Katheryn stared down at the snuffling infant lying in the cradle. Mary had plump pink cheeks and a pouting mouth. She was tightly swaddled and wore a close-fitting bonnet. It would be ages before she was old enough to play with Katheryn.

‘You must be a mother to her now,’ Isabel said. Katheryn wasn’t sure about that. Babies held little appeal for her; they didn’t do anything. She would far rather be romping with her brothers, Charles, Henry and George, even though they were much older and did not always want to be encumbered by a needy little girl.

She had even older brothers and sisters too, Mother’s children by her first husband. In the days after Mother died, they came down from Stockwell to pay their respects, headed by John Leigh, Katheryn’s eldest half-brother, whom she adored. All the Leighs doted on her, especially Isabel. Isabel was lovely: tall, very fair and still pretty, even though she was thirty-two, which seemed ancient. She was being very kind to Katheryn and had offered to stay on to help Father. It was a mercy that Isabel had been at Lady Hall when Mother died, for Father had now disappeared behind his chamber door, being too sunk in his own grief to heed his children’s misery. It was Isabel who clutched Katheryn to her flat velvet bosom, dried her tears and came hastening when she woke screaming from a nightmare. Isabel had come to help with the new baby. Katheryn thought Isabel should have babies of her own, since she loved them so much, but Isabel was not yet married.

Katheryn was not now interested in practicalities. All she knew was that Mother was gone and that her world had been shattered. She understood what death was, for the household chaplain had explained that it was like going to sleep, although you never woke up because you had gone to Heaven to be with God, and that was something to rejoice over. But no one seemed to be rejoicing at all, and Katheryn thought that God was very selfish, taking her mother away when she loved her so much.

There came the day when Katheryn was kneeling on the floor of the hall, playing shovelboard with Isabel as her nurse looked on, and Father summoned her to his private closet with its dark panelled walls. To the child, Lord Edmund looked wild-eyed and haggard in the candlelight.

‘Come here, Kitty,’ he said. It was his pet name for her. ‘I have something for you.’ He held out his hand and there in his palm lay a glittering ruby ring. ‘Your mother left it to you,’ he went on. ‘She wanted you to have it. You must take great care of it.’