The gig lurched as I grabbed him and laid him over my knees, face down. Without knowing why, I slapped him hard on the back and then grabbed his little feet and held him upside-down with some vague memory of his birth and the little choking noises he had made then.

He squawked some more, but no little silver bell fell on to the floor of the gig. I half flung him back at his nurse and cracked the whip at Sorrel, and shouted, ‘Where’s Dr MacAndrew?’

‘In the village, with Lady Lacey,’ she gasped, and clutched Richard to her shoulder.

The noises he was making were more painful now, more shocking to hear. He was retching and choking and his little gasps were less and less effective. He was getting no air. He was dying, in my gig, on Wideacre land, on a sunny morning.

I lashed Sorrel and he put his head down and went from his well-bred canter into a wild gallop. The gig bounced and bobbed like a boat on flood water but I held to the speed, not checking. The wind streamed into my face, I could scarcely see. But one glance at my son told me that none of this rush of air was finding its way into his little body. His gasps were quieter and he was hardly coughing at all. His lips were blue.

‘Where in the village?’ I yelled above the noise of Sorrel’s thundering hoofs and the creaks of the speeding gig.

‘At the vicarage, I think,’ shrieked Mrs Austin, her face as white as her collar, clinging to Richard in fear for him, and in terror at the headlong pace.

We whirled into the village and I saw nothing, but heard the slap of a hen, neck broken under the gig’s wheels. I pulled Sorrel up so hard he half reared as he skidded to a halt, and I flung the reins at Mrs Austin and snatched Richard from her. It was too late. Too late. He was fighting for his breath no more.

I ran up the garden path to the front door, his body limp in my arms, his eyelids as blue as his lips, his little chest so still. The door was opened as I ran, and Dr Pearce’s startled face was there.

‘Where’s John?’ I said.

‘In my study,’ said the Vicar. ‘What is wrong …?’

I slammed open the door and scarcely saw Celia, Mrs Merry and old Margery Thompson bent over the table. I saw only John.

‘John,’ I said, and held out the limp body of my son to him.

He had never touched him, though Richard was now nearly a year old. But now he snatched him from me, taking in the blue eyelids, the blue lips, in one fast raking glance.

He laid the child on the table. Richard was limp; his head banged on the wood as if he were already a corpse. John was patting his waistcoat pocket for a little silver penknife he carried.

‘What?’ he asked, monosyllabically.

‘The silver bell, off his rattle,’ I said.

‘Buttonhook,’ he said to Celia. She was beside him, her eyes on my son’s face. He took Richard’s chin in one hand and forced it brutally upwards until the delicate skin of his neck was tight. And then he cut his throat.

My knees buckled beneath me and I slumped in a chair. For one crazed moment I thought my husband had killed my son, but then I saw him jam the stem of one of Dr Pearce’s pipes in the little hole and I heard a rasping breath. He had slit a hole in Richard’s windpipe and Richard was breathing again.

I dipped my head in my hands, unable to look, then peeped through my fingers to see John staring down Richard’s mouth, with his right hand outstretched towards Celia, as imperious as any Edinburgh surgeon.

She had rummaged in her reticule and come out with a slender pearl-handled buttonhook and a little crochet hook. She put the buttonhook flat in his palm and stood beside him. Without a second’s hesitation she took Richard’s pale face in her own two hands and straightened him so that the pipe stem was not obstructed. His lips were turning pink again. John bent low, and probed down the tiny throat with the buttonhook. Behind me in the doorway Dr Pearce’s boots suddenly creaked as he shifted his weight in the silent horror of the room.

‘Too big,’ said John, straightening up. ‘What else?’

Without a word Celia took one hand from steadying Richard’s head and offered John the crochet hook. He smiled, without looking away from my son.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Perfect.’

Everyone in the room held their breath. Mrs Merry, who had sneered at the clever young Edinburgh-trained man, Margery Thompson, the village gossip, Dr Pearce and me. John poked down Richard’s tiny throat with the slender silver hook and only he and Celia seemed unaware of the agony of tension in the sunlit study.

There was a thin, incongruous tinkle. The little bell knocked against Richard’s milk teeth as John drew it out. And then, there it was, suspended on the silver hook.

‘Done it,’ John said, and he pulled his silk handkerchief from his pocket, pulled out the pipe stem from my baby’s throat, tied the handkerchief in a bandage around his neck and turned him on his front on the hard table. Richard retched and coughed, a wheezy hacking cough, and began, hoarsely, to cry.

