Anna swallows. ‘Good,’ she says. It comes out hoarser than she intends. Her guts are churning. She glances out the window at the vegetation rolling past, the tree-lined paths, the bushes clumped together in a long impenetrable wall. Thankfully, there is still a strip of road. The carriage clings to it, bucking wildly like a ship on a storm-tossed sea, jolting and juddering, throwing Anna and Crispijn together.

She mumbles an apology as their knees connect.

‘Don’t be sorry,’ he says. Pulling himself upright, he extracts a handkerchief and dabs his forehead, the skin clammy and flushed pink. ‘Do you think they make this road intolerable so that the isolation and deprivations of cloistered life are easier to bear?’

‘Perhaps,’ she says. ‘A life devoted to God seems noble. But there are things I would miss.’

‘What would you miss?’

‘Oh, singing,’ she says. ‘Music. Art. Reading. And – it sounds foolish – clothes. Dresses and white petticoats. Ornaments. Shoes.’

They smile at each other.

‘Animals, too,’ she says, warming to her theme (if this is his way of distracting her from the task ahead, then it is working). ‘I left a dog behind when I came to live with you. His name was Wolfert. He belonged to my sister, Lijsbeth, and myself. But Lijsbeth didn’t care for him much so I think he saw me as his mistress. It was difficult to let him go.’

‘I wish I’d known. I love animals,’ says Crispijn. ‘I would fill Sterrenwijck with them, if I could. Hounds and cats, all of them together. But their fur makes Catharina sneeze so I was never allowed a pet of any kind.’

‘What would you miss?’ Anna says as the carriage jolts.

His smile fades a little. ‘I would miss my friends. My sister. My work. And you.’

He fixes her with his dark gaze. Anna feels the heat climb in her cheeks and a strange weightlessness ballooning through her limbs.

‘Perhaps this is too forward,’ he says. ‘You are unchaperoned and an orphan. I am your employer. But I feel I must confess the truth or it will haunt me. I enjoy your company, Anna Tesseltje. It’s rare to find someone that you look forward to seeing every day. Could you ever see yourself joining our family?’

Anna stares at him, shocked. She suddenly understands why he has spent the journey sweating nervously. It wasn’t the dizzy spells nor the headaches. Her heart fills with sudden gladness. This is an offer she never dreamed of, the chance to start her own family and with a man she could learn to love, one who has shown her friendship and kindness beyond measure. She is on the verge of accepting, but then she remembers.

‘I can’t marry you,’ she says.

His face falls. ‘Why ever not?’