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Eliza was given a candle and followed Gibbons and his lamp up the wide staircase past the first-floor drawing room, dark with shadows, and what must be the master bedroom, its door slightly ajar, and on to the second floor.

In the dimness she could make out the ancestral portraits hanging on the walls, their eyes watching her in the flickering flame.

She felt such an imposter. How could she lie to these generous people?

But equally she knew she could not return to her old life having tasted even this small, if rather alarming, sip of freedom.

Gibbons led her into a room that seemed palatial in the swooping arc of his lamp.

The walls had a ghostly tracery of twining vines and birds and the high, canopied bed dominated the centre of the room.

A young maid was turning back the sheet and a steaming jug of water waited for her on the dressing table.

‘This is Polly and she will help deal with your wound. I hope you sleep well, miss.’ Gibbons bowed and left the room.

Eliza sat down in the chair by the looking glass and saw her reflection for the first time.

She gasped in shock. What a disgrace she was, her face grimy, her flaxen hair grey with dirt, and dark red at the crown with dried blood.

Her clothes had always been workaday but now they were stained with the mud and dust of the road.

She looked like a beggar-girl and felt ashamed.

What had Mr Wolfe and Lord Purfoy thought of her?

She was amazed to be given this beautiful room and not just a cot above the horses in the mews.

Polly straightened the quilt and came to stand beside her.

Eliza was embarrassed to be offered the services of a maid who had been woken from her bed, and gazed uncertainly into the young woman’s sleepy blue eyes.

But Polly’s charming, scrubbed face and friendly manner put Eliza at her ease, grateful for her care examining her head.

‘Lawks, miss! What a mess. Lucky it’s not bleeding any more.

’ With a damp cloth she began to dab delicately at the dried blood in the surrounding hair, careful not to disturb the healing wound.

‘Thank you, Polly. Can you tell me how large the cut is?’

‘Only about an inch, miss, but there’s no accounting for heads; they bleed like stuck pigs!’

‘Do you have a cloth I can use to wash my face and hands?’

Polly handed over another linen towel and Eliza dipped it into the jug of water. ‘Oh, what a relief to get this dirt off my skin.’ She was just trying to clean the soot from the front of her hair when there was a knock at the door.

Polly opened it to find Gibbons with a tray and a plate of bread and ham and a couple of sweet pastries. ‘I thought the young lady might be hungry,’ he said as he handed it over. Eliza could have wept with gratitude.

Polly was sleepy and stifled a yawn. ‘I think your head is now as cleaned of blood and dirt as possible, miss. Do you need help undressing?’

‘Thank you, Polly, for all your care. I’m sure it’s time for you to return to bed.

I can manage to undress myself.’ Eliza had never had the luxury of a maid and seldom wore stays as she was often in the loosest of clothes.

For performing she wore pantaloons or tights, and bound her breasts beneath her tight jackets so she could execute her riding feats unimpeded by her costume.

Polly looked relieved and bade goodnight, turning towards the stairs to the maids’ quarters at the top of the house.

Having eaten every morsel of food offered to her, Eliza carefully hung up her dress and chemise, washed her stockings in the remains of the water and hung them to dry on the windowsill.

She only had one other set of clean clothes which she unfolded from her portmanteau, ready for the morrow.

Slipping into a simple calico nightgown, she placed Mr Fox on the bedside table as a talisman to watch over her as she clambered into the high bed and fell into an immediate dreamless sleep.

* * *

Just after dawn, the house in Brook Street began to come alive.

Servants cleaned out the grates, swept the hearths and straightened cushions while others prepared breakfast. As it became more truly morning, pitchers of hot water were carried upstairs to the family rooms, and one for the mysterious guest who had arrived in the middle of the night, her head cracked open by some ruffian – so went below-stairs gossip.

Alick Wolfe had been lying awake since seven in the morning, reluctant to rouse his sleeping wife curled beside him, a hand casually flung over his arm.

He gazed down on her face, amazed still by her beauty and his good fortune in being loved by her.

Her long russet hair lay in a loose plait behind her, her skin slightly flushed from the warmth of their bed.

