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She signed it with her own initial E. Before Eliza could question the wisdom of her reply, she ran downstairs.

Gibbons was nowhere to be found and in an impetuous moment, she decided to deliver it herself.

Dashing down the front steps and up the neighbouring flight, she knocked on the door.

It opened quickly and she was startled to find herself looking up into Lord Purfoy’s dark face.

His eyes, usually so languid, widened with shock.

There was no opportunity to turn and disappear so she thrust her missive into his hand without a word, and hurried back to the Wolfes’ house.

Mr Gibbons had returned to the hallway and Eliza was greeted by his cheerful voice.

‘Miss Gray, it’s good to see you back from the country.

I have a note from a young lady whose maid dropped it in yesterday.

’ He removed a folded and sealed letter from behind the clock on the hall table and handed it to her.

Eliza thanked him and walked into the morning room to sit by the fire.

Marina Fairley had neat, precise handwriting and Eliza was surprised how pleased she was to see it again, requesting her presence at tea the following day at two.

Eliza was gazing into the fire, contemplating the unexpected arrival of friendship and love in her life, when the door opened and Corinna entered. She looked tired, her pregnancy more noticeable. ‘Miss Gray, may I join you?’

‘Of course. I’m glad to see you as I wanted to thank you properly for your kindness to me these last few weeks, and particularly to apologise for my deception over the race.’

‘It’s been our pleasure. Alick told me something of what transpired at Epsom yesterday.’

Eliza felt her spirits falter. ‘Yes, I very much regret the subterfuge and dishonesty in riding Mr Flynn’s horse. It was a shabby way to treat you all after you’d extended such hospitality to me.’ Her voice was formal and subdued.

Corinna took her hand in reassurance. ‘I’m not concerned with that. After all, necessity made me masquerade as a young man to seek my fortune. I could not accuse you of betrayal for doing as I had done.’

‘I think it’s the betrayal of Lord Purfoy that I am most ashamed of.’

‘He’s proud, and under that cool demeanour is a sensitive spirit, as I know you have already recognised.

But I didn’t want to talk about him, I want to talk about you.

’ Eliza looked at her, her expression wary and uncertain as Corinna continued.

‘Alick tells me you feel you have no option but to leave us, to make your own way. I want you to know you’ll always have a home here, should you need it. ’

Eliza was struck with the power of that word home .

Her longing for a home had been the sole impetus of all her recklessness.

She shook her head, holding back the tears.

‘That’s the kindest offer I’ve ever had, Mrs Wolfe, but I cannot rely on other people’s charity.

I have to find a way of living that does not assume the generosity of others. ’

‘My dear. I was like you, an orphan without family or means, but then a stroke of great good fortune led me to a father who left me in his will this house and the resources to live. This is why it would honour him to share his largesse with you, another young woman disinherited through no fault of her own.’

Corinna then got to her feet. ‘I can hear Emma calling for her mama. But remember, Miss Eliza, what I have said.’

Eliza returned to her room to write her acceptance to Miss Fairley and also a letter to Rose Bowman and Mrs Prebble telling them she would be back at the circus in two days’ time.

She had made up her mind and felt it was now the only honest thing to be done.

Having made her decision, Elizer was sadder but calmer.

After all, the circus was the closest thing she had ever known to home.

Leaving the ease and warmth of the Wolfe house, the friendships of them and their friends, would tear at her heart but it had only ever been a temporary resting place.

* * *

Raven Purfoy was on his way to his club when there was a knock on the front door.

He opened it and there was Miss Gray, her face raised to him like a flower, her eyes as startled as he felt.

He had determined not to see her while he attempted to regain his equilibrium and return to the settled way of life that suited him best. But here she was, not even bothering to wear a bonnet, looking soft and ruffled as a rose.

She thrust a letter into his hand and wordlessly dashed away.

He returned to his library and read Eliza’s note, an unexpected fluttering in his heart.

