She went over to the window and pressed her face to the pane instead, rolling from cheek to cheek and trying to cool her skin against the cold glass. Her gaze fell to the gravelled courtyard below. It was well swept and bare save for some barrels lined up against a high brick wall opposite, with an arched gate set in the middle. From where she stood, she couldn’t see much of the triumphant gardens beyond it, only scattered treetops with distant birds alighting; but as the gate opened and a gardener walked through, she caught another glimpse – like a fan opening – of hot, riotous colour: orange, red and yellow flowers, some pointing to the sky like wands, others stippling the air like an artist’s brushes. It was a garden just like Eden, just like the minister had told them about as he stood at his lectern and warned them against temptation. Against sin.

Too late, she was already a sinner now. There could be nothing in that garden to further her fall. She could walk through it and eat all the apples. It struck her as ironic that it was Sholto who had first given her an apple, first led her into temptation, and now here she was, on the wrong side of his garden. Cast out.

But then she’d always been on the wrong side of life – born a daughter and not a son; a peasant and not an heiress. She stared at her brightening reflection in the glass as the sky dimmed and rain began to tap against her window, droplets wriggling down the pane like silvered worms.

She stood and watched from inside her warm, well lit, pretty room, knowing that on a lonely dark mountain, somewhere in the sea, there would be sheep walking in single file towards the stone-stacked cleits. Like her, that last night, looking for shelter.

Chapter Nineteen

‘. . . wants a full polish of the Bowes silver. His lordship’s expecting a—’

Everyone was already seated at a large table when she walked into the servants’ hall; twelve faces turned as one, as though pushed by the wind, eyes grazing up and down the length of her as they took in their newest recruit.

‘Who’s this?’ someone asked, a young boy with an impish look.

The men were dressed in dark-tailed suits and vests with crisp white shirts; the women wore black dresses with white aprons. Everyone was pale, significantly paler than Effie, and her brown cloth trousers seemed rough and lumpy in comparison to their starched uniforms.

‘This is Miss Gillies,’ the housekeeper said through a puckered mouth. ‘You’re just in time, Miss Gillies – you can sit at the end there between Mr Graves and William.’