I avoided thinking about Eustacia. Richard had not spoken of the incident again, but I knew it hurt him to know someone unauthorised had seen him in an unguarded moment. Even though that person could do us little harm, he still resented it. He might still choose to take some form of revenge of his own, something far more vicious than he had done before. The best I could do was try to forget the whole thing and trust in Richard’s good sense.

Once in open country, I could give my horse its head for ten minutes, always something that helped to clear my head of unpleasant thoughts. I’d been forced to resort to it many times over the years, and the concentration required, together with the physical control of the horse, gave my whole body and mind something to do, and let me forget my troubles.

The familiar route and the feel of the animal under me gave me a slip in time. It was as if the events of the past few months had not happened. As though we’d visited Hareton Abbey, returned and resumed our ordinary lives, and I expected to remain the spinster aunt for the rest of my days. It all seemed unreal until I slowed and waited for the others to catch up. Then I saw Lizzie’s new glowing happiness, which she carried around for most of the time these days, and Richard, the once-stranger who was now as familiar to me as I was to myself.

We reached the coast after a comfortable ride through the verdant Devonshire countryside that lasted a couple of hours. Tom was the first one to see the sea, and he swung round in the saddle, crying, “My sea, my sea!” as we always did when we were children. It stretched out to the horizon; grey, white tipped, never still. My surge of joy when I saw it was entirely visceral, a response I’d felt ever since I could remember. It represented freedom to me, and pastures new, places no one would know me, where I could start again.

When we arrived, we dismounted and crept as far as we dared to the cliff edge. I was used to the height, and went right to the edge, but Lizzie and Georgiana went only so far and no further. They didn’t want to look over the edge, down the dizzying drop to where the sea swept up the small beach in the cove below us.

We stood together in silence, Tom, Richard, Gervase and I, and watched the foamy waves, the yellow sand, the curved shape of the bay around us, tried to see the horizon where blue-grey changed to celestial blue. Then Tom glanced at me and winked. I knew what he meant, and decided to join him in a trick we hadn’t used for years. It was irresistible.

Tom seized my hand and, both of us ran. We roared and shouted as we rushed to the cliff edge, and—with no more than a glance—jumped. We heard alarmed cries, male cries, then the twins’ heads appeared over the cliff edge, only the shapes of their behatted heads visible when we squinted up into the sun.

“I think,” said Gervase gravely, “that to play the trick properly, you shouldn’t laugh quite so much while you wait for us.”

It was too late for gravity. Tom and I leaned against each other, helplessly overcome with laughter, not just because of the action itself, but because of the release it had afforded, and the fact we had not done this for years. I felt like a child again.

Richard jumped down to join us. He waited patiently for us to recover our senses, staring out at the view afforded by such a high perch. It was quite safe. We stood on a broad ledge and another one lay not far below it.

Eventually Tom and I wiped our streaming eyes and took a few deep breaths. “Oh, Lord! The number of times we did that.”

“A lifetime ago.” I thought of all the times we had managed to escape to this bay, when the adults were busy at their own games.

“We found the ledge by accident,” I told Richard, “when Tom lost his dog and we found him here. It’s not just our secret, though, we have good reason to believe it’s popular with local lovers.”

“Spy on them, did you?” Amusement curved his lips. “Then this place must be equivalent to the little cupboard in the music room at Eyton where there was room enough for two small boys. Why lovers should choose music rooms to do their courting always escaped me—until recently.” He smiled at me.

Conscious I didn’t present the figure of the ideal lover, I found my handkerchief and rubbed it over my face to rid it of the worst stains gained by my tears of laughter, and tried to distract his attention to the sea. “The smugglers use these cliffs as a look-out. You can see right to the end of the bay, and a little further on a clear day.”

He obligingly gazed out to the sea, hands in his breeches’ pockets, and leaned against the cliff face behind us, perfectly at his ease. No one would have guessed from his appearance today that he was one of the kings of the ballrooms of Europe when he chose. “It must be useful to them.”

“This small cove is part of Lyme bay which stretches all the way from Exmouth to Weymouth,” Tom told him. “We used to run away on our ponies here when we were small, and play games we weren’t allowed anywhere else. We stopped