‘I’m all dirty,’ Hester said, stepping back from his proffered hand.

‘And I smell of horse,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I am on my way from my home in Yorkshire. I couldn’t resist calling in to see if my tulips were ready.’

‘They are.’ Hester gestured to the three bulging sacks at the corner of the terrace. ‘I was going to send them to your London home.’

‘I thought you might. That’s why I have come. I am on my way to Oxford and I wanted the special tulips there. I shall plant them in pots and have them in my rooms.’

Hester nodded. ‘I am sorry you will not meet my husband,’ she said. ‘He is in London today. He has gone into trade in a small way with a West India planter and he is sending some goods out.’

‘I am sorry not to meet him,’ John Lambert said pleasantly. ‘But I hardly dare to delay. I am to be governor of Oxford while my health mends.’

Hester risked a quick glance at him. ‘I had heard you were ill – I was sorry.’

He gave her his warm, intimate smile. ‘I am well enough, and the work I set myself to do is all but done. Pray God we will have peace again, Mrs Tradescant, and in the meantime I can sit down in Oxford and make sure that the colleges get back into some kind of order, and their treasures are safe.’

‘These are hard times to be a guardian of beautiful things.’

‘Better times coming soon,’ he whispered. ‘May I take my tulips now?’

‘Of course. Shall you want them all at Oxford?’

‘Send the Flame tulips to my London house, my wife can plant them for me there. But the rare tulips and the Violetten I must have beside me.’

‘If you breed a true violet one then do let us know,’ Hester said, gesturing to Joseph to take the sack of labelled rare tulips out to the wagon waiting in the street beyond the garden gate. ‘We would buy one back from you.’

‘I shall present it to you,’ John Lambert said grandly. ‘A mark of respect to another guardian of treasure.’ He glanced down the garden and saw Johnnie. ‘And how’s the cavalry officer these days?’

‘Very disheartened,’ Hester said. ‘Would you let him make his bow to you?’

John Lambert cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted: ‘Ho! Tradescant!’

Johnnie looked up at the shout and came up from the tulip beds at a run, skidded to a halt, and dipped in a bow.

‘Major!’ he said.

‘Good day.’

Johnnie beamed at him.

‘You must have been disappointed in recent months, I am sorry for it,’ John Lambert said gently.

‘I can’t see what went wrong,’ Johnnie said passionately.