Her fingers were stained in places by the pigments she used for painting the portraits that were beginning to bring her fame.

He felt an irresistible urge to kiss her.

As he bent his head, her eyes opened and met his. ‘Good morning, Mr Wolfe, I hope you slept well?’

He pulled her close and tucked his arm round her back. ‘I slept very well until dear Rav came calling at three in the morning.’

‘Good heavens! Why on earth? He has his own home to go to. Was he too foxed to notice he’d come to the wrong door?’ She laughed.

‘No, my darling Cory, by the time I saw him he’d sobered up. But I’m afraid we have a house guest.’ Alick looked rueful.

Corinna struggled to sit up and said, a note of urgency in her voice, ‘You mean your American cousin has arrived early?’

‘No, this is a stranger to us both. A young woman run over by his lordship last night, travelling too fast and in his cups. As you can imagine, Taz was most put out.’

‘Poor girl! Is she injured? Who is she?’

‘Well, that’s the mystery. Her name is Eliza but she cannot remember anything else. Rav, of course, has called her Miss Mysterious, which amuses him greatly.’

‘I suppose he couldn’t take her home without a chaperone, to protect them both,’ Corinna mused. ‘Is she hurt, Alick?’

‘She had a crack on the head but it had stopped bleeding by the time she arrived at our door.’

‘Goodness! Perhaps that accounts for the lost memory. I’d better get up and see to her.’

Alick Wolfe’s arm around Corinna’s shoulders tightened as he folded her close to his chest. ‘Not yet, my darling Mrs Wolfe.’ He smiled down at her, his eyes intense with desire.

‘You’re so warm and soft, and smell as sweet as hay, and I cannot resist you.

Thank ye gods I no longer have to!’ They both laughed and slipped lower under the embroidered quilt.

‘So I smell as sweet as hay, sir! You make me sound like one of your favourite hunters.’ Corinna’s giggle ended in a sigh.

‘Oh, Alick! I can’t be long. I want to welcome this young woman to breakfast. And our little Emma will soon be scampering in, having escaped from Nurse.

’ She lifted her arms from the warmth of their bed to slip around his neck, murmuring, ‘But it’s very nice to be woken up like this… ’

* * *

Eliza too was awoken early, but by the solitary tolling of a church bell, and a tide of powerfully mixed emotions washed over her.

Most insistent was a sense of dismay; this passing stranger had imposed her upon his friends in such a high-handed manner that she felt ashamed.

She was also in awe of her surroundings.

Since she was seven, she had only had a dream of home.

Found by Mrs Prebble, wandering, lost and crying, on the streets of Bath, she had been taken to live at Prebbles Flying Circus.

There was no settled home for her even then, for the troupe moved from town to town, staying in lodgings or sometimes making do as best they could in the woods and the fields.

Gazing round this beautiful room, Eliza wondered if this was what having a home meant.

But in the morning light it seemed more like a palace and she, an imposter princess.

She tried to take it all in, knowing it would only be hers for a day; she would have to go and find work and make her new life as best she could.

She gazed at the two large windows and the prettiest hand-painted wallpaper that transported her into a garden.

The bed was hung with what looked like silk, embroidered with green willows and small figures with colourful parasols.

She wriggled into the depths of the warm, soft bed just as there was a knock at the door and Polly entered, carrying a steaming pitcher of water. ‘Morning, miss, I hope you slept well.’

Eliza sat up and stretched. She gazed at her calico dress hanging in the morning light, her spirit suspended between the insecurity of her past and hopes for a future, as yet completely unknown.

As she slipped into her plain gown, she felt how incongruous it was with this grandly elegant room.

She attempted to examine her wound, probing gently with her fingers.

It didn’t seem to be oozing and so with care she combed out her long fair hair, so pale it was almost translucent in the light.

When she was performing she wore it loose as an essential embellishment to her persona as the Winged Venus, but for the rest of the time she braided it into two long plaits and coiled them round her head.

She peered into the looking glass, meeting with an anxious frown the reflected gaze of her unusual eyes, one lilac-grey, the other greeny-gold.