Olivia laughed. ‘Yet you wish to run away from him? Oh, Deb!’

Deb drank some of her cooling tea. ‘I find it disturbing to be so attracted to a man whose way of life I utterly reject,’ she said.

‘I imagine,’ Olivia said shrewdly, ‘that you find it disturbing to be attracted to a man at all when you swore you would never trust one ever again.’

Deb shrugged awkwardly. ‘At the time-after Neil’s betrayal-I could not imagine ever finding a man I could like.’ She looked out across the cool green acres of the garden. ‘Now I am not so naïve as to believe I could not have feelings for someone, but…’ she frowned ‘…I could never act on them.’

‘Never?’ Olivia looked quizzical.

Deb fidgeted. ‘I could never contemplate marriage…’ She fidgeted with her teacup again then looked up to meet her sister’s level gaze. ‘I cannot quite believe it, Liv, but lately I have had thoughts…’ she hesitated, then continued more firmly ‘…thoughts of what it might be like to take Richard Kestrel as a lover. What could be more shocking than that?’

A quiver of breeze ran along the veranda, sending ripples across the little ornamental pond where the fat goldfish basked and stirring the branches of the lilac so that its scent suffused the air.

Even now, Olivia’s calm was not impaired. ‘There are plenty of things more shocking,’ she said. ‘I can see that you would not be much taken with marriage but you might find that to take a lover would be far more pleasurable…’

Deb stared at her. ‘How would you know?’

‘I do not,’ Olivia said calmly. ‘I am only speculating.’

Deb shook her head. ‘It is a scandalous plan. I do not support such behaviour and neither do you.’ She sighed. ‘Goodness knows, after the huge outrage over my elopement, I simply should not be thinking of compounding my folly with this. It is the sort of fantasy that is all very well in theory, but must never be made a reality. It is far too dangerous.’ She wriggled in her chair. ‘Anyway, Lord Richard is not the sole cause of my ill temper. I had a letter from Papa today.’

‘Ah, I see.’ To Deb’s relief, Olivia let the subject of Richard Kestrel drop. ‘Is Papa pressing you to return to the fold?’

‘More than that, he is commanding me.’ Deb licked her finger and picked up the cake crumbs from the plate in most unladylike fashion. ‘He threatens to cut off my allowance if I do not return to live at Walton Hall.’

Olivia made a little sound of distress. ‘That is harsh, although I know he only wants what is best for you, Deb. I do not suppose you can countenance it?’

‘No.’ Deb put the plate down. ‘It is not simply the difficulty of returning home after three years away, Liv. That would be restrictive and unpleasant, but nowhere near as difficult as refusing the match with cousin Harry-again.’

Her sister shuddered. ‘Is that what Papa is proposing?’

‘I fear so,’ Deb said. ‘I spoilt his plans when I eloped with Neil and now he sees an opportunity to make the match that I rejected the first time around.’

Olivia’s gaze was troubled. ‘Surely Papa would not force a match? I know that he can be very autocratic but, if you were unwilling, surely he would not persist?’

Deb looked at her, but did not say anything. The silence was eloquent. They were both remembering their father’s determination to marry all his children off advantageously, a determination that brooked no opposition.

‘If not cousin Harry, then someone else,’ Deb said bluntly. ‘You know that he will not be happy until he sees me safely-and legitimately-married.’

Olivia grimaced sympathetically. She tilted the brim of her straw hat against the sun, which was creeping round the edge of the roof.

‘So what will you do? You cannot avoid returning to Bath for Guy’s wedding, unless you invent some fictitious illness.’

It was on the tip of Deb’s tongue to tell her sister that it was not an illness she planned to invent but a fictitious betrothal. She just managed to hold her peace in time. Despite Olivia’s surprisingly broadminded stance on the subject of taking a lover, Deb knew that she would be shocked to know that her sister had advertised for a fiancé. It simply was not done. It would be time enough to tell Olivia what she planned when she had found a suitable gentleman, even then, she was certain that her sister would cut up rough.

‘I do not know what I shall do,’ she said, ‘though I am certain that I will think of something. Oh, if only there was not this annoying threat of invasion to add weight to Papa’s argument! It is most inconvenient.’

Olivia laughed. ‘What is inconvenient? Bonaparte’s plans? Do you think that he should have consulted your convenience before he assembled his fleet off Boulogne?’

Deb gave a little giggle. ‘No, of course not. How absurd you are! I merely mean that Papa does not consider it safe for me to be living alone with only Clarrie and the servants, for all that you and Ross are but a few miles away.’

