Mrs Hurte surged outwards rather than into the house, took John by the arm and drew him aside. Hester silently admired the tactical skill of her stepdaughter. This was generalship as gifted as Oliver Cromwell’s with his New Model Army. Mrs Hurte would change John’s mind in favour of the match in two sentences of complaints. Both Hester and Frances strained their ears to hear her do it.

‘You’re home too late,’ Mrs Hurte said reproachfully to John. ‘This is a bad business, and you too late to prevent it.’

‘I don’t see that it is bad,’ John remarked.

‘A man of fifty-six and a girl of seventeen?’ Mrs Hurte demanded. ‘What life can they have together?’

‘A good one.’ John gestured to the pretty house and the tracery of carefully pruned rose branches. ‘A boy of her own age could not hope to give her so much.’

‘She should have been kept at her home.’

‘In these times?’ John asked. ‘Where safer than beside the Tower?’

‘And now expecting a baby?’

‘The older the bridegroom, the sooner the better,’ John rejoined swiftly. ‘Why should you be so against it, Mother? It was a marriage for love. Your own daughter Jane had nothing less.’

She bit her lip at that. ‘Jane brought a good dowry and you two were well matched,’ she said.

‘I will see that Frances is properly dowered when peace is restored and I can sell the Virginia plants and restore the rarities to their proper place,’ John said firmly. ‘I am trading in a small way with the West Indies and I expect to see a profit on that very soon. And Frances is well-matched. Alexander is a good and faithful friend to this family and she loves him. Why should she not marry the man of her choice in these times when men and women are making their own choices every day? When this whole war has been fought for men and women to be free?’

Mrs Hurte smoothed her sombre gown. ‘I don’t know what Mr Hurte would have said.’

John smiled. ‘He would have liked the house, and the business. Cooper for the ordnance in the middle of a war? Don’t tell me that he wouldn’t have loved that! Alexander is earning twelve pounds a year and that’s before he draws his allowances! It’s a fine match for the daughter of a man who has little to sell and most of his stock in hiding.’

Hester and Frances exchanged a hidden smile, turned and went into the house.

‘That was clever,’ Hester said approvingly to her stepdaughter.

Frances gave her a most unladylike wink. ‘I know,’ she said smugly.

Spring 1646