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and sisters?’
    Not wishing him to consider her deliberately negative, Harriet nodded silently rather than reminding him that, unlike herself, Una had successfully given birth to yet another baby a few weeks previously, so would not consider a journey to England.
    Ignoring the fact that one of the gardeners might come upon them, Brook kissed her and said, ‘You can be sure, my love, that I shall not stay away from you for one single day longer than I must.’
    Harriet kept her tears at bay until she was alone in her bedroom with Bessie, who did her best to comfort her, saying, ‘Hush, now, Miss Harriet! Was it not one of your poets you told me of who said, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder”?’
    Harriet smiled through her tears. ‘Yes, but Shakespeare, the greatest poet of all, wrote that “parting is such sweet sorrow”. Not that I can think of any sweetness in it lest it be the prospect of Brook’s homecoming.’
    ‘Happen you should go with him,’ Bessie suggested as she ran a brush comfortingly through Harriet’s hair before starting to prepare the dinner gown her young mistress would wear that evening.
    ‘Dearest Bessie, even if it were possible, Brook would not want me with him on such an occasion. I do not want to remain here in this big house, lovely as it is, without him here. I wish it had been possible for Una to visit me with the children as my husband suggested.’
    Bessie sighed, and then her face brightened. ‘So why do you not visit her?’ she enquired. ‘Happen it would be a fine adventure for you to travel to Ireland!’
    Harriet smiled and then sighed. ‘My sister wrote last summer that she would so enjoy our company if we could pay them a visit and her husband, Sir Patrick, said that the journey was not hazardous.’
    ‘Then you should go, Miss Harriet. What better way to pass the time whilst the master is away?’
    Appealing as such an idea was, she hesitated. There was the faint possibility that she might be pregnant once again. If it proved to be so and she undertook the journey to Ireland, and were to have yet another miscarriage, Brook would not forgive her for taking such a risk; nor, indeed, would she forgive herself. It was not just to please him that she had been so desperate for a child, but for herself, too. She had always – even as a young girl – looked forward to the day when she would be a mother, and her adoration for Brook had added to her need to have a child – his child.
    Their family doctor had once told her after one of her miscarriages that irregularity of the monthly cycle was by no means uncommon so, although this had been the case, she had no other reason to suspect she was with child again. She was neither sick nor faint, as had been the case on the last three occasions that she’d been carrying. She felt so well and always ready for Brook’s lovemaking. In these past months since her last miscarriage she’d felt no tiredness and was happy to walk for hours with Bessie in the woods and lanes whilst Brook worked in his study writing letters. She and Bessie would watch the new-born lambs and calves in the fields; watch the trout rise in the river flowing through the meadows, the ducklings and cygnets following their parents, one behind the other. Sometimes she would take her shoes off like the farm children and paddle in the shallow water amongst the beautiful dragonflies darting amongst the water lilies which had spread from the beautiful lake in the garden.
    Brook had promised to take her to Paris for a holiday as soon as she felt strong enough and, laughing, she had told him he fussed too much about her and assured him that she was quite back to normal good health.
    Because of his protectiveness, she had refrained from telling him of the vague suspicions she nurtured very occasionally about her condition. He had been unable to hide his disappointment when she lost the last baby and she had not wanted to give him unnecessary cause for further concern.