For days after the big reveal of her ruined face, she’d mostly kept to her room, hardly venturing out at all. Her leg was fine, the bandages off, but her face! Thoughts crawled through her head, the main one being that every time Jack had sat there talking to her, eating across the table from her, he had been forced to look at her ugliness. He’d never reacted in any way to it, which to her was astonishing. Used to turning heads, used to having men adore her, she could barely take it in. She was so changed. She was ugly, and that was it from here on in. She would have to get used to it, somehow.

When she finally came out into the kitchen again, started cooking meals again, petting the dog, mumbling a few words to Jack, she could see he was relieved.

‘Come out later this afternoon and see the horses when I bed them down,’ he said when she was washing up. ‘Nobody’s about.’

No one to see how disfigured she was. Was that what he meant?

‘All right,’ she said, because she was bored with indoors, going stir crazy.

In the afternoon he went out again, towel on shoulder, and came back an hour later.

‘Where do you go?’ Belle asked, curiosity getting the better of her.

‘Nowhere,’ he said.

‘With a towel on your shoulder. Nowhere. Right. Did your mum have a pool here somewhere?’

Belle certainly hadn’t seen one from any of the windows. She hadn’t seen one when she’d been out in the yard, hanging out washing. Christ, she was so domestic all of a sudden! It startled her. She’d never lifted a well-manicured finger around the gatehouse, never had to and never wanted to. Now her nails were snagged, her skin roughened by work. Before, she’d always been made up to the nines, but now she had no make-up and anyway, what was the point? Her face was ruined. Now, what the fuck was she? Some sort of hausfrau, cowering away from a world that had hurt her too much. She thought again of Mum, of Dad. Her heart sank and pain gnawed at her. Harlan had taken over Charlie’s evil empire and they were both probably dead. She herself was only breathing by luck alone.

Jack was staring at her face. ‘What?’ he said.

‘Nothing.’ She forced a smile and felt the scarring on her left cheek pull tight. Oh Christ. She turned her head aside, letting her hair fall over that side of her face.

‘My mother didn’t have a pool. Nothing so fancy,’ he told her.

‘So where do you go with the towel every day?’ she asked.

‘Nowhere special,’ he said.

‘You’re a great conversationalist,’ said Belle.

He grinned, his eyes not leaving hers. Dark blue. He had, she thought suddenly, beautiful eyes – black-lashed and crinkled from laughter at the corners.