‘Now, Mistress Dickson, I am taking you on trust, for I believe you to be a decent lass from hard-working folks.’

I opened my mouth to say something, but she carried on talking over me.

‘Mistress Dickson,’ she went on, blinking slowly, seeming to enjoy how my name hissed a little in her mouth. ‘The River Inn is a place where folks come and go, but at the heart of it are hard-working, honest Kelso folks, who go by our reputations. On the roads between Scotland and England there are inns, and there are inns, if you catch my drift. Ours is a good inn. There are always going to be folks like Mrs Rose, and the kind of gents who enjoy her company. But those are the patrons, and we are the proprietors. In other words, Mistress Dickson, we keep an honest household. We must, for the parish officers come calling quite often and they would like us shut down, for they think we are a house of loose morals. But if I was to ban every whore and every thief from this inn, I would likely close down within a month, so I have to turn a blind eye to much of what goes on downstairs in the public rooms, and often in the bedrooms. But we who work here are above scandal.’

‘Of course,’ I whispered.

‘Any whiff of scandal and I would have to put you out on your arse,’ she added. I flinched at her language. ‘I’ve hired maids before, and sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. I had to send the last one home, for she got herself into trouble with a patron. Off she went to the House of Correction, but that’s what happens if you don’t obey the house-rules.’

‘The House of Correction?’

‘Oh, you must have seen it on your way into town,’ Mrs Baxter replied airily. ‘The big house on the outskirts, with the high wall. It’s where the parish officers send the vagrants and beggars, and the thieves and whores.’

I frowned at that, but she did not seem to notice. I had not seen any such thing as a House of Correction, but I suppose I didn’t really know what one looked like.

‘Well, you can start tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I am pleased we have struck a deal.

My plan hatched, as a creature from an egg. Delicate at first, but then bolder and with all the urgency of new life.