Hubert didn’t answer for a moment. In truth he was feeling uneasy again about the young man he had brought to his sister’s house. The way this Alridge fellow had got Beattie eating out of his hand had brought his earlier suspicions about him to the fore. Likely he had been playing around with this other lass his wife had been told about, and maybe she hadn’t been the first either. A lass didn’t leave her home in the midst of winter with a babe in arms on a whim. He had always been of the opinion that no one should come between man and wife, but on this occasion he found he didn’t want the bloke to find her. He shrugged, unsmiling, and said, ‘Can’t assist you there, I’m afraid.’

The fair brows drew together, hooding the eyes. ‘I thought cabbies knew most places?’

‘In the town, aye, I could take you anywhere you want to go but not the country, and that’s where Beattie said the lass was heading.’

The blonde head came forward, the piercing blue eyes narrowing to slits. ‘I meant it when I said I loved her.’

There was something threatening about him now and Hubert stiffened. ‘Like I said, nowt comes to mind, all right?’

After a moment Nathaniel nodded. ‘Fair enough, I dare say I can ask around. What do I owe you for the cab fare?’

‘I told you, it’s on me.’ Taking this man’s money would have felt like accepting thirty pieces of silver and he wished he’d followed his first inclination and kept quiet about this lass ending up at Beattie’s.

‘Ta, thanks. I’ll be on my way then.’ Having said that, Nathaniel didn’t immediately start walking, not until the cab driver had climbed up into his seat, clicked his tongue at the patiently waiting horse and they had moved off. Then he walked slowly down the street, his mind buzzing. A miller, and one who lived in the country. That could mean anything. It could be a stone’s throw from the outskirts of Gateshead or further afield but whatever, he would find her. He’d had months of searching the streets of Sunderland in any spare time he had, thinking he’d caught sight of her in this place and that only to be disappointed, and sometimes jumping off trams when he spotted a chestnut-haired woman with a child in the distance. There were times when he’d wondered if he’d end up unhinged. And all because of Vera O’Leary, damn her.

The temper that seemed to erupt from some deep cavern inside him more frequently in the last eighteen months had him breathing hard, his hands clenched into fists. He made himself relax his fingers, one by one, and then breathed in slowly through his nose, exhaling a few times as he told himself to calm down.