Celia said, ‘May I?’ to John and, at his nod, scooped my son into her arms and laid his head on her shoulder. She patted him on his back and whispered loving words while he wept for the confusion and the pain in his throat. Beside his curly head her face was alight with pride and love, and she met John’s look with her heart written in her eyes.

‘You were good,’ he said, sharing the credit. ‘The buttonhook was too big. We would have lost him if you had not thought of the other.’

‘You were good,’ she said. Her eyes met his in frank love. ‘Your hand was steady as a rock. You saved his life.’

‘D’you have some laudanum?’ John asked Dr Pearce, not taking his eyes from Celia’s bright face.

‘No, only a little brandy,’ said the Vicar, watching the two of them as intently as the rest of us.

John grimaced. ‘Very well then,’ he said. ‘He needs something. He’s had a nasty shock.’

He took Richard from Celia’s arms as gently as a father and held the glass for Richard to sip. When the child squirmed he held his face still and tipped down the little measure with one practised gesture. Richard was soothed at once, and when Celia took him back into her arms, his head nodded on her shoulder and he dozed.

Celia and John looked at each other for a brief, magical moment, then John turned to me, and the spell was broken.

‘You have had a shock too, Beatrice,’ he said coolly. ‘Would you like a glass of ratafia? Or port?’

‘No,’ I said dully. ‘I need nothing.’

‘Did you think you had lost him?’ asked Mrs Merry. ‘He looked so blue!’

‘Yes,’ I said desolately. ‘I thought I had lost him, the next Squire. Then all this, all this, would have been for nothing!’

There was a silence. They all turned shocked faces to me. Every one. Every one of them looked at me as if I was an exhibit in some show of freaks.

‘You thought of him as the Squire?’ asked John, incredulous. ‘Your baby was dying in your arms, and you thought that your work would go for nothing?’

‘Yes,’ I said. I stared at the empty fireplace. Not caring what they thought of me. Not caring for anything, anymore.

‘If he had died, what would have become of Wideacre? The entail specifies them both. I have put everything on the two of them. And then I thought he was dead.’

I dropped my face into my hands and I shuddered with deep soundless sobs. No one put a hand out to comfort me. No one said one kind word.

‘You are shocked,’ said Celia at last, but her voice was cold. ‘I came in the carriage. You can go home in it. John can drive me in your gig. Go home now, Beatrice, and you can put Richard to bed when you get home. Then you can rest yourself. You cannot know what you are saying. This has been a shock for you.’

I let her walk me to the carriage and help Mrs Austin with Richard. Then I saw her step back from the window and Coachman Ben drove me home with my son’s warm sleepy body in my arms.

As the trees of the drive flickered past the window, green in the April sunshine, I remembered the look that had passed between Celia and John when he had praised her quickness in thinking of the crochet hook, and she had praised his skill. And I thought also that when she said, ‘Your hand was steady as a rock,’ she had spoken not for his ears alone. She had praised him, and restored him as a first-class doctor. She had told that quiet room, and thus the village, and the wider world outside the village borders, that Dr MacAndrew was indeed the best doctor that the county had ever seen. She had restored John to society. The trick that I knew he could never have done alone, that I had sworn I would never do for him, Celia had done with one easy sentence.

Wideacre might think that his fatigue and drunkenness had killed my mama, but that tale would be swiftly replaced with the story of how, when my child was in danger, I had driven like a devil to reach him. How I had run up the drive with my son in my arms. How I had asked for ‘Doctor’ MacAndrew, not ‘Mister’. And how John’s quick, nerveless skill had saved the life of my son.

The carriage stopped at the front steps of the Hall and Stride opened the door and checked as he saw me inside and not Celia.

‘Lady Lacey is coming later in my gig,’ I said. But it was an effort to speak at all. ‘There has been an accident. Please send coffee to my room. I do not wish to be disturbed.’

Stride nodded, as impassive as ever, and handed me down into the hall. I went wearily through the door to the west wing, not even waiting to see Richard’s nurse inside. She would know to put him into his cradle at once. She would know to watch over him while he slept. He did not need my care. And now there was a barrier between him and me. I had known and I had said aloud, that my son, my lovely son, was most important to me as the heir to Wideacre.