‘All well above board.’ Sir Edward’s patience was starting to fray. ‘Intelligent sort of fellow. Can’t stay at Oxford studying Persians and what-have-you for ever. Soon to take up the living at Smeeth – not too close, not too far, and a handsome house, too. Yes, good old Wyndham. Come the autumn, invite him to dine and I will explain the position. He’ll see the wisdom of marrying in – an arrangement to suit the whole family. Can’t have her yet, mind. He will have to wait a few years, but I doubt—’

And then he stopped, wincing with pain – screwed up his eyes and clutched at his jaw.

‘My dear?’ Fanny felt instant alarm. ‘You are not well?’

Sir Edward suddenly wailed.

Fanny ran to the bell – rang for a servant – and back to his side. ‘Sir Edward! What is it? Do say!’

‘Mouth,’ he spluttered. ‘Tooth.’ He rocked to and fro, and rubbed his face with his hands. ‘All over agony.’

Graves came in then, called other servants – summoned Dr Whitfield – and whisked his master to his bed.

‘I shall follow you up shortly,’ Fanny called after them and then sank into her chair as hope rose up within her and flooded her being. ‘Ague of the face!’ she whispered to herself. A warm feeling of happiness began in her toes. ‘That is what ails him.’ That feeling crept up and up, and sought out her heart. ‘It is ague of the face.’ Tooth, temperature, a shooting neuralgia: were these not the very symptoms from which he had suffered at Lady Banks’s house, back in the year ’21?

And if so, was that not extraordinary! For now Fanny examined it, she had, of late, felt unusually tired. She was definitely a bit plumper. Certainly, her hair was thicker and of a particular shine – Sayce had commented on it only this evening as she was dressing for dinner. She stretched out her fingers and started to count … And – oh! Praise be to the Lord who is kind, and our God who is merciful. Fanny was having a baby and felt perfectly well.

CHAPTER XX

Mary waited to be announced, and then slipped into the bedchamber and clung close to its threshold.

‘Ah, good morning, my dear.’ Lady Knatchbull looked up from the tray on her bed, and dabbed at her lips with a square of monogrammed linen. The bright morning sun caught the wisps of new grey coming loose from her nightcap. ‘Thank you so much for coming and – pray! – do not look so fearful. It is not my intention to bite you!’ She gave an unnatural little laugh – one she had taken to using with her stepchildren as a signal that humour had been committed, and any consequent mirth would not be discouraged. In the silence that followed, Fanny laughed long and alone.