Her hand was unschooled. It lacked the copperplate flourish of the women of his acquaintance, but the words carefully printed in a pleasing symmetry cut him deep and found their mark.

He read them twice, running his fingertips over the paper, feeling the indentation where her quill had pressed:

How strange that heart, to me so tender still,

Should war with Nature and its better will!

He recognised the lines and frowned; Lord Byron had much to answer for.

But a slight smile tilted the corner of his mouth and he did not crumple the paper into a ball and toss it on the fire as he had so many missives from women before.

Instead, he refolded it carefully and slipped it into his breast pocket.

Standing before the fire in his library, he stared into the flames.

What was he to do? If he could not love her in the way she desired and deserved, could he give her a gift that would ease the practicalities of her life?

With renewed purpose he straightened his shoulders, picked up his hat in the hall, thrust it over his sleek dark hair and set off at speed for St James’s and White’s, his venerable club, the den of indulgence and refuge of the noble ruling classes.

Here he would find that swaggering whipster Davenport gambling away his newly acquired fortune.

Lord Purfoy had a plan that astounded even him and would demand every ounce of skill and courage.

Risking his own fortune, he would win back at hazard Miss Gray’s rightful inheritance.

It was the least he could do for her, to offer her her freedom, then his conscience would be clear.

He walked through Grosvenor Square, resplendent in the sunshine, and was gratified by the thought that most of the grand mansions were occupied for the Season, and by people whom he knew.

Raven Purfoy was happy in the knowledge that he existed at the centre of this small acreage of London where more wealth, intelligence, beauty, wit and enterprise were concentrated than anywhere else in the world.

After all, he had escaped his family’s fortress of gloom with only his title, his wealth and his self-protective pride; why would he trade that freedom to return to the emotional turmoil that had almost destroyed him?

Why add the complications of love when he had so many advantages already?

But as he walked on, the clouds obscured the sun and his mood darkened.

His comfortable self-satisfaction began to ebb away.

How empty his heart was without Miss Gray at its centre; how it ached in an unfamiliar way.

His unruly spirit was clamouring that life would never seem as full again because he would not allow himself to love her.

Lord Purfoy wondered if in fact he could only be truly himself by accepting this dangerous, unpredictable life of the heart, embracing more than gambling, horses, and unsentimental liaisons with grateful widows or discreet divorcées?

He was soon outside the impressive pillared facade of his club, the famous bow window to his left.

Lord Alvanley, the great dandy and buck-about-Town, was not yet ensconced there in his habitual throne amongst the gamesters, surveying the passing beaus, while betting huge sums on improbable wagers.

Lord Purfoy hoped he might find him inside.

An extravagant man of generous wit and appetite, his company was enjoyed by everyone from the Prince of Wales to Purfoy himself.

Lord Purfoy walked up the marble steps, greeted by almost everyone he passed.

He was well known and regarded with some awe by his acquaintances who had never got the measure of the man and found his cool sophistication hard to penetrate. True friends were few.

The entrance hall was thronged with men leaving and arriving, some befuddled with drink, a few merry and flushed with their winnings, and one or two white with the shock of having lost a whole ancestral estate or stable of the finest horseflesh in their addiction for the game.

Lord Purfoy was one of those rare gamesters whose restraint remained iron-clad throughout, his calculating brain always in control of the baser instincts for risk and excitement, competitiveness and pride.

Suddenly Alvanley was by his side, his large handsome face puffy with excess. ‘What’s up Purfoy? You look like you’ve swallowed a wasp. Or you mean business.’ Lord Alvanley took him aside and added, ‘You know within these walls nothing really matters, so lighten that saturnine countenance, eh?’

‘But outside these walls, my lord, some things matter very much indeed.’ Lord Purfoy’s face remained grim.

‘That may be so, but while we’re here we cast those cares to the winds, don’t you agree? Are you headed for the hazard tables?’

‘I am.’