‘Doctor Player, you have been most helpful,’ she said. ‘May I offer you a glass of ratafia? In the parlour?’

He took a little bottle of medicine from his bag, I heard it clink against the brass fastening.

‘I shall leave this for her, she should take it when she wakes,’ he said. ‘I can tell Nurse on my way out. And as for her marriage with your son, I should risk no delay, Lady Clara. She is very ill indeed.’

They went out together, I heard them talking in low voices as they went down the stairs and then I was alone in the silence of my room with only the soft ticking of the clock and the hushed flickering of the flames in the fireplace.

I slid into a hot daze, and then I woke again seconds later, chilled to the bone. If I had any voice other than a rasping breath I should have laughed. I had thought my da a big enough villain but even he would have balked at marrying his child off to a dying girl. He was a rogue but he had given me the string and the clasp of gold because his dying wife had asked it of him. In our world we took the wishes of the dying seriously. In this Quality world where everything looked so fair and spoke so soft, it was those with land who gave the orders, who had the world as they wished. Nothing was sacred except fortune.

Lady Clara did not dislike me, I knew her well enough and I knew that had I been her daughter-in-law she would have liked me as well as she liked her own Maria – probably better. She neither liked nor disliked anyone very strongly, her main concern was with herself. In her eyes it was her duty to preserve her personal wealth, her family’s wealth and name, and to increase it wherever possible. Every great family on the land had made itself rich at the expense of hundreds of little ones. I knew that. But I never knew it so clearly as that evening when I watched the ceiling billow like a muslin cloth as my hot eyes played tricks on me, and I knew that I was in the care of a woman who cared more for my signature than for me.

What happened next was like a nightmare in a fever. I woke one time to find Emily washing my face with some cool scented water. I pulled away from her touch. My skin was so sore and so burning that it stung when she touched me. She said, ‘Beg pardon, m’m,’ in an undertone and made a few more ineffectual dabs at me.

I was sweating still – burning up with fever. My bedroom door beyond Emily opened, the white paintwork seemed to shimmer as I looked at it, and Lady Clara came in. Something about her face struck me, even in my heat-tranced muddle. She looked determined, her mouth was set, her eyes, as she glanced to the bed, were as hard as stones I think I shrank back a little and looked to Perry.

He was ill from one of his drinking bouts, his, face was pale, his hair curly and damp from a wash with cold water in an effort to sober in a hurry. But most of all I noticed his clothes. He usually wore riding dress in the mornings, or one of his silk dressing gowns over white linen and breeches. But this morning he was dressed immaculately in pale grey, with a new waistcoat of lavender and a pale grey jacket. In one hand he carried pale grey gloves.

I think it was the gloves which made something in my mind click like a clockwork mechanism. I heard my old voice, my worldly gypsy-child’s voice say: ‘Damn me, they’re going to marry me as I lie here dying!’ and a sense of absolute outrage made me sweat with temper and made my eyes go bright and dizzy.

Perry came to my bedside and looked down at me.

‘Not too close, Perry,’ his mother said.

‘I’m sorry about this, Sarah,’ he said. ‘I did not mean it to be like this for us. I really wanted us to marry and make each other happy.’

His anxious face was wavering as he spoke. That burst of temper had tired me.

‘You’re dying,’ he said bluntly. ‘And if I’m not married to you I’ll be ruined, Sarah. I have to have my fortune, please help me. It will mean nothing to you when you’re dead, after all.’

I turned my face away and closed my eyes. I was black with rage. I should do nothing for him, nothing for them, nothing.

‘She should have some laudanum to soothe her,’ I heard the doctor say. They were all here then. Emily’s nervous pulling at my shoulder raised me a little and I opened my mouth and let the draught slide down. At once I felt a golden glow inside me. It was far stronger than usual. It was strong enough to make me drunk with it. Clever Doctor Player was earning his fee – the Wideacre Dower House which belonged to me. My sense of anger and my panic-stricken scrabble for life eased away from me. My rasping breath grew quieter and steady. I was getting less air, but I minded less. I would have protested against nothing while the drug worked its magic on me. It all seemed a long way away and wonderfully unimportant. I felt easy; I liked Perry well enough, I did not like to see him look so afraid and so unhappy. He should have his fortune, it was only fair.

