‘Seven years is better than life. Maybe it will do him good in the long run. Piers has been cheating us all for years, especially you. I hate to think how Grandmama will take the news. He was always her favourite, apart from Aurelia, of course.’

‘Are you going to take her to Trevenor today?’

‘Yes. I promised that I would and I need to make sure that Martin Gibbs is doing his job well enough to leave him in charge.’

‘You don’t intend to stay and run the business yourself?’

‘I still know virtually nothing about running a clay mine or selling the product. I’m a soldier, Rosie. I doubt if I could ever be anything else, despite my gammy leg.’

‘What will you do, Alex? Will you live here?’

He took a seat beside her at the table. ‘That’s what I want most in the world, but it’s even more difficult now. I have your reputation to consider and I would never do anything to harm you or Dolly. Whether you like it or not you have had the responsibility for this old pile of rocks thrust upon you by Bertie’s absence. He’s the one who ought to give up the army and take over the running of Rockwood.’

‘The army is Bertie’s life.’

‘I know that, and it was mine until the accident changed things for ever.’ He reached out and caressed her cheek. ‘But if that hadn’t happened we would never have been reunited as we were in the château. It was just you and me then, Rosie.’

She smiled. ‘And Hester, of course.’

‘You know what I mean. But we can’t live like that here.’

A sudden stab of fear hit her as forcibly as a blow from a fist. ‘You’re leaving for good?’

‘There’s no other way. Last night I held you close, but that mustn’t happen again.’

‘You’re right, of course. But I don’t want you to leave. Where will you go?’

‘I might be able to get my job back at the War Office. Ideally I’d like to rejoin my regiment, but I doubt if they’ll take me back in the army.’

‘You’d risk your life in the Crimea to get away from me?’

‘Not you, my love. You will always be in my heart wherever I go. I want you to believe that, but if I stay here it’s not only your reputation that will be tarnished. Think of Dolly growing up in a home tainted by scandal. I love her as if she were my own child, and I wouldn’t want her to suffer because of something I had done.’