Kneeling in front of the fireplace – and noticing in what immaculate order Thomas laid the logs for her; well, for Marianne, really, even in her absence – Belle made an effort not to remember Wills standing on that very spot, so magnificent, so gallant, in his damp clothes, towelling his hair. How excited they’d all been, how trusting, how full of hope and expectation, and now all of it was over, dashed to the ground, trampled on. Wills had, quite simply, broken Marianne’s heart, not just by throwing her over – and so brutally! In public! – but also by turning out to be such a worthless person. Belle turned the word over in her mouth. Worthless. Without worth. No worth of any kind, beyond his beauty, and that turned out to be part of the wickedness of him, because it was a deception, wasn’t it, to look so good and to be so bad?

And he was bad. Elinor had told her something of his badness when she got back from London, about the Greek girl and the money, and she had hinted that there was more, which she might divulge later, but Belle wasn’t sure she wanted to hear any more. She had, as she told Elinor, heard quite enough to convince her that Wills’s beauty was, as she’d always hinted – hadn’t she? – only skin deep. Elinor had looked at her with the kind of affectionate scepticism she’d sometimes caught on Henry’s face, a sort of fond tolerance, which had made her most indignant and extra determined to assert her mistrust of Wills from the very beginning. She was equally assertive in her conviction that Marianne must stay away from everything that might remind her of happier and more hopeful times.

‘I’m glad you think that, Ma,’ Elinor had said that morning before she went to work, ‘because I don’t think I could persuade Marianne to move just now, whatever I did. It’s probably shock, the effect of shock. There’s so much for her to come to terms with.’

‘Exactly,’ Belle said. ‘Just what I said to her. Poor darling. But she wouldn’t be warned.’

She twisted newspaper pages into spirals, now, and laid them in the fireplace; then she added kindling, which Thomas had left arranged as carefully as breadsticks in a wicker basket. Marianne was impulsive to the point of wilfulness, entirely certain that what had captured her imagination needed no other justification for providing the obvious, indeed the only, course of action. It was wonderful and terrible to see the consequences of Marianne’s predilection for allowing emotion to prevail over everything, and it was also alarmingly familiar. Belle leaned forward to place a few small, split logs on to her wigwam of paper and wood. Marianne was just as she had been, and, if she was truthful with herself, was still very capable of being. She sat back on her heels and dusted her hands off against one another. But admitting that, she assured herself stoutly, did not in any way diminish the fact that she had been suspicious of Wills from the start. Who wouldn’t be, faced with such utter male glory? It wasn’t natural, it really wasn’t, for a man to be as good-looking as that.

The landline telephone began to ring from the kitchen. Belle scrambled to her feet and hurried to answer it.

‘It’s Mary,’ Mary Middleton said in her unengaged way.

‘Oh, Mary.’

‘Awful day.’

‘Well, I suppose—’

‘I hate this time of year in the country. Thank goodness the boys are all at day school now, and Anna-Maria’s doing three days at nursery. It means Baby and I can keep scooting up to London. A lifesaver.’

Belle leaned against the kitchen table. Outside the window, the rain fell noisily into the small paved yard in which the rotary clothesline was planted, and dripping. ‘Yes, I’m sure.’

‘I thought I’d better ring you,’ Mary said. ‘To let you know that I’ve met your sister-in-law, in London.’

‘Fanny!’

‘Yes,’ Mary said. ‘Her Harry and my William are about the same age. And of course, she’s got Norland.’

Belle straightened a little. She said crisply, ‘Indeed she has.’

‘It sounds lovely.’

‘It is.’

‘Well,’ Mary said, in the tone of one who had been instructed to pass on information which they, personally, saw no need to share, ‘we’ve all been asked to dinner at Fanny’s, next weekend. Jonno thought you should know, for some reason. Perhaps because the girls have been asked too.’

‘The girls?’

‘Elinor,’ Mary said, ‘and Marianne. And Lucy and Nancy. We’ll be swamped with girls. At least Bill’s coming too. It’s so great he can be relied on not to mind being the universal man.’

Belle closed her eyes. She took a deep breath. She said, ‘I’m not sure Marianne will be well enough.’

‘Oh?’ Mary said. ‘Won’t she? Isn’t the best remedy for a broken heart to accept every invitation going?’

‘It’s not her heart, Mary, it’s her asthma.’

‘I don’t think the Dashwoods have any dogs in London. It’s a house somewhere near Harley Street.’

