‘All the more reason not to be such a spendthrift with Joyce’s money!’ Aunt Margaret retorted. ‘He told me last Christmas that he’s deeply in debt. I didn’t sympathise, for he had only himself to blame. Those poor children have nothing; the girls will have no marriage portions. What is to become of them, I don’t know! Think how well your father provided for you and your brothers and sisters. I know you haven’t been found a suitable husband yet, but the dowry is there. It gets my goat, how those Howards are so stuck-up and high-and-mighty, and yet so wanting where it matters. We Culpepers are descended from King Edward the First too, you know!’

Katheryn was surprised to hear the glorious Howards, and her father, spoken of so unkindly. Clearly her aunt had got it wrong. Father had always been nice, if distant, although he was prone to disappearing mysteriously for weeks on end and people often seemed to get angry with him. Perhaps, when he was away, he was playing cards. Katheryn had not known there was anything wrong with playing cards, or that she did not have a marriage portion, whatever that was. She was more worried about her finger, which the kitten, fed up with being pulled about and bedecked with ribbons, had just scratched. She crawled out from under the table with the protesting animal in her arms.

‘Mercy me!’ exclaimed Aunt Margaret, and Isabel said something about little pitchers.

‘My finger hurts,’ said Katheryn, holding it up. Isabel fetched a damp cloth and dabbed at it. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said, smiling. ‘Be brave.’

‘Culpeper’s a funny name,’ Katheryn observed.

‘I’m told our ancestors were spice merchants,’ Aunt Margaret said. ‘They were called pepperers.’ Katheryn giggled. She had forgotten about what she had just heard. But that night, lying in her comfortable feather bed in the beamed chamber she shared with Isabel, she remembered and was glad that she didn’t have to be poor any more. Father had been right. Coming to Aunt Margaret’s was the best thing that could have happened to her.

Of all the Culpeper relations who came to stay, Katheryn liked her distant cousin Tom best. He was one of the Bedgebury Culpepers, the senior branch of the family. He came that winter with his parents and six siblings. At eighteen, Tom was eleven years older than Katheryn, but so debonair with his dark good looks, and so kind to a motherless little girl. He took the time to sit with her and admire the kittens, winning her heart completely.

‘We have lots of animals at Bedgebury,’ he told her.

‘I wish I could see them,’ she said.

‘I hope you will visit us soon,’ he smiled. ‘Alas, I am hardly ever there. I serve the King and am mostly at court.’