‘Aye. Now she might be your sister’ – Nathaniel’s latest variation on a theme was that he was searching for his sister with whom he’d lost contact after a family quarrel years before – ‘but I have to say she’s no better than she should be, if you don’t mind me talking straight. Mind, she’s got her head screwed on and knows how to look after number one, I’ll say that for the lass. She’ll be in clover if he goes through with it an’ marries her. The whole town was talking about it, I don’t mind saying.’

Keeping a hold on his patience, Nathaniel had said, ‘If who marries her?’

‘The Bembridge son and heir, of course. Got betrothed, they did, a while back. He’s an officer, a major, in the army.’

‘And he bought her the bakery?’

‘Sure as eggs are eggs. He probably thought he could get away with just that – you know what these lord-of-the-manor types are like – but somehow she’s hooked him in. That’s if the marriage happens, of course. Me wife was full of it when she was alive – you know what women are like. Even used to go an’ buy the odd loaf or two from there, she did, an’ her a woman who always baked her own.’ The old man’s eyes had narrowed and his voice had taken on a sceptical tone. ‘An’ you say she’s your sister, lad?’

‘Yes.’ Nathaniel had bitten the word out.

‘Well, you needn’t worry about her any more, to my mind. She’s done all right for herself and the bairn. She told me she was a widow when I picked her up that day. Was that right or was that what the family trouble was about, her having a bairn out of wedlock?’

Nathaniel had had more than enough by now and would have liked to take out his fury at what Rose had done by battering the old man to a pulp. Instead he said shortly, ‘She was a widow,’ and stood up, leaving the pub and walking back to the lodging house where he had taken a room. He’d sat up all night, simmering with rage and drinking a whole bottle of whisky that he had bought the day before.

She was a whore, he’d told himself, nothing but a whore. First the miller and now this rich bloke, and they were just two he knew about. She’d made a monkey of him, that’s what she’d done. He’d searched the whole of Durham for her and all the time she’d been prostituting herself. He’d kill her, he would, he’d kill her. He’d done murder for her, turned his life upside down and moved from place to place for nigh on ten years and all the time she’d been laughing at him.