‘Look,’ she said to him, slightly louder, ‘you really do need to help me. Some sign. Just some little teeny sign that I’m not letting Marianne just be swept away like someone in a canoe over rapids. It’s all happened so fast, this gorgeous boy and the drama of her being caught in a storm without her inhaler, and two seconds later, they seem to be at a point where he’s offering her a car, for heaven’s sake, and she seems to think it was the most natural thing in the world to be offered it as well as to accept it. I know you’ll laugh at me, darling, but she seems to have even less idea of reason or restraint than I did, and although he is heart-stopping to look at, and seems a model of charm, I can’t help but have a twinge of anxiety about the whole thing. It’s happened so suddenly. I mean, we didn’t even know he existed ten minutes ago, and I just have this little nag inside me that she’s riding for a fall, and she’s going to get hurt—’

There was a sound from the landing. Belle stopped talking, laid Henry down on her duvet, and climbed out of bed. She padded over to the door and opened it cautiously. The landing was dark and ringed by closed doors. Silence reigned. She shut her door again and got back into bed. She looked down at Henry. He smiled up cheerfully at her from his supine position on her duvet. ‘And I’ve got something to confess to you, darling. I did an awful thing, even if most mothers would do the same in my place. Henry, I snooped on her phone. She was washing her hair, and I went into her room and had a look at the texts on her phone – and it was, even by my standards, unbelievable. I couldn’t believe how many. There was actually nothing at all in her sent box except these completely passionate texts to him. I know you’d say I shouldn’t have looked in the first place. You’d say that the Marianne apple didn’t fall far from the Belle tree, wouldn’t you?’ she said to him. ‘You’d say that if anyone ought to have faith in Marianne surrendering to her heart in a flash, like this, it should be me. Wouldn’t you? And you’d be laughing, and teasing me a bit. And I know I’d deserve it. I do. But all the same …’

She stopped, picked Henry up and put him back on her bedside table. Then she said, to the empty, shadowy room, ‘I expect it’s being a lone parent that’s making me think like this. You’re bound to be more anxious if there’s no one to tell you not to be daft, aren’t you?’ She glanced back at Henry. ‘So I’ll try not to be daft, darling, I really will. The last thing you’d want me to do is to mistrust a lovely, pure, energetic welling up of true passion. So I won’t. I’ll believe in her just as – as you always did. Didn’t you?’

Sir John said that they would take two cars to the barbecue, and that Wills could bring Marianne and Margaret in what he called the Nonsense.

‘What is the point of a car in which you can’t get a dog and a gun and a brace of nippers? I ask you.’

‘The point’, Wills said behind his hand to Marianne, ‘is that I don’t have to take J Middleton or his brood or his gloomy friends anywhere, ever.’

They were standing on the drive below the great front steps to Barton Park. A portable barbecue and a vast number of cool boxes were being loaded into the back of Jonno and Bill Brandon’s Range Rovers, and various squeals were emerging from the front hall of the house where all the little Middletons were being inserted by their mother and an exhausted-looking Estonian nanny into outdoor clothes and boots. The Dashwood girls, who had been instructed to bring nothing but their looks and their company, were standing by Wills’s car, or, in Marianne’s case, lounging gracefully along the bonnet. Belle, who had complained of a sore throat at breakfast, had been persuaded by Elinor to stay at home.

‘Perfect timing, Ma.’

‘It is rather, I know. But this sort of outing is far more fun for you girls.’

‘Or not.’

‘Well, Marianne will love it.’

Elinor gave her mother a quick kiss. ‘Marianne would love watching paint dry, if Wills was watching it with her.’

‘Darling,’ Belle said, ‘can I ask you something? Do you know if Wills has got a job or anything?’

Elinor grinned. ‘Ma, you old matchmaker!’

‘Well, I can’t help noticing, can I?’

‘That he doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to get back to whatever he does, and that he and Marianne—’

‘Yes,’ Belle said.

She was wearing the misty expression that usually heralded another reference to Dad. To forestall her, Elinor said quickly, ‘I think he’s in property, or something.’

‘Property?’

‘Yes. I think he’s a sort of search agent. Looks for flats and houses in London, for foreigners. As investments. All very high end.’

Belle said carefully, ‘It sounds a bit – venal.’

‘Well, yes,’ Elinor said, laughing. ‘Yes. He likes the good things, does Wills. Look at that car! A fantasy of a good thing.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘I mean’, Elinor said, ‘that it’s probably leased. Not many people can buy a car like that.’

