He smiled very kindly at her. ‘You look lovely,’ he said simply. ‘Every time I see you, you have grown prettier. How old are you now? Fifteen?’

Frances cast down her eyes in her most modest gesture and wished that she could blush. She thought for a moment that she should lay claim to fifteen years, but then she remembered that a birthday invariably meant a present. ‘I’m fifteen in five months’ time,’ she said. ‘October the seventh.’ Without lifting her gaze, modestly directed to the toes of her boots, she could see his hand moving towards the flap on his deep coat pocket.

‘I brought you these,’ he said. ‘Some little fairings.’

They were very far from little fairings. They were three large bundles of ribbon of a deep scarlet silk shot through with gold thread. There would be enough to trim a gown and make ties for Frances’s light brown hair. Despite the shortages of the war, the fashion was still for gowns with sleeves elaborately slashed and trimmed, and Frances had a genuine need as well as a passion for ribbon.

Without taking his eyes from her absorbed face, Alexander Norman said: ‘You do love beautiful things, don’t you, Frances?’ and was rewarded by a look of complete honesty, empty of all coquetry, when she looked up and said: ‘Oh, of course! Because of my grandfather! I have had beautiful things around me all my life.’

‘Cousin Norman,’ Hester said pleasantly, coming into the hall from the kitchen door. ‘What a pleasure to see you, and on such a cold day. Did you come by the river?’

‘Yes,’ he said. He let her help him off with his greatcoat and gave it to Frances to take to the kitchen to warm it through, and to order some hot ale. ‘I would not trust the roads these days.’

She shook her head. ‘Lambeth is quiet enough now that the archbishop’s palace is empty,’ she said. ‘All the apprentice lads are exhausted with their drilling and their mustering and digging the fortifications. They have no stomach left for roaming around the streets and making trouble for their betters.’

She led the way into the family sitting room. Johnnie was seated before a small fire, writing out plant labels with painstaking care. ‘Uncle Norman!’ he exclaimed and leaped up from his place. Alexander Norman greeted him with a brisk hug and then dived once again into his pocket.

‘I have given your sister half a mile of silk ribbon, should you like the same to edge your suit?’ he asked.

‘No, sir, that is, not if you have anything else … that is, I should be very grateful for anything you bring me …’

Alexander laughed. ‘I have a wicked little toy here which one of the armourers made at the Tower. But you must promise me to only behead dead roses.’