He paused for a moment. ‘Do you think we could start from the beginning again?’ he asked. ‘With your love for me and me learning to love you?’

Her colour deepened and he saw the little white bow at the neck of her nightgown trembling as her breath came faster. ‘Do you think you could learn to love me?’

John released her hands, put his lips against her throat and then gently untied the fluttering bow. ‘I know I could,’ he said; knowing at least that he hoped he might.

At the end of April, Alexander Norman sent a note to the Ark.

I write in haste to send you urgent news. The king has ridden off from Oxford and left the court there. No-one knows where he is bound but this must mean the end of the war. He has no more than a dozen gentlemen with him. He must be fleeing to join the queen in France. Thank God at last it is over.

John took the note through to Hester and laid it down before her where she was working on the household accounts at the drawing desk in the bay of the Venetian windows in the rarities room.

‘So it is all over for him at last,’ he said.

She glanced quickly up at him. ‘You must be glad that it has finished. Just think of getting the country back to normal.’

‘Normal!’ he exclaimed. ‘Who will be king if he is in exile? How will the country be run?’

‘By Parliament!’ she said impatiently. ‘I thought that was what they were fighting for!’

‘I can’t help but think of him, without the queen, riding out, knowing he has lost everything.’

‘Many other people have lost everything,’ Hester observed grimly. ‘And their sons and brothers and husbands too. Another two years of this and Johnnie would have gone. He’s been wild to die in the king’s service ever since the war started.’

John nodded and turned to leave the room. ‘I just think of him,’ he said. ‘Riding out on his own. I hope to God he has someone with him who knows the way to Dover.’

‘Newark!’ John exclaimed and looked at Alexander Norman in complete disbelief. ‘What the devil is he doing in Newark? I thought he was going to France!’

‘He rode around,’ Alexander said. ‘You have to admire the style of it. He came within an hour’s ride of London and apparently thought of riding in to test the mood of the people.’

John gasped in horror.

‘And then he rode to King’s Lynn, and then on northwards to Newark.’

‘What the devil is he doing?’