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think Jamie will. He needs an active father, now he’s growing up. He needs more to do than walks with his nurse.’
    â€˜He’s still only a babe. He needs only me.’
    â€˜So let’s wait till we’ve heard what provisions Linas has made for you, then we shall know better what his needs are, shan’t we? You are exhausted, and so am I. It’s time you were home. Come. I have to get back to Abbots Mere before the snow gets deeper.’
    â€˜What about the servants?’ I said, relieved to have been let off so lightly. ‘You came here to—’
    â€˜Brierley can stay to deal with that. He lives on Petergate. You should trust him. He’s an honest man.’
    â€˜I’m sure he is. He’ll have your interests at heart.’
    â€˜And Jamie’s. Is that such a bad thing?’
    Still, I could not help myself. Perhaps I wanted to provoke him, to make him react, in spite of his courtesy to me. Perhaps I was a little mad that day. ‘If I was retaining him,’ I said, ‘it would not be such a bad thing. But I’m not, am I?’
    We had reached the door where his hand rested upon the large brass knob but, as my stupidly caustic remark stung him into action, he turned to me with characteristic speed, taking me by the shoulders with hands that bit through all my woollen layers. Holding me back against the deeply carved doorcase, he bent his head to look inside my hood and, whatever anger he saw on my face, it could have been nothing to the fury on his.
    â€˜Stop it, woman!’ he snarled. ‘You think you’re the only loser in this damned business? You think you’ve had the thin end of the wedge, do you? Well, do you? Forget it. He was my brother. You had him for the best part of six years. I had him for thirty. We both…you and me…did what he wanted us to do, and if you had less choice in the matter than you’d have liked, well, I had just as little. I did it for him, and you believed I did it for you, didn’t you? That’s why you’re so angry. D’ye think I make a habit of creeping into my lady guests’ beds while they’re asleep?’
    Since he was being kind enough to ask my opinion on that, I’d like to have said that he must have had a fair bit of practice at it. But, no, I said nothing of the kind. Nothing at all, in fact. I simply shook my head, which made my hood fall off. I noticed two new hairline creases from his nose to his mouth. I noticed that his eyelids were puffy, as if he’d been weeping. I noticed a sprinkling of silver hairs in that luxurious dark mop, just above his ears.
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ I whispered. ‘I’m overwrought. We both need to rest.’
    He sighed through his nose with lips compressed, and I thought he was going to say more because his eyes held mine, letting me read the sadness written there more eloquently than words. Then he released me, and I felt the tingling where his hands had been, and I stoodstill while he pulled up my hood and settled it round my face. I was under no illusions; he would do the same for any of his closer woman friends, I was sure. Perhaps their minds would empty too, just for those few seconds.
    â€˜Calm down,’ he said, gruffly. ‘Go home and get warm. Come on.’
    Outside on the pavement, the lamplighter clambered down his ladder into the horizontal white blizzard, having cast a halo of light dancing across the ghostly snow-covered figures below. Lord Winterson’s groom emerged from the narrow alley that led to Linas’s courtyard and stables, riding one horse and leading the mighty grey hunter that blew clouds of white into the freezing air. ‘Follow on,’ Winterson called to him, taking my arm and linking it through his.
    â€˜I can manage,’ I said, ready to pull away. ‘Really I can.’
    But he clamped my hand with his elbow and, bending his head into the snowstorm, began to