I smiled at him, and then I looked around the room, Maria’s room which I had disliked on sight, and yet would be the last thing I saw before I closed my eyes for the last time. They had put flowers on my writing desk, white lilies and carnations and the little flap was down ready for the ledger which the rector would bring. There was fresh ink and mended pens and a blotter and sealing wax. They were all ready. There were more flowers on the mantelpiece by the clock. The stuffy room was heavy with their perfume, I looked around at them and I laughed inside. They would do nicely for my funeral too. I guessed Lady Clara would choose white flowers for the wreath. She would never waste hot-house flowers in mid-winter.

There was a tap at the door and I heard Rimmings’ voice say: ‘The Reverend Fawcett, ma’am,’ and I heard a brisk tread into the room. Through half-closed eyelids I saw him go and make his bow to Lady Clara, and shake the doctor’s hand. He bowed to Perry then he approached my bed, halting a careful distance from me, and his smile was less assured.

‘Miss Lacey, I am sorry to see you so ill,’ he said. ‘Are you able to hear me? Do you know why I have come?’

Lady Clara came swiftly to my bedside, her silk morning dress rustling. She came to the other side of the bed and fearless for once, took my hand and put her other hand against my cheek as if she loved me dearly. I flinched. She knew I hated being touched, she was not a loving woman. All this was for show. I understood that. I had been a circus child.

‘Dear Sarah understands us, when her fever is abated,’ she said firmly. ‘This marriage has been her dearest wish since she and my son met last spring.’ She lowered her voice. ‘We none of us could bear to disappoint her,’ she said. ‘They have been betrothed for months, I could not deny her the right to marry before…’ she broke off as if her emotions were too much for her. My breath rasped in the silence. I had no voice to deny it, even if I had wished. Besides, the drug had robbed me of determination. I felt sleepy and lazy, idle and happy, as feckless as a child on a hot summer’s day. I did not care what they did.

The rector nodded and his dark shiny head caught the grey winter light from the window. ‘Is this your considered wish, Miss Lacey?’ he asked me directly.

Lady Clara looked at me, her wide blue eyes had a look of desperate pleading. If I found my voice and said ‘no’ her son would be ruined. I could hardly see her, I could hardly see the rector, or Perry. I was thinking of the high clean woods of Wideacre and how, when he was teaching me my way around the estate, Will used to ride with me. How very loud the birdsong was, in those afternoons, under the trees.

I thought of Will, and smiled.

They took it as consent.

‘Then I will begin,’ said the rector.

He did Lady Clara’s work for her. He began at the beginning and missed out nothing – as far as I knew, for it was the first wedding service I had ever heard all the way through in all my life. When we were chavvies she and I used to hang around the back of churches at wedding-time for sometimes kindly people would give us a penny, pitying our bare legs and thin clothes. More often they would give us a ha’pence to scout off and leave the church looking tidy. We never cared for their motive, we only wanted the coppers. I knew some parts of the service, I knew there were questions to be answered, and I puzzled my tired hot mind with whether I should say ‘no’ and stop this farce while I could. But I did not really care enough for anything, the drug came between me and the land.

When he came to the section where I should have said ‘I do’ he slipped through it, and my confused blinkings were consent enough. Lady Clara was at my side, reckless of infection, and when she said firmly, ‘She nodded,’ that was consent enough.

I was fair game. I seemed to be back in time on Wideacre and it was night. I was riding Sea wearily down the hill from the London road. At the ford at the foot of the hill he splashed in and then paused, bent his head and drank. I could smell the coldness of the water and the scent of the flowers on the air. In the banks along the river the primroses gleamed palely in the darkness. In the secret darkness of the wood an owl hooted twice.

‘I now pronounce thee man and wife,’ a voice said from somewhere. Sea lifted his head and water dripped from his chin, loud drops in the night-time stillness, then he waded through the swift water and heaved up the far bank and on to the road again.

Lady Clara was pushing something into my hands, a pen. I scrawled my name as she had taught me to do on the paper she held before me. In the darkness on the land Sea headed purposefully between two open wrought-iron gates and a shadow of a man came out from under the trees and looked up at me. It was a man who was out looking for poachers because he hated gin traps. It was Will Tyacke.