‘What will you do?’ she asked. ‘You’re rather alone. Unless you have taken a fancy to the little Bristol trader.’

‘I haven’t,’ I said. I felt a moment’s discomfort at my disloyalty. But then I remembered the quiet house and the noise of my drinking soup and my heart hardened. ‘I don’t know what to do. Mr Fortescue talks of teachers of elocution and dancing, and tells me I should have a lady companion.’ I grimaced. ‘Then there’s the land,’ I said. ‘I need to know what’s being done on it and yet there is no one to ask but Mr Fortescue and Will Tyacke.’

Lady Havering poured the chocolate and then sat back and looked at me again. ‘Do you disapprove of his guardianship of your land?’ she asked, her voice very neutral.

‘Yes I do,’ I said firmly. ‘It is being run for the gain of the working people, that means the Hall makes a loss every time we sow and reap. The village is doing well out of it, but the estate gets a share of what it ought to have entire.’

Lady Havering nodded grimly. ‘I’ve not seen the estate books,’ she said. ‘But I have eyes in my head and I have seen them undersell me in the Midhurst market for season after season until the price of food has been forced down and held down. It’s revolutionary! It destroys the value of property.’

I nodded.

‘How old are you?’ she asked.

‘Sixteen or thereabouts,’ I said.

She nodded and tapped her teeth with her long fingernail. ‘Five years until you can run the estate for yourself,’ she said softly. ‘A long time to have to endure Mr Fortescue’s amateur farming.’

‘A long time to live with a lady companion,’ I said with feeling. ‘Life with a lady companion in that house, with Mr Fortescue coming to stay.’

Lady Havering nodded, as if she had come to some decision. ‘Not to be borne,’ she said briskly. ‘Drink your chocolate up, child, and I will come with you to see Mr Fortescue. I’ll take you under my wing, you need not fear the lady companion. I’ve launched one daughter successfully into the world and I can certainly do it again with you. And you won’t shock me. Your lady companion would probably pop off with spasms within a week!’

I obediently raised my cup but I did not drink, I looked at her over the rim.

‘What do you mean, “take me under your wing”?’ I asked.

She gave me one of her rare sweet smiles. ‘I will look after you,’ she said pleasantly. ‘You can come and stay here and I will teach you the things you need to know to be a lady in society. When the Season starts again I will bring you out, introduce you to the people you need to know. I will choose your dresses for you and teach you how to dance, how to eat, how to behave. You are my cousin, you have no family but me. It is fitting.’

I did not stop to think that Lady Havering did not look like a woman who was burdened with a sense of duty. I put my cup down with a clatter.

‘Would you do that for me?’ I demanded. ‘For me?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I will.’

I said nothing for a moment and she was silent too. Then I spoke, and the delight had gone from my voice.

‘What for?’ I said shrewdly. ‘What d’you get out of this?’

She poured herself a fresh cup and she chuckled. ‘Very good, Sarah,’ she said. ‘Yes, I do “get something out of this”. Firstly, I irritate your precious Mr Fortescue which will be a great delight to me. Secondly, while I am chaperoning you I shall charge my dress bills to your estate which can very well afford them, whereas I cannot. Thirdly, by doing this I am making it more likely that you are not infected with Wideacre Jacobinism which is something I cannot afford to have on my doorstep. The more Mr Fortescue leaves you well alone, the sooner you can get the estate back into order.’

‘You would teach me to read the accounts and understand what is going on?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You can hire my manager yourself and use him to check this madness on Wideacre. You can stop it going any further by refusing to hand over the land to the village as they want. And as soon as you are of age you can turn it into the profitable place it by rights should be.’

I spat in my palm and reached it out to her across the little table. ‘Done,’ I said.

The pleasant smile on her face never flickered. She spat in her own and shook hands. ‘Done,’ she repeated. Then her face changed and she turned my hand over, palm up, so that she could see the deep hard lines and the callouses and rope burns.

‘Gracious me,’ she said. ‘Turning you into a young lady will be no sinecure. We will start with your hands! Whatever have you been doing to get them into this state? I doubt we’ll ever get them soft.’

I looked at my palms for a moment. The bulge at the thumb and at the base of the fingers was as tough as old leather. I thought of the reins I had held and the ropes I had pulled and the trapeze bar.

‘I was working,’ I said, taciturn.

