Despite the summons, she absolutely could not go downstairs in her current state, hair dishevelled and face all crumpled from lying in the garden for hours. At her dressing table, adorned with her mother’s pearl-inlaid hair brush and hand mirror, Verity smoothed her hair at the glass and rubbed just a hint of rouge into her cheeks to add some colour into her skin. Her face had a light tan from the sun but in the gloom of the house it looked yellow, like jaundice. Her mother would have known how to handle Americans. She would have disarmed this one with her trilling laugh. All men had loved her. She’d known how to flatter them, to make them feel special and, unlike Verity, she had been a fragile, delicate thing and it made men want to protect her too. Father said once that her brothers had worshipped her and been protective and he’d had to reassure them that he was good enough for her. Verity dabbed a spot of her mother’s precious L’Air du Temps on her wrists. None of them had protected her, though, it turned out, had they?

A pale light suffused the east-facing drawing room but did not fully illuminate it. Her father and Jack sat either side of the cold fireplace. Peter stood next to the drinks cabinet. As Verity entered the room, the door creaked and they all turned to see her. She was warm with embarrassment, but her father just said, ‘Come in, come in,’ and waved at her impatiently. Peter helped himself to a generous measure of whisky. He winked at her.

‘Creep,’ she mouthed.

Her father did not offer her a drink. Instead, he was intent on listening to the American’s tales of breaking in horses on a ranch in Arizona. Verity perched on the edge of an armchair and studied their guest. His hair was the colour of pale wood. Or was it a peach? Yes, that was it. But there was copper too. It seemed to change and shift when he moved and his golden head caught the light from the reading lamps. And his face was strange too: it was strictly rather ugly but undeniably compelling. She imagined drawing the line of his profile in pencil, down along the thin nose, twisted slightly to the left to his large mouth and his hard little chin. As she was recreating his image, the portrait himself turned and looked at her.

‘Hello there.’

She almost fell back into the chair. But as he turned back to her brother she found herself looking at him again, studying the lines and contours of his form.