‘So, sister. How goes the hunt?’

‘What?’ She swung round, and there he was, standing in the dark at the top of the back stairs, for all the world as if he’d been waiting for her.

‘You heard me,’ he said. His face was shadowed, but there was something ugly in his stance. ‘Sebastian. What are you doing to get yourself blooded?’

‘Ugh.’ She turned her face away from him. ‘Must you be so vulgar?’

‘Must you be such a prude?’

She tried to push past, but he grabbed her wrist, painfully hard.

‘Don’t you walk away from me when I’m speaking to you. I am the master of this house, Rosa, and you will listen and obey when I speak, do you understand?’

‘I will listen,’ she hissed between her teeth, trying not to let the pain in her wrist show on her face. ‘But as to whether I will obey or not, that lies with my own conscience. I won’t be whored out to your friends for your profit.’

Alexis lifted his free hand and struck her, brutally, across the face. Rosa staggered and would have fallen if he hadn’t hauled her back to her feet by the wrist he was still holding.

‘You brute.’ She put her free hand to her cheek. It was throbbing and swelling, and would be green and blue by tomorrow. ‘You – you bastard.’

‘Never speak to me that way again, do you understand?’ he snarled. ‘And wash your filthy mouth out with soap. Tomorrow, Sebastian rides out in the Row. You will meet him, and you will charm him, and God help you if there’s the least trace of a bruise on your prim little face. Understood?’

Rosa stood for a moment, gasping. Alexis’ grip on her wrist throbbed in time with the pain in her cheek. Then she closed her eyes, feeling her hatred well and boil inside her like molten lead, twining with her power into a hot, explosive bitterness.

‘Fýrgnást!’ she hissed.

Alexis stumbled back with a cry of agony, wringing his hand as if he’d had an electrical shock. He stared down at his palm. In the centre was a charred and blackened spot, still smoking a little.

‘You little bitch!’

‘Touch me again,’ Rosa said, her voice very low and shaking, ‘and you’ll get the same thing somewhere even more painful.’

‘Go to your room.’ Alexis’ face was like thunder and he wrung his hand as if he could wipe her smouldering curse off it, but it was burnt deep into his flesh. Rosa smiled, in spite of the pain in her face, and Alexis roared, ‘Get to your room, you hell-cat! If I see you again before breakfast you’ll regret it, understood?’

‘Quite.’

Rosa kept her head high and her spine straight as she walked along the corridor to her room, though her face throbbed and her wrist was red from Alexis’ grip.

She held it together until the door closed behind her, but the sound of it clicking shut was like the lifting of a spell. She had not wept since Papa died, but she felt very close to it now – closer than when she had fallen from her horse and limped home on a twisted ankle, closer than when Mama had slapped her for riding astride in Alexis’ cast-off trousers.

‘Bastard.’ She leant against the door, her forehead against the wood, as if he were only just the other side. The words were mangled and torn by her shaking, sobbing breath. Her face felt hot, her forehead burning against the cool wood. ‘I hate you. I hate you.’

Only silence answered her. Alexis had gone – back to the library, back to his brandy. Or out to his club.

At last she made her way across to the mirror, to look at her swollen face. Her right cheek was twice the size of the left, her right eye pink and swelling shut. It would serve Alexis right if she did turn up in the Row with her face like this. See what Sebastian thought of her then, and see what Alexis’ friends thought of him.

But the thought came to her, as she stared at her battered face, that whatever marriage to Sebastian would be like, it couldn’t be much worse than life here. Once she was married, she would be out from under Alexis’ thumb. In fact, if she married Sebastian, the tables would be turned. Alexis would be in her power.

The thought hung there, cold and heavy in the silence. At last Rosa risked turning the door knob and peering out. The corridor was empty and she made her way cautiously down to the study, where the grimoire was kept. Inside it was cold and dark, and she lit a lamp with hands that shook, the match flame trembling as she touched it to the wick.

The grimoire lay on the desk, its brass lock shut tight, and she whispered the word her mother had taught her as a little girl.

‘Ætýne!’

The lock sprang open with a chink and Rosa opened the pages, feeling the magic swirl and shimmer beneath her fingers as she leafed through the pages, stopping here and there to check for possibilities. At last she came to a page marked with a ribbon, for easier reference.

