“Everything all right?” Father asks, turning back to watch us rather beadily.

“F-fine, sir,” Cuthbert manages.

A loud dinner gong sounds, the noise rippling through the room and causing an already overwrought Cuthbert to jump several inches in the air.

“Better knock the rest of that back,” Father says jovially, pointing at Cuthbert’s drink. As he turns away for a moment I whip the glass out of Cuthbert’s hand and empty the remains into a nearby potted fern.

I am rewarded with a grateful, if tremulous, smile and – much to Father’s obvious delight – Cuthbert offers me his arm to escort me into the dining room.

Dinner is just as painful as I anticipated. The food is marginally better than usual, as we are out to impress, but our cook has never met a vegetable she couldn’t boil into submission. I am seated between my mother and Cuthbert, and Mother keeps chivvying our talk along with encouraging little conversation openers.

“Beatrice, Philip tells me that Cuthbert is a keen philatelist; isn’t that fascinating?”

“Yes,” I wade in grimly. After all, none of this is Cuthbert’s doing. “Do you have any particularly interesting stamps in your collection?”

“Er … not really,” Cuthbert mutters, the mottled flush making another appearance. “I don’t really collect them myself, you see. Uncle just gave me some of his old scrapbooks…” He trails off miserably.

“Mmm,” I murmur, drawing an infinity sign in the gravy on my plate with my knife. At one end of the table I notice Father is deep in conversation with Mr Astley about the hunt, a subject on which they could happily spend all night agreeing loudly with each other. The vicar is making some sort of disparaging comment about the moral fibre of his parishioners to the woman next to him. The vicar’s wife is telling the story of the head cold again in a rather carrying drone.

Their voices seem suddenly to clamour over one another, filling my head with the endlessly repeating pattern of polite conversation. I grind my teeth together, feeling an itch spread across my skin. A longing to jump to my feet and run as fast as I can, as far away as possible, sweeps over me.

Instead, I force myself to concentrate on the conversation on either side of me.

“Oh, Cuthbert!” Mother is saying, shaking her head, a roguish twinkle in her voice, “there’s no need to be so modest; I’m sure a young man like yourself will have no trouble in running the estate. What you really need, of course, is a wife who knows how these things work: a young woman of good breeding with experience in such matters. Wouldn’t you agree, Beatrice?” The look she gives me is pointed. There’s steel behind her words.

“Yes, Mother,” I say evenly. “Perhaps placing an advertisement in The Times would be a sensible way of filling the position.”