‘You may come and live here with my blessing,’ Olivia said drily. ‘You would not be getting in anybody’s way and it would be nice to have someone to talk to.’

Deb gave her a troubled look. ‘Truly, Liv, is it so bad? I know that there was a time when you hoped to give Ross an heir…’

‘Not much chance of that now,’ Olivia said, even more drily. ‘I have yet to learn that it is possible to conceive an heir when the husband spends all his time improving his estate and the wife spends all her energies on her garden. We may be designing a most elegant home, but we are not propagating a future generation to appreciate it-’

She broke off, looking flustered for the first time in Deborah’s memory. Ross Marney had come through the folding French windows and out on to the veranda just as his wife was speaking. It was impossible to tell how much of the conversation he had heard.

‘Good afternoon, Ross,’ Deb said, seeing that Olivia was rendered temporarily speechless. She got to her feet. ‘May I pour you some tea?’

Ross bent to kiss her cheek. He was of sturdy build, with black hair and intense blue eyes. When Olivia had first married him, Deb, then an impressionable sixteen-year-old, had had quite a crush on him. These days she could laugh at her girlish infatuations, but she still considered him a handsome man.

‘I think that you should allow your sister to dispense the refreshments,’ Ross said, with an unfathomable look at Olivia, ‘since she is complaining that that is all the propagation that she is permitted to do.’

An awkward silence fell. There were two spots of colour high on Olivia’s cheekbones as she poured the tea. The spout of the pot rattled against the china as her hand shook slightly, and Deb felt a rush of sympathy. It was too bad of Ross to make his wife feel so uncomfortable. He should have pretended that he had not heard.

‘We were speaking of our trip to Somerset,’ she said, trying once again to break the silence. ‘It is only two months until Guy’s wedding.’

‘Plenty of time for him to reconsider, then, before he makes a decision he may live to regret,’ Ross said. He took his cup with a curt word of thanks and strolled away down the grassy slope on to the lawn.

Deb was halfway out of her chair when Olivia put her hand on her sister’s arm.

‘Deb, do not!’ she implored in a whisper. ‘I know that you only mean to help, but it does not do any good…’

Deb subsided back in her chair. She picked up her own cup and drank the cooling liquid. Sometimes in the past she had interfered in Ross and Olivia’s disagreements when her sister’s refusal to stand up to her husband had so infuriated her that she could not let a subject pass. Olivia had never reproached her, but sometimes Deb had had the impression that her intervention had made things worse rather than better. She felt exasperated. Olivia was a pattern card of goodness and Ross Marney was a nice man, handsome, generous and kind. So why, oh, why was it not possible for the two of them to co-exist in harmony? She wanted to bang their heads together.

‘I suppose that I should go,’ she said slowly.

‘Do not hurry away on Ross’s account,’ Olivia said, and Deb heard the note of bitterness in her voice ring clear as a bell. ‘He won’t speak to me of this. We never do talk.’

Deb wrinkled up her face. Her knowledge of married life was small, consisting of five weeks before Neil Stratton had departed to the wars. That month had hardly been the bliss that she had been expecting. Even so, she knew that if a husband and wife never spoke to each other then they could hardly expect other aspects of their relationship to improve. She opened her mouth to offer some advice, saw the expression on Olivia’s face and closed it again.

‘You do not understand,’ Olivia said rapidly. ‘Please let it go, Deborah.’

Deb got up and hugged her sister hard, spilling Olivia’s tea in the process. Her sister bore the embrace stoically, even going so far as to give Deb a brief, convulsive hug in return. She dabbed at the tea stains on her dress, head bent. All the animation that Deb had seen in her earlier in the afternoon had vanished.

‘Would you care to take the carriage back to Mallow?’ Olivia enquired. ‘It is hot to be walking.’

‘No, thank you,’ Deb said. ‘I shall go through the woods. It will give me time to think.’

A faint spark of amusement lit Olivia’s face again. ‘About Richard Kestrel? You do not fear to find him lurking behind a tree waiting to pounce again?’

Deb laughed. ‘If he does, he will get all the odium that should rightly be reserved for Ross. It would be poetic justice.’

Olivia put out her hand quickly. ‘You will be here for my musicale tonight?’ she asked, and Deb could hear and understand the pleading tone in her voice. It was the first time she had seen a crack in Olivia’s perfect façade and it made her fearful. The marriage must be in dire straits indeed.