‘Nothing really,’ said Kitty. ‘It’s just that when it’s your first baby, you don’t know what to expect, do you? What’s normal, you know?’

‘Well, if you’re worried, I can examine you, if you’d like me to,’ suggested the doctor.

‘No,’ Kitty replied hastily, ‘no need for that, I’m sure.’ The thought of the old man seeing her naked stomach, feeling for the baby, running his hands across her belly and who knew where else, made her shudder. No one but Rupert, and possibly the midwife when the time came, should see the bare flesh of her abdomen.

It was Lady Blake, worried by her daughter’s listlessness and continued sickness, who suggested sending for Mrs Harper.

‘She’s an experienced midwife,’ she told Rupert. ‘Knows far more about having babies than any doctor.’

‘By all means,’ he said. ‘If you think it’s necessary.’

Lady Blake did think so, and the message was sent.

When Mrs Harper arrived from the village an hour later, Rupert left her to his mother-in-law; it was women’s business. He didn’t know what the problem was or what he should be asking her.

Lady Blake took her into Kitty’s room and closed the door behind her, leaving Rupert firmly outside. Once with Kitty, Mrs Harper was all efficiency.

‘Now then, my lady, I’m going to have to examine you. I need to look at your stomach. Don’t worry, it won’t hurt, but we just have to see if baby is all right. Don’t want him getting into trouble, now, do we?’

Kitty agreed that they didn’t and, closing her eyes, submitted to the gentle pressure of Mrs Harper’s hands.

Mrs Harper knew almost at once that there was indeed something wrong. The child was lying in quite the wrong place. She looked up and exchanged a glance with Lady Blake.

Gently she replaced Kitty’s bedclothes and smiled down into her fearful eyes. ‘There now,’ she said. ‘That’s over, not so bad, you see. Now, you get some rest while I have a word with your mother.’

In Rupert’s study Mrs Harper explained her fears – that the baby was growing outside Kitty’s womb and at this late stage there was almost nothing that could be done. Rupert immediately telegraphed for a doctor from Harley Street. He came at once by train but when he’d examined Kitty, he only confirmed that the midwife was right, the baby was trying to grow in the wrong place.

Kitty suffered more and more pain, and when the tube finally ruptured, as the London doctor had known it must, and she began to bleed, there was nothing anyone could do. There was no baby to save and the mother was beyond saving. As she lost too much blood, she lost her grip on life and Pilgrim’s Oak suffered its third death in six months.

She was buried in the graveyard of the church where she and Rupert had been married. Apart from the priest there was no one but Kitty’s parents and Rupert and Fran at the church or the graveside. Sir James and Lady Blake stood rigidly dry-eyed as their daughter’s coffin was lowered into the ground, Rupert and Fran beside them. Rupert watched as Kitty’s mother scattered a handful of soil into the grave, heard it clatter on the coffin lid and felt ineffably sad. He hadn’t loved Kitty as a wife should be loved, but he had loved her as a childhood friend and bitterly mourned her passing. Frances stood erect and silent at his side and he wondered at her strength. Three funerals of people she loved. All that were left to her now were him and their mother.