She turned at that. ‘Oatlands!’ she exclaimed bitterly. ‘What do you think the palaces are like now? Oatlands was Prince Rupert’s head-quarters! D’you think I could keep a pretty girl safe in a barracks? She was as much at risk there as in the stews of the City.’

‘You could have put her on a ship to me!’

She blazed up at that. ‘And where were you? I had two letters from you in three years, one parcel of Indian goods and one consignment of plants. What was I to imagine? I didn’t even know if you were alive or dead. I had to take all the decisions on my own and I did what I thought was the best. Alexander offered her a home and promised me that he would love her and keep her safe. And she wanted to marry him. She accepted him on her own account. And they are happy, anyone can see that.’

‘I shall get her home,’ John swore. ‘I shall have the marriage annulled. She is not to be his wife.’

‘She is expecting his baby.’ Hester spoke calmly as her heart hammered in her ears. ‘She will come home for the confinement, and she visits us often. But she will not leave her husband, even at your bidding, John.’

He flung out of the room at that and she heard him stride across the hall. Johnnie shot one scared look at her and she put her hand on his shoulder. There was a great bellow from the rarities room: ‘Mother of God! Where are the rarities? What have you done?’

Hester turned Johnnie on his heel and pushed him gently towards the kitchen door. ‘Wrap up warmly and go and sweep the snow off the trees,’ she said.

‘What will you do?’

‘I shall have to explain to him how we live now. It will be hard for him to understand.’

‘Then he should never have gone away,’ Johnnie said.

They had a bitter row in the half-empty room. John in his horror at the changes could not even hear that the finest of the rarities were safely in hiding. Every confession that Hester had to make, that she had sold one or other of the treasures for food, merely heightened his anger by a further notch.

‘You have betrayed me!’ he yelled at her. ‘You have betrayed my trust, my sacred trust in you. You have sold my treasures, you have sold my daughter!’

‘What was I to do?’ Hester shouted back, as angry as him. ‘You were gone. This summer I was going to tell your son that I feared you must be dead. I had to survive without you. I had to manage somehow. We had one true friend in the whole world and Frances loves and trusts him. She wasn’t sold. He took her without a dowry.’