A hansom cab called at the house a short time later and from her window upstairs Eleanor stood and watched as Alasdair emerged from the house in top hat and morning coat with a fat leather portfolio. He carried a rolled umbrella. The sky showed no hint of cloud but the memory of the last five days of rain was still fresh. The lawn was quite waterlogged and he stuck closely to the path. A sandstone wall surrounded the house, and guarding its solid double gates were two winged lions, cast in stone mid-roar and about to pounce. But they never did roar, they never had pounced.

They did not roar or pounce now as Alasdair passed between them, covering the short distance to the cab with that purposeful stride of his. It was a stride that had carried him all the way to the chamber of the Legislative Assembly and now looked set to carry him into a new nation and a new national parliament. It was a stride that brooked no possibility of failure, that allowed no place for hesitancy or doubt. She had admired that stride for it had carried her too, for a time.

To be so sure and certain. What did that feel like?

She watched him climb into the cab. The driver, a youngish man in a green bowler, startled the ageing grey horse with a flick of his whip and the cab set forward with a jerk.

A very short time later Eleanor, too, left the house. She had donned a long cream and ivory winter coat, sheepskin-lined boots and a hat—not the ostrich feathers of the previous night but something wide-brimmed and bland, something functional—and she had her gloves and parasol in her hand. At the front door she paused and called, ‘I am going out, Alice,’ and gave no more explanation than that, though as Alice did not reply and was likely in another part of the house it was possible the girl did not hear.

Eleanor had departed the house so soon after her husband that his cab was still visible as it climbed back up the hill to the main road, the bowler-hatted cab driver and his ancient horse making heavy weather of the incline. By the time it crested the hill Eleanor, moving swiftly on foot, had almost caught up to it. But now that they were on the level she could not hope to keep pace. She looked about her and, spying another cab stationary on the roadside ahead disgorging two elderly ladies, she signalled the driver and climbed nimbly inside. She held on tightly as they jerked forward, and only then did she pull up the little hatch in the roof and instruct the cabbie.

‘Driver, do you see that cab before us? I should like you to follow the same route.’