Catharina’s cheeks colour. She flicks an anxious look at Anna who bites her lip hard, grounding down on the soft flesh with her teeth. This meeting must go smoothly, she thinks. If they offend him, Maarten will surely withhold any knowledge he possesses. It crosses Anna’s mind that he could be bluffing, pretending to know more than he really does. But Catharina is not willing to take the chance. Anna watches her struggle with her own pride. It is clearly an effort. At last, she summons a strained smile.

‘Of course,’ she says. ‘It’s for you, the patron, to say. I will ask Mrs Hartog to prepare the library now and have it cleaned. Anna, you help her. Go on, now. I will light the fire in there myself. I’ve done it before…’

She crosses to the firebox to scoop up an armful of fresh kindling and Anna catches Maarten’s quick, triumphant smile.

The portrait sittings continue for the next month. Each morning, the Horsts arrive in their carriage and Mrs Hartog shows them into the library where Anna is tasked with ensuring they are comfortably seen to – that there is ample wine filling their crystal goblets, that the outfits they are to be painted in are pressed and clean, no untoward creases to distract Catharina as she sketches the figures into the scene. Blanche poses wearing a gown of silver gilt damask. It is the dress she was married in. She tells Anna that Maarten chose it for her, that it was one of the gifts he brought with him when he came to meet her father at the inn in Amsterdam where their family was staying after they fled to the Continent. Maarten was there to negotiate the terms of the arrangement. He obtained her measurements in advance from Blanche’s mother and the silver dress arrived in its own carriage, as if it were a real person.