He earned a brief smile for that and then she was gone, her back very straight, her head very high. John turned his attention to the mystery guest who had managed, in so short a time, to mortally offend his daughter.

‘I beg your pardon,’ the man said. ‘She was so simply dressed I thought she was your housemaid.’ He glanced at John’s own muddy homespun breeches, linen shirt, leather waistcoat and scratched dirty hands.

‘We are gardeners,’ John said gently. ‘It’s a dirty job. It rather calls for simple dress.’

‘Of course –’ the man said hastily. ‘I did not mean to upset Miss Tradescant.’

John nodded, not bothering to correct him.

‘There are far too many women, young and old, trying to meddle in the affairs of men,’ the man said in an effort to please. ‘You do well to keep her at home and working in her place. The country would be a better place for us all if women were restrained from thinking and bearing witness, and praying, and preaching and all the rest of it. The country will be a better place when the women are back in the kitchens again and everyone back in their proper place. I like to see a young lady dressed as plain as a kitchen maid. It shows she has proper humility.’

‘Your business with me, sir?’ John prompted. ‘I have a rose garden to see to, and petals which have to go fresh to the perfumiers.’

The man glanced around the empty terrace as if he thought they might be overheard.

‘Can we talk here?’

‘You can talk anything that is fit and legal,’ John said shortly.

‘My name is Mordaunt. I come from the king.’

John nodded, saying nothing.

‘Viscount John Mordaunt,’ the gentleman emphasised, as if John were likely to be swayed by a title.

John nodded again.

‘There is to be a rising. The country cannot be ruled by a council of nobodies and a parliament of nothings. We have been waiting our time, and now the king has named the day.’

‘I don’t want to know,’ John said abruptly.

‘We are counting on you to secure Lambeth for the king,’ Mordaunt said earnestly. ‘I know where your sympathies lie. You mustn’t think that this is a little conspiracy which will get us nowhere but the Tower. This is to be a great uprising on the first day of August. And your part will be to secure Lambeth and this side of the river. You are to secure the horse ferry, and then extend downriver.’

‘I don’t want to know,’ John repeated. ‘My sympathies are with peace and order. I won’t recognise Charles Stuart until he is crowned king of England. I lost a son –’ He broke off.

‘Then you will want to be avenged!’ Mordaunt said, as if that clinched the matter. ‘Your son fought for the king, did he?’