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Ines was arguing with the innkeeper’s wife over the quality of the claret, and so Cressida sat alone by a leaping fire of apple-logs with rain hammering at the shuttered windows, grateful that the Green Dragon was as quiet a place to change horses as Greville’s mother had always claimed, not that it would do her any good to think of the Nightingales now.

They were some days south of York, and having left Drochcala while Greville was at last asleep, Cressida still had no real final destination in mind, even though several weeks had now passed on her slow journey south.

She swirled what remained of the claret around in the bottom of her glass, remembering how Byron had stared straight through her at Drochcala, a direct cut no one could deny she deserved.

She had his two hundred pounds, but now she’d lost his regard, there really was no one.

Don’t be a fool , she told herself, swallowing the dregs of the claret, which stripped her gullet like home-brewed daffy.

This isn’t the first time you’ve been alone, this isn’t the first time you’ve had to set out with bank-notes and nothing else.

At least this time there is money. Things had been worse: she had done worse.

This wasn’t the first time she’d been without Greville, even if she couldn’t walk without a stick.

Ines came over, big with news and triumphant; she opened her mouth to speak and then closed it again after glancing at Cressida.

How could she ever surrender herself to Greville once more with a secret between them that was so painful she couldn’t even think of it, let alone speak of it?

She only had to close her eyes briefly to squat once more at the side of that mountain road with the scent of pine needles and wild thyme and wet mud on the air, and a woman from another regiment holding her hands.

She’d never even known the other woman’s name, but she could still see her work-chafed hands.

Cressida remembered the silence when it was all over, too, and then the bundle in her arms, so still, too soon.

‘Mistress!’ Ines said, filling Cressida’s glass again. ‘Do you attend?’

‘I do, you impertinent little baggage,’ Cressida said. ‘I ought to turn you off without a character.’

Ines suppressed a smile, with difficulty.

‘Mistress, listen, I said to that woman with a face like a dog’s behind that she must needs put away this rubbish she feeds to her guests, because there is such an equipage outside in the yard, the like of which you have never seen.

Although I suppose you have, at one time in your life, but she’ll have to bring up the good stuff from her cellar now.

The post-boy said she was as fine a mort as he’d ever seen, proper well minted, he said, who won’t be putting up with jack-sauce. ’

‘I’m glad to see your English is coming along, my girl, because it certainly is improper,’ Cressida said. On instinct, she reached for the knife as the door opened, forcing herself to clasp the claret glass instead and to think about where on earth she was going to start a new life in the morning.

The innkeeper’s wife bustled into the taproom from the back-kitchen, elbowing the post-boy out of her path with a brisk clip around the ear.

‘How many times have I told you to stay out from under my feet when we have— Good evening, milady. We have such a snug fire here, which I beg you to warm yourself at, on such a blustery inclement night as it is. It’s not much of a summer, I would call it. ’

‘Quite, and you can find us some champagne, if you please.’ Sylvia Crauford swept into the parlour in a fur-trimmed travelling cloak, throwing back the abundant hood to reveal a heap of curls tinted newly gold by the skilled hand of her personal apothecary.

Kitty Alasdair came in behind her, clad in a much more subdued cloak of dark blue superfine with embroidered frogging in the military style, with a small shako pinned to her dark crown of braids, and wearing every minute of a long journey with her stepmother writ upon her face.

Cressida looked up from her empty glass to witness Sylvia’s imperious order for three glasses. Kitty took a seat and consulted the travel guide that lay before Cressida on the table.

‘It says here the eels and the fruit pie are very good. We’ll have that, I thank you. Mama arrived at Drochcala just after you left, Cressida.’

Sylvia settled herself in the chair beside Cressida and bestowed a smile upon the innkeeper’s wife, who was hovering in anticipation of gossip.

‘How fortunate that we should meet my daughter-in-law upon this road. My son, you know, has gone back to the Peninsula to rejoin his regiment, taking my nephew with him, who has just purchased his commission, as well as a servant from poor Lord Bute’s estate, and we are all feeling their absence horribly, as I’m sure you understand. ’

‘Oh yes, ma’am,’ the innkeeper’s wife said, a little less sure of herself now. ‘My sister’s boy has been out since last April, and it is a trial to think on when we might all see him again.’

‘You’re quite right: it’s a great burden upon one’s mind, is it not?

’ Sylvia said. ‘My daughter-in-law will be much the happier keeping me company in the countryside, at least until we can all divert ourselves in town again, and I daresay I shall be, too. One always fares better with a little honest occupation, do you not think?’

Cressida ignored a darkling look from Ines.

She would just have to explain to Sylvia why she’d had to let Greville go.

Sylvia must learn to understand, and to bear it, as she must do the same.

The innkeeper’s wife bobbed a curtsey and swept off to call for champagne, trailing the sulking post-boy behind her, who cheered up a little when Kitty tipped him fourpence.

Cressida despatched Ines to unpack their bags, leaving her alone with Sylvia and Kitty.

In the quiet parlour at the Green Dragon, with apple-logs crackling in the grate, she could at last admit to the secret that, despite all her courage, she had kept from Greville.

When she had finished, Sylvia sat back in her chair, speaking in French lest they should be interrupted.

‘That’s just what I said to him in London,’ Sylvia said, briskly.

‘Exactly what I said, was it not, Kitty? That there was bound to have been a child of questionable parentage, and you were so unable to face that obnoxious manly pride that I have been trying to coax him out of for the best part of four and twenty years. I’m very sorry, darling.

I lost three myself and Kitty two, and it never gets easier.

One just gets used to it, and a good remedy I have found, where it may be arranged, is to have another. ’

‘Mother!’ Kitty hissed. ‘That is not always possible, nor even desirable. Ma’am, I wish you will have some sensitivity, at least.’

‘Well, that’s as may be,’ Sylvia said, unchastened.

‘But all the same, you know what Greville is like when he’s in a truly awful rage, or most likely you don’t, for I’m sure he’d never show you such a display.

I thought he was going to hit Crauford across the room all those years ago when he so much as breathed that perhaps it was all for the best that you had gone, not that I can blame him, if I’m truly honest. Kitty, perhaps you may leave us for a moment, my love. ’

Kitty went outside, leaving Cressida with Sylvia, who pulled off her kidskin gloves and took Cressida’s hands in her own.

‘Your poor fingers, my dear girl,’ she said, ‘are so cold. You have no mother and, for all my faults of which I have many, I am the nearest thing to it that you do have, God help you. So now you will listen to me.’

And so Cressida had no choice but to listen to Sylvia Nightingale, and to repair her face as best she could with a handkerchief from Kitty’s reticule when she came back in with the innkeeper’s wife, who was bearing a tray of champagne and glasses, and a few thin slices of caraway seed cake on her best gilded plate in case they should fancy something to take the edge off their journey.