He nodded. ‘Very well then,’ he said. ‘I have written you and Lady Clara a note to tell you how much you can spend a quarter, and the bank you can draw on for funds, and my London and Bristol offices. I shall like to see you every month or so wherever you are, whether London or here. And if you should change your mind about the Haverings you must write to me at once and I shall come and take you away.’

I nodded, ignoring the feeling that I was making a rather serious mistake. ‘All right,’ I said tightly.

‘If you should change your mind, Sarah,’ he said kindly, ‘if you should change your mind after a little of that life and want to come back to Wideacre, your home is always here for you, remember. We can find someone you would enjoy living with here. You do not have to go to the Haverings.’

I shook my head. ‘I like them,’ I said defiantly. ‘I am not your sort of person, Mr Fortescue. You would not understand. Their life, their society life, will suit me very well.’

‘I am sorry for it,’ he said gently, then he gave a little bow. He did not offer to kiss my hand as he had done once before, and he left the room.

I sat in silence for a while. I supposed I should feel triumphant for I had taken on a powerful man, and the manager of my fortune, and come out best, come out with my own way. But it did not feel like a victory. It felt instead as if I had been offered a little gold but had preferred to take false coin. I felt around my neck where I still wore, out of habit, the string with the gold clasps. And I wondered what Celia would have made of me, a vagrant granddaughter. And what my long-dead mama Julia would think if she could see me rejecting the man she had loved and turning my back on the land she called home.

* * *

I was silent and blue-devilled for that night only. The very next day, Lady Clara swept down on to Wideacre Hall, exchanged documents and addresses with Mr Fortescue, ordered my bags packed, and took me away. I only saw James Fortescue once more, when he rode over to bid me farewell the day before he went back to Bristol. He did not even cross the threshold but held his horse and stood on the terrace till I went out to join him.

‘Will Tyacke will call on you tomorrow and take you out riding,’ he said as we stood on the terrace. ‘It is my wish, Sarah, that you ride with him and learn all you can about the estate. I know your heart is set on London and your Season but Lady Clara herself will tell you that you can be in the best of society and still know what is grown in your fields.’

I nodded. ‘I want to learn,’ I said. I did not say, ‘So when I am of age I can make changes,’ but that thought hung in the air between us.

‘Maybe when you have seen how things are run on Wideacre and how things are run here, you will come to see things my way,’ Mr Fortescue said gently.

‘Maybe,’ I said.

He put out his hand and I held out mine, in the way I had been taught. I had already learned not to pull away. Lady Clara had scolded me for being missish about another person’s touch, and had forced me to stand still while she circled me and patted my cheeks, my shoulders, my arms, and messed my hair. ‘There!’ she had said at the end of the circuit. ‘I don’t expect you to drape yourself over your friends but you are a girl, and girls must be available for petting.’

So it was no hardship to step close to Mr Fortescue and wait for his kiss on my forehead, or even on my hand. But he did neither. He shook hands with me as if I were a young gentleman, and his grip was very firm and friendly.

‘You have my address,’ he said turning his back and getting on his horse. ‘And whatever you think of my trusteeship you should remember that I am your friend and I have tried to do the best I can, for both you and the land. If you are in any need at all you should send for me and I will come at once.’

I smiled wryly at that, thinking of the years when I had gone hungry. Now I was being offered help when I lived in a house with twenty servants and had four meals a day.

‘I think I can care for myself,’ I said.

He settled his reins and looked down at me. ‘We differ on that, too,’ he said gently. ‘I think you have tried to care for yourself for too long. I think that you have tried so hard to care for yourself that you have shut up all your pain inside you, so that no one can ease it for you, or comfort you. I should dearly have loved to see you settled here where you were cared for, where you could have had something of the childhood you missed.’

He tipped his hat to me, and to Lady Clara who waved a lacetrimmed handkerchief to him from the parlour window, and then he clicked to his horse and rode away down the drive.

I watched him go, his square shoulders and slightly bowed head. I watched him go and knew that if my real mama Julia had been able to choose, he would have been her husband. If she had lived, he would have been my papa. I watched him ride away and leave me with the Haverings and I refused to hear what he said about shutting my pain inside myself. I would not acknowledge any loss. I would not feel the loss of him. I refused to feel bereft.

