‘What did he say that was so ridiculous?’ Frances asked gently. She came beside her stepmother and slipped her arm around the older woman’s waist. Hester saw that smooth prettiness beside her own worn face and felt a deep pang of envy that her own beauty was past, and at the same time a glow of joy that she had brought that unloved, frightened little girl into this rare, beautiful being.

‘He said that you were a young woman grown,’ Hester said. She felt Frances at her side. The girl was a girl no longer, her breasts were filling out, the curve of her waist would fit a man’s hand, she had lost her coltish legginess, she was, as Alexander had seen but her stepmother had not, a young woman.

‘Well, I am,’ Frances said, as one stating the obvious.

‘He said you should be married,’ Hester said.

‘And so I shall be, I suppose.’

‘He thought sooner rather than later,’ Hester said. ‘Because these are dangerous times. He thinks you should have a husband to take care of you.’ She had thought that Frances would pull away and laugh her reckless laugh. But the girl rested her head on her stepmother’s shoulder and said thoughtfully: ‘You know, I think I would like that.’

Hester pulled back to look at Frances. ‘You still seem like a little girl to me.’

‘But I am a young woman,’ Frances pointed out. ‘And when I go into Lambeth the men shout at me, and call things to me. If Father were at home then it would be different, but he is not home, and he is not coming home, is he?’

Hester shook her head. ‘I have no news of him.’

‘Then if he does not come home, and if the war goes on, and so everything is still so uneasy …’

‘Yes?’ Hester asked.

‘If our lives don’t get easier then I would like a husband to care for me, and to care for you and Johnnie. I think we need a man in this house. I think we need a man to care for us.’

There was a long silence. Hester looked into the beautiful face of her stepdaughter and thought that perhaps the first of her promises to this girl’s grandfather, John Tradescant, was nearly fulfilled. She had brought up his granddaughter to be a beautiful woman and within a year or two there would only be Johnnie and the treasures for her to guard.

Alexander Norman strolled in the grounds for an hour before he came in to dinner. He found Hester laying the table in the parlour with Frances helping her. Johnnie was showing a visitor around the rarities.