I came to hate myself for the rise of my desire and then my embarrassment that they would hear us. I could not bear to know that every word I said, every snatched breath, even the sound of my kiss was audible to a critical and intent audience. I shrank from his sisters’ knowledge that I loved him, I flinched from their intimacy with something that should be exclusive, just to us. On the first morning after we had finally made love, when Daniel came downstairs, I caught the glance his mother flickered over him. It was a look of utter possession, as a farmer might look at a healthy bull at stud. She had heard my cry of pleasure half-silenced the night before and she was delighted at his prowess. To her I was nothing more than a cow who should soon be in calf, the credit for it all was to her son, the prestige of founding a family would come to her.

After that I would not come downstairs at the same time as Daniel. I felt scorched by the bright glances of his sisters which flicked from his face to mine and back again, as if to read how we had been transformed into man and wife by the muffled exchanges of the night. I would either get up before the others, and be downstairs with the kindling laid on last night’s embers, boiling the breakfast gruel before anyone else was up, or I would wait until he had eaten his breakfast and gone.

When I came down late, his sisters would nudge each other and whisper.

‘I see you keep court hours still,’ Mary said spitefully.

Her mother made a gesture with her hand to silence her. ‘Leave her alone, she will need to rest,’ she said.

I shot a quick glance at her, it was the first time she had defended me against Mary’s acid tongue, and then I saw it was not me, Hannah, that she was defending. It was not even Daniel’s wife—as though anything that belonged to Daniel was illuminated by the glow he cast in this household—it was because she hoped I was breeding. She wanted another boy, another boy for the House of Israel, another little d’Israeli to continue the line. And if I could produce him soon, while she was still young and active, she could bring him up as her own, in her own house, under her supervision and then it would be: ‘my son’s little boy, my son the doctor, you know.’

If I had not served for three years at court I would have fought like a cat with my mother-in-law and my three dear sisters-in-law; but I had seen worse and heard worse and endured worse than they could ever have dreamed. I knew that the moment I complained to Daniel about them I would bring down on my own head all his worry and all his love for them, for me, and for the family he was trying to make.