‘Now,’ Lady Clara said as she joined me on the terrace and we watched his departing back. ‘Now, my girl, you are going to start work.’

I laughed at that, for I had known work that Lady Clara could never have dreamed of. But I laughed a good deal less once the work started.

Of course it was never hard, not like trapeze work or horsetraining. But it was wearying in a way that those skills had not been. I found I was as tired in the evenings as if I had been working hard each day, and I could not think what ailed me. Lady Clara never stopped watching me, she had me walk across the room a dozen times, she had me sit in a chair and get up again, over and over. She ordered the carriage out into the yard, and a phaeton and a curricle, and sent me up and down the steps into each of them time after time, until I could engage not to tread on the hem of my gown, or bang my bonnet on the carriage roof.

At mealtimes we dined quite alone. Not even Perry ate with us; the servants laid the table and were then dismissed. Then patiently, like a warder with an idiot, she taught me how to hold my knife and, at the same time, to hold my fork, how to put them down on the plate between mouthfuls, how to drink from my glass only when my mouth was empty so there was no greasy stain left on the rim. How to talk while I ate, and how to cope with chicken wings and chop bones without seizing them up and gnawing and sucking at them. She taught me to wipe the tips of my fingers on my napkin, she taught me to balance it on my knees so that it did not slide to the floor. How much wine to drink, and when it was polite to refuse or polite to accept.

All the time, every minute of the day, she corrected my speech. By just raising one of her arched eyebrows she warned me that I was talking Rom, talking rough, or talking bawdy. Over and over again I would try to tell her something and she would make me try the phrase, like a horse at a difficult jump, until I could get it out with the right words and the right inflexion.

‘Fortunately, some of the best ladies in society talk like farm-hands,’ she said acidly. ‘And a good few can read and write no more than you. But still you will learn, Sarah. You are coming along fast.’

I could not help but respect her. She never so much as flickered one of her long-lashed eyes, whatever I did. Whatever the mistakes I made – and I was too ignorant even to know how much she must be offended – she never even looked surprised. One evening, after an especially hard day when she had been trying to teach me to pick flowers in the garden and arrange them in a glass, I had burst out:

‘Lady Clara, this is hopeless. It is driving me half mad, and you must be fashed to death of me. I’ll never learn it. I’ve started too late. You are trying to school me in tricks I should’ve learned when I was learning to walk. I am too old for them now. I’ll go back to my own place and I’ll get Mr Fortescue’s old lady to live with me. I’ll never learn all I ought, and you must have had a bellyful of teaching me.’

‘Don’t say bellyful,’ she said instantly. ‘Or fashed.’ Then she paused. ‘No, my dear,’ she said. ‘I am not weary of it, and I think you are learning well. I am not disposed to give it all up. I think you will be a credit to me, to all of us. I want us to go on. I am pleased with your progress.’

‘But Lady Clara,’ I said. ‘The Season starts in autumn. I shall never be ready in time.’

She leaned back her head on the parlour chair. We were in the Blue Parlour and the colour of the upholstery matched her eyes as if it had been chosen with her colouring in mind. It probably had.

‘You must leave that decision to me,’ she said. ‘I am your sponsor into this new world, you have to trust my judgement. I shall tell you what is best for you, and I shall tell you when you are ready.’

‘And then what?’ I asked baldly. ‘When I am ready, when I am introduced into your society? What happens then? What do you think happens then?’

She raised her eyebrows, her blue eyes were very distant, very cold. ‘Why, you amuse yourself,’ she said. ‘You are the heiress to a considerable estate. You are sponsored by a woman of immaculate credentials (that’s me) and you will be squired by the best-looking young man in London, a peer of the realm himself (that, God help us, is Perry). If you want to be in Society, you will have reached the pinnacle of your ambitions.’

‘And then what?’ I pressed her.

She gave me a weary cold smile. ‘Then you decide, my dear,’ she said. ‘Most young women marry the best offer, the highest bidder. Their parents judge for them, their elders advise. But you have no parents to judge for you, and the circles where I will take you would never receive Mr Fortescue. You are your own mistress. If you fall head over heels in love I suppose you could marry your choice, whether he is footman or groom. No one would stop you.’