It was as if the heart had gone out of her and out of the house altogether. The garden was neglected, the topiary and the knot garden hedges were growing out and losing their shape. The gravel on the paths was no defence against the constantly springing weeds. The warm nursery beds by the house had not been prepared with sieved earth for the coming of the new season as they should have been. The fruit trees had not been properly pruned in the autumn. Even the chestnuts had not all been planted and grown on ready for sale in the early summer.

‘I couldn’t do it all,’ Hester said stubbornly as she saw John look critically over the garden from the terrace. ‘I had no boys, I had no money. We all did what we could but this garden takes a dozen men to keep. Joseph and Johnnie and Frances and I couldn’t do it.’

‘Of course not, I understand,’ John said and he turned away to brood in the half-empty rarities room, and walk with his limping stride around the frozen garden.

Johnnie unpacked the Virginian saplings and left them in their barrels by the house wall. The ground was too hard to dig them in. One of them had died from the salt winds of the voyage but the other four looked strong and likely to put out green leaves when the weather improved.

‘What are they?’ Johnnie asked.

His father’s face lit up. ‘Tulip trees, they call them. They grow as round and shapely as a horse chestnut but they have great flowers, white, waxy flowers, as big as your head. I have seen them grow to such a height and breadth –’ He broke off. Suckahanna had showed it to him. ‘And these are maple trees.’

Johnnie rolled the big barrels of seeds and roots into the orangery and set to work unpacking them and planting them up in pots of sieved earth ready to be set outside and watered when the spring frosts ended. John watched him, disinclined to work himself, horribly quick to criticise when his son dropped a seed or was clumsy with a root.

‘Have you never been taught how to do this properly?’ he demanded irritably.

His son looked up at him, his resentment veiled. ‘I am sorry, sir,’ he said formally.

Hester appeared in the doorway and took in the scene in one quick glance. ‘Can I have a word with you, husband?’ she asked, her voice very even.

John walked towards her and she drew him out of earshot, into the garden.

‘Please don’t correct Johnnie so harshly,’ she said. ‘He’s not used to it, and indeed he is a good boy and a very hard worker.’

‘He is my son,’ John pointed out. ‘I shall teach him what is right.’

She bowed her head. ‘Of course,’ she said coldly. ‘You must do as you wish.’