He hesitated. ‘But the thing about tulips is the shortness of the season, and the way you can buy them in the bulb and hold the bulb in your hand and know that inside it is a thing of such beauty. And you know that if you care for it you will see that thing of beauty, whereas a rose – a rose grows itself.’

Hester laughed. ‘If you were a working gardener, Mr Lambert, you would value plants that grow themselves. But let me show you our tulip beds.’

She led the way back through the garden and then paused. The path ran alongside the wall which kept the west wind off the plants. Along the wall, espaliered in regular lines, were apple and pear trees; the south wall was lined with the peaches and apricots. They were Tradescant walls: a double skin of brick with three fireplaces set one on top of each other and a flue running from each fire along the length of the wall to keep the bricks at a steady warmth by night and day. But Hester had not been able to afford the charcoal for the fires for two seasons.

Hester saw Mr Lambert take in the neat planning and the solidity of the building, and the immaculate pruning of the branches, and felt her familiar stir of pride. Then he turned to the garden beds and she heard his sharp intake of breath.

There was bed after bed of tulips. They grew at least twenty of each specimen, and they had more than a hundred different varieties. Each new variety was labelled with a lead spike stuck in the ground at the head of the row and on each spike, in Johnnie’s meticulous printing, was the name of each variety. Behind each label, like a row of well-drilled infantry, grew the tulips, with their leaves clasped close to their stalks and their growing heads like multi-coloured soldiers shouldering their pikes.

Hester enjoyed the expression on the cavalier’s face. ‘We keep the rare ones potted up,’ she said. ‘These are only garden tulips. I can show you the rarities, we keep them in our orangery.’

‘I had no idea,’ he said softly. He was walking between the tulip beds, scanning them, bending to read the labels and then going on. ‘I had heard you were great gardeners, but I thought you worked on the palace gardens.’

‘We do,’ Hester said. ‘We did,’ she corrected herself. ‘But we had to have our own garden to stock the palace gardens, and we have always sold our stock.’

He nodded, paced the length of the bed, kneeled down and then got up again. Hester noted the dirt on the knees of his grey suit and that he did not trouble to brush it off. She recognised at once the signs of a besotted tulip enthusiast and a man accustomed to employing others to keep his clothes smart.

‘And what rarities do you have?’ he asked.