A charme to heal a Bruise, Swellyng or Bloe: Binde in a clene Kerchief a frefh Kydny or a pece of Lamb’s Liver. If Nonne can be found, let the Kerchief be wette with clene fpring Wattere, or Teares. Presse itte to the Swellynge and speke these words: Gelácne ábláwunge, geháliged be, May the Bloode of the Lamb take my Payne from me.

Someone had written in pencil beneath: This charm never fails, though I have kidney only rarely to hand, and lamb’s liver never, and generally use nothing more than a wetted handkerchief. It has been of great service in my marriage, alas.

Rosa felt rage at the violence of men bubble up in her as she read the words. Rage at Alexis, with his cold words and hot fury. Rage at that unknown ancestor of hers, who had caused his wife to mark the spell for all her descendants’ use. Rage at her father for dying and leaving her here at Alexis’ mercy. Rage at them all – even the blameless ones: Sebastian, Philip Catesby, even at that poor outwith stable-hand.

She had no clean spring water and she would not waste her tears on Alexis.

Instead she looked out at the iron-grey clouds scattered across the sky, drawing them towards her in her mind, gathering them into a dark, sodden mass of unshed tears in the sky. The first drops of rain began to spatter against the window pane. She opened the casement and leant out, letting it fall on her clean white handkerchief. Even the rain was grey and filled with soot and smog. She thought of Matchenham, of the clear soft rain that fell on the woods and pastures, and washed everything clean and new. London rain did not clean – it only soiled.

I want to go home.

Luke knocked at the kitchen door, waited, and then came awkwardly into the room, wiping his boots on the mat.

For a long moment he just stood, watching as they bustled around him. Hot tureens were steaming on the table, Becky was laying out spoons and knives, a big red-faced woman at the range was ladling potatoes from one dish into another. Luke stood, dazed at the thought that all this was for the service of just three people: a girl, a boy, and a woman. It didn’t seem possible. He and his uncle ate well – but there was more food here than they would eat in a week, and more meat than Minna’s family saw in a month, perhaps in a year.

Then a boy sitting in the corner with a pile of dirty shoes looked up.

‘Who’s he?’

Every head in the room turned to look at him and Luke felt the flush rise up his neck.

‘He is Luke Welling,’ Becky said pertly. ‘Fred’s cousin. And you’ll keep a civil tongue in your head, young Jack, and get those boots cleaned before supper or I’ll tell Mr James to take a penny off your wages.’

‘I only arst,’ the boy said mildly, and went back to scraping the boots on to a newspaper.

‘Luke, this is Mrs Ramsbottom, the cook,’ Becky continued. ‘And this is Ellen; she’s maid to Mrs Greenwood and Miss Rosa.’

‘Please to meet you, I’m sure,’ Ellen said, looking Luke up and down as if she wasn’t sure what the cat had dragged in. ‘You don’t look much like Fred, I must say.’

‘No,’ Luke agreed. It seemed safer not to offer explanations.

‘How’re you related again?’ Ellen asked.

‘Cousins,’ Luke said. He was beginning to dislike this tall, haughty girl with her blonde hair swept under a lace cap.

‘Through his mother’s side, I suppose? Is it his aunt Mary or Mabel?’

‘Through Mabel,’ Luke said at random. The kitchen was warm after the cold of the yard, and he felt sweat pool in the small of his back. ‘But we’re not first cousins. It’s complicated.’

‘Hmm.’ She looked at him long and hard, then a bell went over the doorway and she gave a cross tut. ‘Drat, that’s the mistress’s bell. Mrs Ramsbottom, I should be down in two ticks but will you put my plate on the warmer if I’m kept?’

The cook gave no answer, but a jerky nod seemed to indicate that she’d heard and Ellen ran swiftly up the narrow stairs and disappeared.

‘Well, Luke . . .’ Mr James appeared from a back pantry, holding a bottle in his hand. ‘I can see from your derrière that you’ve acquainted yourself with the horses.’

Luke looked down at himself and then plucked sheepishly at the strands of hay still sticking to the back of his trousers. He must have brushed a bale on leaving the stables.

‘Mr Alexis Greenwood has sent word down to say that he and Miss Rosa will be riding in the Row tomorrow, so please have Brimstone and Cherry saddled and ready for ten o’clock, understood?’

‘Yes,’ Luke said, then hastily added, ‘sir,’ as he saw Mr James’s raised eyebrow.

‘Now, let’s be seated. We won’t wait for Ellen.’

‘Luke, you’re next to me,’ Becky whispered. He looked down to see her hand stroking the seat of the wooden chair beside her.