Within a week, she felt quite at home at Oxon Hoath, where everyone was so kind to her. She could see in Aunt Margaret comforting resemblances to her mother, and Uncle William was a very merry fellow who had an endless store of jokes. There was a litter of kittens in the barn, and a host of dogs about the place. Above all, she was struck by how well the Cottons lived, what good food they had, and their fine clothes. She had never known such plenty at Lady Hall or at her father’s town house in Lambeth. She felt drawn into the bosom of the Cotton family, who treated her as one of their own. Only at night did she weep for her mother.

The young Cottons enjoyed a lot of freedom and the run of the house and its surrounds. It stood in the middle of a great deer park and had been in the Culpeper family for generations. There were lots of Culpeper relations living nearby, at places called Bedgebury, Wakehurst and Preston Hall, many of whom came visiting while Katheryn was at Oxon Hoath. Later, she learned that her grandfather had been the last of his particular line, and that his estates had been divided between his two daughters, her mother Joyce and Aunt Margaret. How different life might have been if Mother had inherited Oxon Hoath!

One day, as Margaret and Isabel were overseeing the boiling of plum puddings for Christmas, Katheryn was sitting under the kitchen table, playing with a kitten and listening to her elders conversing. Much of what they said went over her head, but her ears pricked up at one point.

‘You did better for yourself than Mother,’ Isabel said. ‘She married the son of a duke, but you’ve had the happier life.’

‘Aye,’ Aunt Margaret agreed. ‘I still have the house and much of the property left me by your grandfather. Edmund squandered all Joyce’s inheritance on his extravagances and gambled the rest away at cards. Now there is nothing left but what the Howards have given him. I daresay he’d wager the very roof over his head if he thought it could bring him a fortune. And him an educated man, who has learned Latin, French and logic and God knows what else. He ought to know better!’

‘It cannot be easy being a younger son with no inheritance to look for,’ Isabel said, ever the pacifist. ‘Edmund is one of nine, you know.’