside the dresser, bent to peer into the baskets of turnips and onions that Linux lined up below the work-bench, and the locked drawers of knives she kept there. Linux watched her, then went back to her place and clamped her hands together in her lap, all the while casting suspicious looks at the rest of us as if we were the ones responsible for disturbing her peace.

Madame returned to the table, forked up a bite of cake. ‘Delicious! But that goes without saying, Mrs Linux.’ She spoke brightly, though she appeared unwell, hair clinging to her brow. She didn’t look at any of us, but closed her eyes and took up another bite, and we all gawped at her, the music suddenly too slow and too loud in the close room. When it seemed that she would chew for ever, she suddenly clattered fork to plate, and clapped her hands together. ‘We should be dancing!’ Pru and Charles blinked in confusion, as if she was speaking Turkish, but she waved them onto their feet anyway, swept them into the cleared space, then came towards me and held out her hand. ‘Frances? It seems we are a man short. You or I must play the breeches role.’

I jerked backwards.

Kiii, it was like being slapped. First, a moment of nothing, then the lightning inside. I remember worrying about the sticky damp that prickled under my arms from beating rugs out against the hawthorn all afternoon, whether I’d smell sour with it; worrying about my calluses that would no doubt feel rough as sackcloth to her, and about where to put my eyes. But then there wasn’t time to puzzle about any of it, for she took my arm and pulled me into the cleared space, and Mr Casterwick tapped his feet and made his bow sing. There wasn’t space for more than a hop and a gallop between table and dresser, and there was nothing in me but held breath. My chest was tight with it. Our knees bounced the table and jostled the chairs. When Pru happened to knock one over she shook with laughter, and that made the rest of them laugh too, and Madame smiled around at everyone and looked pleased.