Mr Lister didn’t manage to hide it in time. He couldn’t help but start at it when he read it. We gathered to see what it was he’d seen and he tried to close the paper but Anne snatched it from him, gasped and threw it down. I picked it up, foolishly, and I too had the shock of my life to see it.

An announcement in the paper.

Once we’d all had a look, Marian left the room, always one to avoid Anne’s temper. Aunt ordered more tea and busied herself with her sewing. I sat and cried, and Mr Lister ranted about small-minded folk, sounding much like Anne, who herself paced back and forth and then with a flourish threw the entire paper on the fire. Mr Lister had only read a few pages, but he showed his allegiance to Anne well enough by not commenting and then taking her out for a long walk around the grounds. I admire him more and more.

The announcement was for the wedding of Sir Jack Lister of Shibden Hall and Miss Walker of Crow Nest on election day. It was a slight against us both and our families.

No one but us two know of the wedding that really took place. I wonder if they could imagine the irony of it, that she is in fact wed to me. I wonder if they knew that it was true or if they simply meant it as an insult, that neither of us are now worthy of marriage to anyone but each other. If only we could be really married, legally! Perhaps we should put in a real announcement – but if we cannot even tell our own families, what chance do we stand? The businessmen we have riled and any opposition to her party will come and burn down the Hall with us all inside if they should find out.

A few weeks then passed, and I had hoped it was all over. Bullying, as Mr Lister had termed it. It was bullying, plain and simple. The lowest of the low. It comes from a place of jealousy and inferiority, he had stated loudly on more than one occasion.

He’d explained to me that those men see her, and me too, as a threat to their power and so resort to name calling, by which he meant the name Gentleman Jack, a name given to Anne years back when she first started to manage her own estate and sink her own coal pits, which has now resurfaced.