‘Miss Tesseltje, I have news. I believe I myself am expecting a child. Please don’t say anything to your mistress. If I’m right, it’s early. Maarten is the only other person I’ve told and, as you can imagine, he is beyond happy to think he will soon have an heir. There is nobody else to confide in, and I feel closer to you after this past month than I do to any other woman in Holland.’

Anna doesn’t know what to do with this news. She murmurs a blessing to the blushing Blanche and makes a move to push past the girl, hoping she will take the hint and release her hand. Blanche only grips her tighter.

‘I wondered,’ Blanche says, a little breathlessly, ‘if you might consider leaving the van Shurmans and joining our household? Lady van Shurman’s spirits seem so much restored now. She can surely spare you. And I would dearly love for you to become my maid. You can help with the baby, when he finally appears. You’d have to accompany us to Sumatra when we leave next month, but with you, a four-month journey across the seas would not feel like a burden.’

Anna’s first instinct is to refuse. There is a difficult silence while she formulates and discards the harshest rejections. Imagine, she thinks, giving up Catharina and Crispijn for Maarten’s manipulation and Blanche’s clinginess. But the girl seems so moved by the idea that she finds it difficult to reject her outright.

She is saved from answering when Catharina pokes her head through the chamber door.

‘Is she ready?’ she says to Anna, who nods mutely, not trusting herself to speak.

Catharina gives Blanche a little push through the door, following her out into the library where Maarten is waiting in his uniform. He grasps his wife’s arm possessively as she crosses the room to stand in the place Catharina has marked in chalk upon the floor.

‘There you are,’ he says. ‘I was beginning to think you’d died.’