‘I would be doing it for myself, first and foremost. I have had two years to think about it all and you are the most important thing in my life. You always will be. And don’t look at me like that. I can’t help how I feel any more than the sun can help rising every morning and setting each night. I have an inheritance from my grandparents which would suffice to keep us in comfort and we could go abroad to live, somewhere warm where Betsy can grow up in freedom far away from narrow minds. I was going to talk to you when we were in Scotland, but Rose’ – he took her hands in his – ‘think about what I have said, please. And we can talk about it some more.’ He brushed a stray curl from her forehead as he spoke, his gaze lingering on her mouth, and then suddenly he pulled her in to him.

For one infinitesimal moment they were staring deep into each other’s eyes, and whatever he read in hers caused him to start kissing her face, not just her mouth, but her eyes, the tip of her nose and then her lips. And she responded, straining in to him as though she would merge her body with his, knowing she had never been kissed like this before, in such a way that time stopped and the world disappeared. When at last his lips moved away from hers she was gasping for breath and trembling with the passion that had consumed them both.

Even before he said softly and deeply, ‘You see? You see how it is, my darling? You are the other part of me and me of you,’ she knew she was lost. She was his, she couldn’t fight this love that had come into her life like a whirlwind the first time she had set eyes on him in the market. Even then, in some deep recess of her mind, she had known she didn’t want to live a life that did not hold him in it. But the cost, especially for him, would be huge. Could she subject him to that, loving him as she did?

He was reluctant to let her go but she moved out of the circle of his arms, recovering her composure as she tidied her hair and smoothed her clothes. When she knew she was sufficiently in charge of herself again, she said quietly, ‘Alexander, you must see—’