‘What punishment?’ he mumbled.

‘Silas. Sit up. You are making me impatient. Remember I am trying to help you.’

They could run away together. He had done it before and now he had money stashed in a bureau in his room at the King’s Arms and believed himself wiser to the world. The town he’d had such high hopes of had betrayed him, twice. He was done with it. They would go far away, to Chesterfield or Nottingham, or even to the coast to live out their days by the sea. Betrothed. The word was a boulder pressing on his neck.

‘Aye, I know thou art.’ He lifted his head. ‘What’s this punishment then, that’ll get me out of ’ere?’

Chapter 36

Harriet Wragg would disappear. She would be transformed, turned to a new purpose. Mrs Albert Boothby. Turning meant curdling, too. Milk gone sour.

‘Ow!’ She inspected the bead of blood on her finger and sucked it, laying aside the offending needle. How many times had she consoled Alice over a punctured fingertip? If she had a daughter she would name her for her cousin and teach her the art of embroidery. She would be an obedient wife by then. She had always been obedient before, accepted her lot. But since the flood, rebellious thoughts had stirred the silt of her mind. The old Harriet Wragg would never have taken matters into her own hands in an attempt to save Silas from the noose. And she could see clearly now that Mrs Albert Boothby would not be allowed to ink her delicate fingers in a clerical job.

What sort of future might await a woman named Harriet Hinchcliffe?

She looked up from the tapestry, momentarily blinded by the shaft of sunlight she was sitting in. Ludicrous thought. She would not secure a future on one kiss, albeit a thrilling kiss, a kiss she had returned, wanting the feel of Silas’s full lips against hers. Albert Boothby had a thin mouth. How would it feel to kiss those lips? She could not imagine. She would soon find out.

Harriet took a slow deep breath, in and out. Her bedroom still gave off the woolly aroma of new carpeting and the cloying scent of freshly varnished furniture. It was not her furniture. It belonged to Walter and would pass to her brother James to hold in trust for her cousins when Walter died. Her uncle had told her he would live to see her married, but the doctor thought otherwise. ‘Let him believe it,’ the man had told her. ‘It does no harm.’

Her finger had stopped bleeding. Harriet picked up the needle again. She had redrawn the outline of the princess on the precious embroidery her mother had started but never got the opportunity to finish, of a gowned and crowned girl with red hair. After the flood, she had found the fabric on the ruined carpet. The red thread of the girl’s hair was intact and Harriet had carefully washed the cotton. It came out miraculously unmarked. She had re-stretched it over a new wooden frame, determined to finally finish the piece her mother had started. She kept the tiara because the stitching around that was already complete and she could not bear to undo any of her mother’s work. But she altered the gown to reflect the latest fashion, sharpening the waist to a point, supplying a bustle and a high-necked collar. The princess was no longer a fluffed up, feathered thing on her way to a ball to meet her prince. She was dressed for an outing, wearing a tiara. An eccentric. She had added a delicate umbrella with lace trim. The face she kept blank.