Margaret waved her hand. ‘It is nothing,’ she said.

You are right about that, Beatrice thought. She knew she was not adept at controlling her facial expressions, and concentrated hard on keeping her face a mask as best she could. It would not do for her lip to curl in contempt at this moment.

The women took their tea in an atmosphere of stilted awkwardness. Beatrice had never been alone with the duchess before and her nerves only made her stammer worse. Margaret had a way of looking at her as if she could see right through to the inside of her head, and always there was that pinched look about her mouth, as though she found Beatrice wanting in every possible way. The tea was too weak and milky for Beatrice’s taste. The cakes were ash in her mouth. There was not even a dog in the room for her to pet, and it seemed to Beatrice suddenly ridiculous for there not to be any dogs at all in such a mansion as Raven Hall.

She wondered what would happen if she put down her teacup and told the duchess, quite decisively, and without a hint of a stammer, that she was calling off the engagement. She suddenly ached to declare that she would not be sucked into this house, or shackled into matrimony; that she meant to spend the rest of her days a blissfully contented spinster, accountable to nobody but herself, concerned with no one’s wishes but her own. How glorious such a thing would be. How full of oxygen the world would suddenly become.

It was not the first time the thought had appeared but, on this occasion, it was accompanied by such a fierce rush of longing that Beatrice rattled her teacup in its saucer, earning her another look of reprobation from the duchess.

Since last week’s conversation with her solicitor, she’d realised that her father’s death had left a fortune at her fingertips. And that money changed things. It changed everything. For the first time, she could smell freedom in the air, and another life calling to her, if only she had the courage to take the plunge. And yet still she hesitated, afraid of offending people, of doing the wrong thing, of causing hurt, of making a scene, of upsetting her family, of being unnatural.

The tea was finished. Surely it was permissible to take her leave now, at last? Whenever Beatrice was forced into company, she often found herself overwhelmed with the sudden desperate urge to flee. She felt herself drowning in chit-chat and teacups, hungry to gulp down the air of solitude. A glance out of the mullioned windows showed her there was still plenty of daylight left in the summer sky. Enough to go foraging for mushrooms and take one last turn about the grounds of her home whilst they still belonged to her.