‘I know perfectly well where my stepson and his wife live in London, Mary, thank you. And dogs are not, this time, the problem.’

‘Oh, I thought—’

‘Mary,’ Belle demanded, ‘have you any idea of the complete waste of space that John Willoughby has turned out to be?’

There was short a silence on the other end of the line, and then Mary said, ‘Jonno says he’ll never speak to him again, and he never says that about anyone.’

‘Good. And you?’

Mary said, with more energy, ‘He never took any notice of the children when he was here. He paid more attention to the dogs than my children, for heaven’s sake.’

‘There you are then.’

‘Will you tell Elinor?’

‘Tell her what?’

‘Will you tell Elinor’, Mary said, ‘that John and Fanny expect her for dinner, in London, on Saturday? But you’d better not tell her that Edward won’t be there.’

‘Mary—’

‘Lucy told me that he won’t. I don’t know why she should know where he is, but she seems to. He can’t stand his mother, or something.’

‘His mother!’ Belle exclaimed.

‘It’s weird, when her house is the only home he’s got, according to everyone. But I expect it’s to do with her wanting to marry him off to some heiress or other, so he won’t be pounced on by a gold-digger. She sounds quite something, Mrs Ferrars.’

‘But why’, Belle said, bewildered by Mary’s stream of consciousness, ‘does it matter where Ed’s mother is?’

‘Oh,’ Mary said, ‘Fanny said her mother would be there at dinner. Won’t that be interesting? The dragon who guards the cave to the Ferrarses’ millions. Mrs F., and Fanny’s other brother. The one who was in the paper. Belle, I’ve got to dash. Baby wake-up time and we do not like it if the first thing we see when we open our eyes isn’t Mumma.’

‘Of course,’ Belle said faintly.

‘And you’ll tell Ellie? Smart casual, Saturday night.’

‘Yes,’ Belle said. ‘Yes. Goodbye.’

She put the handset back into its cradle with elaborate care in order not to slam it. No Edward, but instead, Edward’s mother, Fanny, John, those gruesome Steele girls, smart casual … Poor Elinor. Poor, poor Marianne. Why was the world so intent on pretending that nothing had happened?

The phone rang again. She snatched it up. Before she could utter a word, Mary said, ‘Completely forgot to say that Wills is getting married, or something.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t know the details, just heard that he’s gone to Athens. Must fly, really, really loud baby noises from on high now!’

And she was gone.

From her sitting room, Abigail Jennings could hear the sounds of Marianne’s guitar. It was, she had said to Charlotte on the telephone that morning – Charlotte’s baby was late now, by five days, and therefore constant encouraging telephoning was required, on both sides – such a relief to hear. Even the dirgeful, gloomy things she seemed to want to play were better than all that sighing or silence. Thank goodness, she’d said to Charlotte, for Bill Brandon’s besottedness. He’d said he’d bring the guitar up to London on his next trip from Delaford, and she was sure he’d made a special journey to collect it, but who cared, really, as long as Marianne had the thing in her hands and could play some of her misery out, at least.

‘I never cease to be thankful, dear,’ Abigail said to her younger daughter, ‘that you never went in for having your heart broken.’

Charlotte gave a squeal of laughter. ‘No fear!’

‘These Dashwood girls, Char, such sweeties, but really hopeless. So emotional. I suppose you only have to look at their mother, don’t you?’

‘Now, now, Mummy.’

‘Well,’ Abigail said, ‘she was all over Wills like a rash. And now the Ferrars boy, for Elinor …’

‘Don’t think so, Mummy.’

‘Char dear, he went to stay; there’s all that mystery about him just coming and going—’

Charlotte’s voice dropped to confidential. She said quietly but emphatically, ‘He’ll do as he’s told.’

‘What?’

‘Mummy, there’s squillions in that family. Just loadsa money. His father made an absolute pile, you know that, and Mrs F. will be very picky about the girls those boys end up with. They won’t be allowed to choose, Mummy, or if they do, there’ll be awful consequences. Ellie can moon about after Ed till she’s blue in the face but he’s got to marry where he’s told, which is Tassy Morton.’

‘Tassy?’

‘Of course!’ Charlotte exclaimed. ‘It makes absolute sense. Property prince marries scaffolding heiress, it’s perfect! And she’s really sweet. She’ll do anything Daddy tells her, so if he says marry Ed Ferrars, she’ll do it. I don’t suppose she’s ever had an opinion of her own in her life!’