A floorboard behind me creaked and a broad arm came around me and the man who hated gin traps lifted my thick mop of curls and kissed the nape of my neck.

‘Mmmm,’ he said by way of greeting, and then his other arm came around me and I leaned back against him and closed my eyes, and let the sunlight and the cool morning, and the greenness of the fields and the warmth of his body against my cool skin wash over me in a great wave of delight.

He slid his hand down my flank and cupped one rounded buttock gently in his hand, then without hesitation his hand went between my legs from behind and his fingers, skilled and knowledgeable, parted my gentle flesh and found the core of the little maze of my body, and stroked me so that I sighed again and again until, still holding me with my back pressed against his warm chest, he entered me and I clung to the window-sill and rested my head against the cool of the window frame and thought for one moment, ‘I have never never felt such delight.’

Then we tumbled down together on the hard floorboards, giving and taking pleasure, moving and seeking, demanding and contented in a great frenzy of happiness until I sighed out loud – and then there was a silence and nothing but the birdsong and the wood-pigeons calling in the silence and the sun was very warm on my shoulder and on my rapt face.

We lay very still, and then Will reached up to the bed and drew me up too. I sat naked on his bare thighs and felt the pleasure of being close and naked like innocent animals. He looked more like a fox cub than ever, his eyes brown and smiling and sleepy. He was radiant with love, I could feel the glow of it on his skin, all over.

‘I hope you’re not going to expect that every morning,’ he said plaintively. ‘I’m a working man, you know.’

I laughed delightedly. ‘And I’m a working woman,’ I said. ‘I must go into Chichester this very day and see about leasing the Hall. It would produce a good income for the corporation, and a nice couple, a London merchant, or a retired admiral or someone like that, would be good neighbours to have.’

‘It’ll be odd: them coming to a cottage to pay rent,’ Will offered. He stood up and stretched so that his head brushed the low ceiling. ‘Odd for them to see you living here.’

‘I have low tastes,’ I said lightly and I kissed his warm chest and rubbed my face against the soft hairs.

I pulled on my breeches and Gerry’s best shirt. ‘I’ll need some more clothes, too,’ I said.

‘I knew it,’ Will said gloomily. ‘Can’t you make do with hand-me-downs?’

‘I’ll work in breeches,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘But I’ll have one – no, two! – dresses for best!’

There was a clatter from the room next door.

‘Is that the chavvies?’ I asked. I was alert at once. I could not help but fear them, Becky’s daughters, the children Will had chosen to raise.

Will nodded, and the next thing the door burst open and all three of them were upon him swarming all over him like puppies.

‘And look who’s here!’ Will exclaimed as he got clear.

They all three turned to look at me, six unwinking eyes surveyed me from head to bare feet.

‘Is this Miss Sarah?’ the oldest one asked uncertainly, taking in my rumpled hair and my breeches.

‘She was Miss Sarah,’ Will said. ‘But now she has come to live with us. She’s finished with living in London, and with grand folks. She’s my true love and she’s come home to me.’

The middle one, very ready to believe in princesses coming to cottages, came forward and put her hand out to me. ‘And will you be my ma and comb my hair without pulling?’ she asked.

I took a deep breath. ‘Yes I will,’ I said bravely, and took her hand. Will beamed at me across their heads.

‘Will can be your da, and I’ll be your ma,’ I said plunging in. ‘But you’ll have to help me go on, I was never anyone’s ma before.’

‘She’s a circus girl,’ Will said impressively. ‘She can dance on horseback and she can swing on a trapeze. There’s not many little girls who have a ma who can do that. You come on downstairs and she can tell you all about it while I make the porridge!’

They tumbled downstairs in a rush at that offer and while they spooned porridge into their mouths and Will made strong hot tea for them I told them a little about Robert and Jack and learning to ride bareback and the falls. Then I told them about winning Sea and they all rushed upstairs to pull on their woollen stockings and their clogs under their nightshirts so that they could go out at once and meet Sea.

‘Will you do circus tricks for us here?’ the oldest one pressed me. ‘Will you teach us how to dance on horseback, and we can all be in a circus?’

Will laughed aloud at my aghast face.

‘Nay,’ he said. ‘Her travelling days are over. She may teach you some tricks for fun, but her main work should be training horses for people to buy.’