‘Oh,’ Belle said faintly, and then, ‘do you think Marianne knows?’

Elinor sighed. ‘Marianne is deaf to anything anyone says about Wills, if it isn’t praise. He’s kind of mesmerised her. She can’t think about another thing.’ She glanced at her mother. ‘Ma, I’d better go.’

Wills, indeed, was in high spirits at Barton. He was making no attempt whatever to disguise the fact that he wouldn’t have had anything to do with an uproarious Middleton family outing if it wasn’t for Marianne. He had made loud fraternal remarks to Margaret about tolerating her company for the outward journey in the Aston, but definitely not for the return, and had also, to Elinor’s dismay, made fun of Bill Brandon, who was patiently loading picnic chairs and rugs into the back of his car, as instructed, with every appearance of indulgence towards his host.

‘God knows why he bothered to return,’ Wills said, lounging beside Marianne. ‘He went back to Delaford last week and I can’t think why he doesn’t stay there. He must be far more at home among all those fruitcakes than he is anywhere else.’

Marianne laughed. She was by now leaning against him quite shamelessly. ‘Stop it,’ she said, not meaning it. ‘Stop it! He’s not a fruitcake. He’s just very, very dull.’

Wills glanced down at her head, only an inch below his shoulder. He said, comfortably, ‘He’s King of the Bleeding Obvious.’

‘He’s OK,’ Elinor said.

Marianne grimaced up at Wills. ‘Her patron, you see. He found her a job.’

‘How wonderfully good of him.’

‘He is good,’ Elinor said.

‘But good’, said Wills, ‘is so boring.’

‘People really like him,’ Elinor said.

‘But not people I give a toss about. Not exceptional people. Just – just worthy people.’

Elinor said, trying to sound light-hearted, ‘You’re being pretty unfair.’

‘No, he’s not,’ Marianne said. ‘It’s just that you feel you owe Bill something. Look at him. Look at him now, on his mobile. He can’t even talk on a mobile without looking weird.’

‘The hero of Herzegovina.’

‘The Balkan bulldog.’

‘And master of the monosyllable.’

‘Stop it,’ Elinor said. ‘Stop it—’

‘Oh, look,’ Margaret said suddenly. ‘Look! He’s running! What’s happened? What’s happened?’

Wills slipped an arm around Marianne. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘whatever it is, at least he looks vaguely alive, at last.’

And they laughed together. Elinor watched Bill Brandon reach Sir John, put a hand on his arm to get his attention, and then have to persist as Sir John, far more intent upon the arranging of everything in the back of his car, failed to respond. Then she saw Bill Brandon grasp Sir John’s shoulders and turn him forcibly and say something very earnestly to him, his face very close to Sir John’s. Sir John’s hearty countenance abruptly altered from one of irritation at being interrupted to one of real concern. He put an arm up and grasped Bill Brandon’s sleeve, and then, with the other hand, patted his shoulder. It looked like reassurance.

‘It’s something serious,’ Elinor said.

‘Bill Brandon only knows how to do serious. Serious is his default mode.’

‘No,’ Elinor said. ‘No. Really serious. You can see.’

‘Then don’t look,’ Wills said fondly to Marianne, his arm firmly round her. ‘It might be catching.’

Bill Brandon was now climbing into the driver’s seat of his car while Sir John and Thomas, with much show of speed and importance, unloaded all the things that had, only moments before, been so carefully loaded in.

‘Go and see, Ellie,’ Marianne said lazily, heavy against Wills.

‘No. No, I can’t. Everyone looks really upset.’

‘I’ll go,’ Margaret said. She glanced at Wills. ‘Don’t you dare go without me,’ she added, and then she dashed across the gravel, towards Sir John.

‘Perhaps,’ Wills said, his voice as light as ever, ‘there’s been a mutiny at Delaford?’

Marianne gave a little giggle. Elinor shot her a look of reproof.

‘Well, if there has been …’

Sir John was saying something gravely to Margaret. He wasn’t smiling. He gestured at all the rugs and folding chairs dumped on the drive, and then he raised one arm and beckoned to Elinor, calling out, ‘Picnic’s off! Some bloody crisis, poor fellow! Crying shame, really it is. Come here while I decide what to do instead!’

Elinor glanced at Marianne. She said, ‘Go on, Ellie. He’s summoning you.’

Elinor began to cross the drive towards him. The moment she was no more than two metres away, Wills slid his arm down Marianne’s back and said, in a stage whisper, ‘Jump in.’