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They had somehow found themselves sitting together on the sofa, and Marcus said, as she snuggled close to him, ‘Is it too soon? I don’t want to pressurise you, and perhaps now everything is resolved, you may wish to have a little time really to be engaged, rather than the pretence we made of it before.

Maybe you would even prefer to be married at Wyverne, as you once said.

I don’t want you to feel that I am rushing you if you would rather wait. ’

She shook her head. How complicated it all was.

‘I want to be alone with you, that’s the plain truth of it.

We always seem to be surrounded by so many people, and while we remain betrothed, that will not change.

I love Sophie and my brothers, I am sure I will quickly grow to love your mother and sister, and I am even fond of Aunt Keswick, who has always been very good to me despite her gruff exterior.

But they are always here, or about to burst in at any moment – it is a wonder we have had these few precious moments alone. ’

‘We could go down to Thornfalcon for our honeymoon,’ he told her, caressing her cheek and making her sigh and press her face to his hand.

‘It’s a good deal more than a day’s carriage ride from London, and some of the roads are bad, so we’d have to break our journey somewhere on the way.

But once we got there, we could be private together. ’

‘Does it hold many memories for you, Marcus?’ She knew that Thornfalcon in Somerset was where Marcus had grown up, which meant that it was also where he had fallen in love with Lavinia, his neighbour, and lost her.

And they now knew that his brother had died there at her hands.

It must be full of all sorts of recollections, both good and bad.

Was it really wise to go there straight after their wedding?

She was relieved that he did not fail to understand her. ‘You are worried that at home, I will see Lavinia in every room and on every walk and ride – you fear she will haunt us? And if she does not, my poor brother’s fate will?’

It was something that had never occurred to her before this conversation, but when he put it to her in that stark manner, she could not deny it.

‘I know we will be obliged to go there eventually, even if we do not do so straight away. It is your principal seat, is it not? And so I can understand that you want to live there, or even that you might decide you must live there even if you don’t want to.

I have no idea what you feel about the place – whether that might be love, hatred, or indifference, or something altogether more complex.

We haven’t discussed it at all, have we? ’

‘You are right, we should,’ he said, leaning back.

‘We should talk about our expectations and our hopes and fears, should we not? Where and how we shall live. It has never crossed my mind before – how unjust it is that a woman marries a man and is merely expected to live where he says they shall live, with no discussion. Nobody would question my right to tell you grandly, “We shall live at Thornfalcon”, which is a place you’ve never even seen and know little about. ’

‘It’s a conundrum. It’s foolish to imagine that I might think of saying to you that I don’t wish to live there, supposing I should visit and dislike it, and that you might simply agree.

Because in practical terms, if you own an estate, it would be negligent of you not to spend a substantial portion of your time there.

Even if you don’t care for it at all, or you wife doesn’t, you are committed to the place and its people.

I know this from my brother, who hated being at Wyverne when my father was alive, and yet had a duty not to abandon it completely. ’

‘My feelings are mixed,’ he told her, and she could see that he was trying to puzzle it out for himself.

‘Perhaps less mixed than your brother’s, for there is no question of anything as extreme as hatred.

It was a wonderful place to grow up, and it’s beautiful, I think – not in a dramatic but a quiet way.

It’s not a great mansion with Palladian columns and a lake.

’ He grinned at her – plainly, he had heard what Wyverne was like.

‘It’s a big, old, rambling house built around a courtyard, with parts of it very ancient indeed, and lots of unexpected steps here and there, and secret corners such as children love.

Yet it was never meant to be mine. I could not tell you when I realised that Ambrose would inherit it, not me – I seem always to have known it, and I swear I never resented it.

It wouldn’t be true to say that I never allowed myself to become deeply attached, because it was my home, and I was happy there.

But I always expected to leave it and make my way in the world, in a way that my brother did not.

I found it odd, when I came home after I was wounded, to walk about the place and think it mine for the first time.

I still haven’t grown accustomed to that.

