He took the pot in his arms, careless of his velvet jacket and the rich lace at his throat. ‘What a beauty!’ he said. ‘The petals are like a mirror!’

‘And here comes my husband,’ Hester remarked, curbing her irritation that John was pushing a barrow up from the seed beds in his shirtsleeves with his hat set askew on his head.

Lambert carefully replaced the pot on its stand.

‘Mr Tradescant.’

John set down the barrow, came up the steps to the terrace, and bowed to their guest. ‘I won’t shake hands. I’m dirty.’

‘I’m admiring your tulips.’

John nodded. ‘Any luck with your own? Hester told me you were going to try with the Violetten?’

‘I have been too much away from home to select the blooms for breeding them to a true colour. But my wife tells me they made a pretty show in shades of mauve and purple.’

Further down the orchard Hester saw Johnnie glance up the avenue and then, when he saw that it was Lambert, pick up his watering pot and with assumed nonchalance stroll up the path under the dark sticky buds of the horse chestnut trees.

‘Good day to you,’ General Lambert said.

Johnnie skidded to a halt and gave a little bow.

‘General Lambert is looking for something for his father-in-law’s garden in Kensington,’ Hester said to her husband. ‘I am tempting him with the new tulip.’

‘Isn’t it fine?’ John said. ‘It’s got a sheen on it like the coat of a bay horse. Does your father-in-law have fruit trees? And you could risk transplanting roses if we do it at once.’

‘I’d like some roses,’ Lambert said. ‘He has some Rosamund roses already. D’you have any in pure white?’

‘I have a Rosa alba,’ John said. ‘And an offshoot which I have grown from it with very thick petals.’

‘Scented?’

‘A very light scent, very sweet. And I have a Virginian rose, there’s only two of them in the whole country.’

‘And we have a white dog rose,’ Johnnie volunteered. ‘Since you’re a Yorkshireman, sir.’

Lambert laughed. ‘That’s a pretty thought, I thank you.’ He glanced at Johnnie and then looked again. ‘Hey now, young man, have you been sick? You’re not as bright as when I last saw you.’

There was an awkward silence. ‘He was in the war,’ Hester said honestly.

Lambert took in the slope of Johnnie’s shoulders and the droop of his fair head. ‘Where was that, lad?’

‘At Colchester.’

The general nodded. ‘A bad business,’ he said shortly. ‘You must be sorry for how it all ended; but thank God we should have peace now, at last.’

Johnnie shot a swift look at him. ‘You weren’t there for his trial,’ he remarked.

Lambert shook his head. ‘I was doing my duty elsewhere.’

‘Would you have tried him?’