Edgar and I had been married six months. It was early autumn. Evening. I was sitting with Edgar in the window seat of the crimson drawing room. The sun’s dying rays cast a golden light on the gardens, where Nature had been tamed. Everything was pruned and clipped and cut so brutally that it made me shudder. The gardens held nothing that pleased my eye. Instead my gaze was drawn beyond the walls to the rise of hill and moor. Just over that ridge lay Wuthering Heights. Four miles distant but a world away now. I was wishing Heathcliff and I had never run through the dark that night, that we’d never stood and peered into this very window. I wished that we’d never frightened Edgar and his sister, that we’d never got caught. I was so sad, thinking how things might have turned out if we’d only followed a different path.

I was pregnant with Edgar’s child by then, though I did not know it yet, and it had made me dreadfully weary. My husband took my silence for calm and smiled tenderly at me while remarking on the beauty of the evening. I forced myself to return his smile. It seemed a huge effort to arrange my face so, but Edgar didn’t see how much it cost me and that made me even sadder.

Nelly came in to light the candles. I was dimly aware that she was on edge, as if something had upset her, but I cared nothing for Nelly’s troubles. As she turned to go, she muttered suddenly, “A person from Gimmerton wishes to see you, ma’am.”

“What does he want?” I said.

“I didn’t ask.”

A tradesman, I assumed. As mistress of a big house, I had an endless stream of dull, humdrum matters to deal with.

“Close the curtains then,” I told Nelly. “Bring up tea. I’ll be back in a moment, Edgar.”

I had no relish for the task ahead and walked slowly from the room, along the passage, through the kitchen and out of the back door. I could see no one in the courtyard and I was about to sigh with irritation, thinking that the wretched tradesman had not bothered to wait.

I inhaled a deep breath and – oh God! – my heart stopped beating.

Time halted.

The world tilted on its axis.

I could taste something in the air. It caught at the back of my throat – a scent so familiar it brought tears rushing to my eyes and a name bursting from my lips.

“Heathcliff?”

It could not be him. I had lost my mind – this was some delicious delusion. Oh, I wished it would last for ever! I spun around. There was nothing. Was he a ghost, then? Had Heathcliff died and come to take his leave?

“Heathcliff!” I called again. As if I had conjured him into being, he stepped from the shadows. There he stood.

Tall. Handsome. The man he was meant to be.