And I can’t claim to any deep knowledge of how to run an estate – my father never thought to teach me, since there was no need.

I dare say Helena knows more of such things than I do; my mother certainly does, and she has been a great help to me.

So you see, it’s all new to me still, my love.

And you’re right, I cannot neglect it. I don’t want to, and it’s not just a matter of obligation and duty; I want to do right by it.

I would never have come to London at all this spring if Helena had not been making her come-out. ’

She couldn’t help but notice that he hadn’t mentioned the powerful connection the place must hold with Lavinia, and her uncertainty must have been written on her face, because he said, ‘I didn’t find Thornfalcon haunted by Lavinia when I went back, rather to my surprise.

My mother had the tact to make sure that I did not occupy Ambrose’s chamber, and…

does it make sense to say that my youthful feelings for her seem very distant from me now?

Perhaps because I was away so long – almost eight years!

– and I came back as a different person.

A man, not a boy, and more importantly, a soldier.

I may have little faith in my current knowledge of the running of the estate, but I am sure that I can learn, and my military career has given me great confidence in my ability to manage people, which is more than half the battle.

If I had ever seen Lavinia there as Ambrose’s wife, or mistress of the house, it might have been different, but I never did.

And if you are worried about taking her place, my love, you should be aware that the servants never cared for her – I had not realised quite how much until Pennyfeather told me.

But the last thing in the world I want is to make you uncomfortable, least of all on our honeymoon.

There must be dozens of other places we could go.

Wyverne, even – it’s your home, and it’s much closer and easier to get to.

I am sure there might be a corner found for us in such a palace. ’

Amelia smiled, but said, ‘It’s not really my home, you know, Marcus.

I was born there, but I don’t have any memory of living there as a child.

My mother died when I was small, and my Aunt Jemima came and took Charlie and me away to live with her and her own children, outside St Albans in Hertfordshire.

My Aunt Keswick’s home is nearby, so we were a great group of cousins all quite close in age, and spent most of our time together, including our lessons.

We lived there happily till Aunt Jemima died and my uncle quickly remarried.

His new wife made it quite clear that she did not want a houseful of great overgrown children, some of whom who were not even his.

Then we went to live with Rafe, because by then he was old enough to take care of us, but at his own small home, not at Wyverne, where my father was.

I’d barely been there at all until two years ago, and it holds no special significance for me.

We used to sneak in like a pack of thieves sometimes when my father and Rosanna were away, to visit my grandmother in secret – can you imagine how ridiculous? ’

He was looking at her with sympathy and understanding. ‘You haven’t really had one settled home in your life, then?’

‘No, although for the last few years, my home, and Charlie’s, has been wherever Rafe was.

I don’t think my experience has been all that unusual.

So many people I know have parents who remarry, or have grown up as orphans, passed between relatives.

But if you had been thinking that I grew up in the grandeur of Wyverne and expected to be in charge of such a palace when I married, that’s not the case at all.

I’ve almost always lived in much smaller places.

And yes, I would like a home of my own at last. My portion is all invested in the Funds, and does not include any property. ’

‘That I can give you. A home that is yours. Do you think, then, that you would be content to go to Thornfalcon? Or would you like to think about it for a while, and consider other alternatives?’

She shook her head. ‘If we are to be married on Tuesday, I had better not think about it for very long!’

Marcus laughed. ‘You are a constant delight to me. My dear, you are right in all you say – we shall be obliged to spend a good part of our year at Thornfalcon. It would be idle to pretend that we shall not. Now that I have resigned my commission, as in all honesty I should have done a good while ago when Ambrose died, the care of the place is my job. I cannot be sitting idle when there is work to be done and nobody else to do it. But that doesn’t mean we need to go there now. ’

‘I would like to, I think,’ she said slowly. ‘I want to be with you, and I want it to feel… permanent. However happy we might be in some other place, it can only be an interlude, and not our real life. I would like our real life to begin, far away from all this gossip and scandal and deception.’

‘So would I,’ he said. ‘My darling, so would I.’