‘To dance with?’ asked the littlest one, eyes and mouth round.

‘No,’ I said smiling. ‘To ride. But I will show you how I used to dance bareback if we ever have a horse who will let me do it. Sea would not stand for it for one moment!’

Will sent them upstairs then to get dressed in earnest and wash their faces in time for school. Then he and I walked together to take them to school and went hand in hand down the village street to bid good-day to other people of Acre and to tell them that I had come home at last.

It was a busy couple of days. There was Gerry and Emily to settle in with two familes down the village street. Emily bloomed like a rose in the countryside but Gerry was surly and cross until he went into Midhurst and got himself a job at the Spread Eagle, then he was very full of bragging to the other ostlers about London ways. He brought home a good wage, and he paid a share of it into the common fund for the corporation. He seemed settled, and Will and I repaid him our debt.

I went, as I had promised, to Chichester and the Hall was offered for rent. We would get a handsome sum for it, the agents thought. I spoke to them before I went to the dressmakers for new clothes so they had to deal with me in my breeches. It was to their credit that they never so much as glanced at me. They called me Lady Havering throughout and I did not know how to stop them. They never so much as mentioned Perry, nor the fact that the name on the deeds of the Hall was now ‘The corporation of Acre, manager Will Tyacke’. But I knew that once I had set so much as a step out of the office, the tale would be all around Sussex – aye and Hampshire too, by tea-time.

I had to go and see the vicar and tell him how everything was changed, and the world upside down for him. He could not comprehend why a rich woman could choose to be poor. He could not understand why I should wish to live in a cottage and rent out the Hall. Finally I told him bluntly that though I was married to Lord Havering I would never live with him, and that Will was my lover. He had been trying to maintain a pretence that I was living in Will’s cottage as a rich woman’s whim. But when I said outright that Will and I loved each other, and loved the land, and would live here together for the rest of our lives, he went white with shock, and rang the bell for me to be shown the door.

‘I’ll never be able to go to church,’ I said to Will that evening. I was sitting on the settle, skinning a rabbit with my sleeves rolled up, as he cooked the supper. ‘I’m a scarlet woman. I’ll never be able to take the chavvies in to say their prayers, not even sat at the back. Vicar’ll look badly at you too.’

Will turned, a wooden spoon in his hand and licked it with relish before he smiled and answered me. ‘Small lack,’ he said. ‘But he’d best remember which side his bread is buttered.’

When I looked blank he beamed at me. ‘You’ve made the village into a squire!’ he said grinning. ‘We own the living. If he’s impertinent I think we can refuse him his wages, certainly don’t need to pay the Wideacre Hall’s share of his tithe. If you don’t fancy having a vicar we can leave the post empty after he is gone. You can persuade the whole village to turn pagan if you wish.’

I laughed in return. ‘I had forgotten!’ I said delightedly. ‘But I wouldn’t do it! The whole place is pagan enough already! But I had forgotten we own the living, the vicarage and all!’

‘Aye,’ Will said, and turned himself to the important task of game stew.

The only thing which fretted me at all in those busy spring days was the thought of Mr Fortescue. I spoke of him one morning, when the letters for the estate came in and there was no reply from him. Will took a handful of my curls and gently shook my head. ‘He’s a good man,’ he said softly. ‘He only ever wanted your happiness. He’ll be shocked, but I reckon he’ll take it. He was deep in the dismals when he knew you were set on marriage to Lord Peregrine. And I never heard a word from him that you’d been forced to it. It shook him to the marrow, he was too pained even for speech. He’d think that anything was better for you than that. I wager he’ll be glad enough that you’ve run away from that Havering crowd. And we have Wideacre safe. Safe for ever, safe for the corporation. He’ll be glad enough of that.’

I nodded. And Will was right. Only a couple of days later, when I was turning over the earth in the front garden with Lizzie helping and getting in the way with a spoon in her grimy hands, and mud on her face, the post-boy came down the street with a letter addressed to Lady Sarah Havering, care of Will Tyacke, which I thought a masterly compromise between postal accuracy and scandal.

James Fortescue was brief and to the point: ‘I am more happy than I can say to know that you two have found happiness together. Please do not think of the opinions of Society. You are building a new world on Wideacre, you cannot expect to be welcomed by all those who live in the old. You have my blessings on your brave attempt to break free.’