‘Your little Mary was a wild success last evening.’ Lizzie stretched out her long legs, placed her feet on the footstool, turned her elegant slippers this way and that and studied all angles with complete satisfaction. ‘Do you have plans for her yet?’

‘She did seem to go down rather well.’ Fanny spoke into her sewing. ‘No doubt we can put it down to the girl being a novelty …’ She selected a new thread. ‘We are such a small world here in Kent that the milieu is grateful for anyone new. I shall be launching her shortly.’ She looked up then and added, in confidence: ‘I must say I do rather dread it, but perhaps it will not, after all, be as quiet as one fears.’

With one eyebrow arched, Lizzie studied her sister in silence – opened her mouth, closed it, wriggled deeper into her armchair – and then spoke up again. ‘Dearest, I do sometimes wonder if you have eyes in your head.’

Fanny dropped her embroidery into her lap and looked up in astonishment. ‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘For a start, are you the only person in all of Christendom not to have noticed that George is wild for the creature?’

‘George …’ Fanny repeated. ‘George Knight? Our brother?’ Her head felt strangely muddled. ‘But this is getting ridiculous! Aunt Cassandra, of all people, was saying the same only last week.’ She had that left-out feeling again. What was it they all knew which she did not? ‘It is as if you have all created some myth in your heads. I mean, have you all asked yourselves what he might see in her?’

Lizzie just laughed. ‘The age-old story, my darling. The girl is uncommonly pretty.’

This was getting too much. ‘Surely you cannot mean Mary?’

But instead of arguing her case, Lizzie just stared and stared until Fanny was forced to defend herself.

‘But she has that unfortunate sallow complexion,’ she began, and then conceded: ‘Although I suppose it has become a little more pink since I found her a pony. And her figure is—’ Well, that was rather graceful. She would give the girl that. ‘But anyway,’ she concluded with triumph, ‘her hair is as straight as a plumb line!’

Lizzie smirked. ‘And how would yours be if Hall didn’t visit you weekly? You are her mother. If her hair is not good enough, it is up to you to do something about it. Not that anything is needed for, as I say, the child is a beauty. And it is high time that someone brought it to your attention, as any minute now your Sir Edward is in for a visit – if not from George, then some other poor swain.’