‘The twins of joy and sorrow,’ Alice went on. ‘You cannot have one without the other.’

‘I see a small gravestone before a year has passed,’ Gwendolyn said.

Rosa had yet to feel any tenderness at all towards the baby in her belly, but those words sent a cold shudder through her, as if she’d just slipped between the icy sheets of a frozen bed.

It’s not real, she told herself. It is only Eustace finding new ways to punish me. Very soon, though, it would be his turn to be punished …

‘I see a winter garden,’ Alice said.

‘Two gardens, in fact,’ Gwendolyn chimed in.

‘One of snow and magic,’ Alice said.

‘Another of fire and clockwork.’

‘I see a tiger made of stars.’

‘Showers of opals and orchids.’

‘Purple rain.’

‘And a carousel upon a frozen lake.’

Rosa realised her hands were bunched together in her lap. It felt hot and airless inside the folly, which suddenly seemed to spin gently around her. ‘What are you talking about? Did my husband tell you to say these things?’

‘The Carousel of Icicles,’ Alice said again. ‘The world has never seen its like before.’

Rosa thought of the aborted plans for a winter carousel buried in her workbook – the hundreds of icicles. She was about to question the twins further, but nausea gave a sudden lurch in her stomach and she stood and turned around, stumbling over her skirts in her haste to get out. The blood opal blazed upon her finger as she gripped the handle and opened the door. She hurried away to the outskirts of the garden, where she could shelter beneath one of the trees and take deep gulps of the cool night air.

She had lost her taste for the garden and had just decided to return to the house when she saw James Sheppard standing a short distance away, beside a display of orchids. True to his word, he had continued to provide Rosa with orchids after she married, but he never came to Raven Hall himself, and Rosa had not expected to see him tonight. The last time she’d laid eyes on him had been at the Winter Ball, when he’d congratulated her on her engagement. It felt like a lifetime ago, like something from a dream, and now Rosa felt a strange mixture of sorrow and gladness at the sight of him. Before she could hurry away, he noticed her across the lawn and smiled. Rosa was dismayed by the sudden ache that she felt at the sight, a hopeless longing. When he bowed to her, she might simply have inclined her head in return and moved on, but instead she found herself crossing the lawn towards him, as if in a trance.

‘Good evening, your grace,’ he said. ‘Being a duchess suits you. Of course I knew it would. You look as beautiful as ever.’