She nodded. ‘You needn’t tell me,’ she said. ‘As long as no one from your past comes pestering me, then it is none of my affair and it can stay that way. But tell me one thing: Is there anyone who would recognize you or follow you?’

‘No,’ I said. Robert Gower would let me go. Jack would run a mile rather than face me.

‘Did you commit any crimes?’ she asked bluntly.

I reviewed the poaching and the gambling, the horse-breaking and the little cheats. I looked up and her eyes were on me.

‘Nothing spectacular,’ I said.

She threw back her head and laughed at that and the bows on her cap bobbed.

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Nothing spectacular. I shall ask no more. Have you told Mr Fortescue all this?’

I shrugged. ‘A little,’ I said. ‘Enough to prove to him who I am. Nothing more.’

She nodded as if she were pleased. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘As your duenna I shall make rules for your behaviour. The first is that you will wear gloves all the time, and the other is even more important.’

I waited.

‘You’ll speak of your past to no one,’ she said bluntly. ‘What you have told me you will tell no one else. When you move in society we shall say merely that you were living quietly in the country with humble people before you were found by the trustees. Your background will be obscure but deeply respectable. Have you got that?’

I nodded. ‘Obscure but deeply respectable,’ I said turning the words over in my mouth. ‘Yes, I’ve got that.’

She shot a sideways smile at me. ‘Good,’ she said.

There was a tap at the door and she turned her head and called: ‘Enter!’

Lord Peregrine put his head tentatively around the door. ‘It’s me, Mama,’ he said.

‘Excellent, you can come in,’ she said briskly.

Bathed and dressed he was radiantly beautiful, as lovely as a girl. He was wearing a dark blue riding coat with pale tight breeches and high patent-leather hessian boots. His blond hair was tightly curled and still wet from his bath. His eyes were a limpid blue and only the violet shadows under them showed that he had missed a night’s sleep. His mother looked at him coolly.

‘You’ll do,’ she said.

Lord Peregrine flashed an engaging smile at her. ‘Why, thank you, Mama!’ he said as if at a great compliment and then he stood quite still, as if he were awaiting orders.

He soon had them. He was to escort me back to Wideacre Hall and to take his mama’s card to announce that she would visit Mr Fortescue that afternoon. He was to await a reply but to stay no longer than twenty minutes, and he was to drink nothing but tea or coffee.

‘I don’t know what sort of table you think he keeps there, Mama,’ Lord Peregrine said pleasantly. ‘But he doesn’t look to me like the sort of chap who offers you champagne at ten in the morning.’

She smiled grimly. ‘I don’t doubt it,’ she said. ‘And then you’ll come straight home.’

‘Yes, Mama,’ he said, his smile unblemished.

I took it that I was dismissed and I rose to leave. Lady Clara shot a quick measuring glance at me.

‘Properly dressed, you would be beautiful,’ she said. ‘I’ll have the Chichester dressmaker come out tomorrow. You will come to me then and be fitted for new clothes.’

I nodded. ‘Thank you, Lady Clara,’ I said politely.

She held out her hand to me and raised her cheek for a kiss and then I managed to get myself past the delicate little table and over the pale-coloured rugs without accident. I don’t think I breathed easy until the door was shut behind us, and Lord Peregrine was leading the way back down the gallery.

‘Taking you in hand, is she?’ he asked.

‘Aye,’ I said.

He nodded, and paused at the top of the wooden staircase to look at me. ‘Well that’s good,’ he said encouragingly. ‘She’ll get you a girl’s dress. I was thinking about it while I was having my bath and I couldn’t think where to get one. I’m glad about that.’

I chuckled. ‘I’m glad too,’ I said.

‘And you’ll be coming here again!’ he said. ‘That’s grand. I was afraid it was going to be awfully slow until I went to London, but you and I can ride together and I can show you around.’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘No trouble at all,’ he said cordially and then he took my arm and we strolled across the marble hall as if we were young brothers, as if I had been born and bred in such a place, as if we were best friends.

23

Peregrine escorted me home riding a showy hunter from his mama’s stables. Mr Fortescue came out on the terrace when he saw us riding up the drive and I saw by his face that he was not pleased to see me with Perry.

He invited him inside and offered him a dish of tea. Perry rolled his eyes at me and graciously accepted. He sat in the parlour with one eye on the clock, delivered his mama’s message – word-perfect – and then left as the clock ticked precisely to the twenty minutes.