I stayed silent. I became aware of the perfect quiet of the night. There would be sirens soon, I was sure, but for now the darkness was a velvet curtain swallowing up every tiny sound. I stared out through the open window, my senses on high alert. I needed to get to the house. Needed to get Felicity and John somewhere safe. Only then could I try and put it all together and work out what kind of danger I was in.

‘Your friends are comfortable,’ said Walt, flatly. ‘Comfortable enough, at least. I fear that the gentleman took quite a beating but the lady seems to be without injury.’

I froze, the blood in my body suddenly feeling ice-cold. ‘He’s ill. He’s been in hospital …’

‘And yet you sent him to the house.’

‘You said you were bringing people. There were personal items I didn’t want you to see.’

‘Pictures of your son, yes? How sweet. A lie, of course, but a sweet one.’

I chewed my lip, cursing myself for ever involving my friends. ‘Whatever it is that’s happening, they’re no part of it.’

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘They’re flies in the ointment and you put them there. You’ve put yourself there too, despite my best attempts to keep you from becoming involved. Why won’t you listen to those who care about you?’

I didn’t reply. He sounded just like my old tutor at Oxford, puce with rage at my inability to follow instructions or to do what he knew to be in my best interests. He never realized how much I enjoyed him shouting at me. Didn’t realize what an effect his righteous indignation had upon the stubborn, bright-eyed, twenty-year-old girl in his class – not until she had seduced him and got herself pregnant with his child.

I looked out into the darkness. The dawn would reveal the view I’d fallen in love with; the landscape that I’d first glimpsed in one of the many property particulars that Cranham had insisted I leaf through when we first came to our arrangement. He would buy whatever property I wanted and provide a home for me to raise my fatherless son, and I would marry him in a chaste, courteous arrangement that permitted him to live as he wished.