I sighed. “It’s not the authorities I’m afraid of. It’s the smugglers.”

“They won’t dare start anything with us.” He sounded more confident than I was feeling. “Don’t worry, Rose, I’ll be there to dance at your wedding.” He didn’t say this in a particularly cheerful tone, but I couldn’t pursue it, as we had reached the end of the orchard and had to climb the stile into the field beyond.

Once over, I paused to study the field, a gentle slope of green pasture with a wide expanse of clear blue sky above, meeting in a hard line in the distance, fringed at the left side with trees, earth meeting air. Every morning this was as fresh as a newborn baby, memoryless, meeting the world with new moods, new expectations.

I breathed in the sea-scented air. “I shall miss this.” I linked my arm with Tom’s again.

“What?” This view was so familiar to him he’d never even noticed it, but I, who would lose it soon, was making the most of it while it was still there for me.

I waved my free hand around me. “All this.”

Tom gazed around. “Oh, yes. I wouldn’t like to live anywhere else but here. I’d feel like a fish out of water in some other place.”

“I don’t know how I’ll feel.” Richard had become my home, but I’d come back here from time to time to renew that part of me which had been here before him, and try to keep it, for my own sake.

“I’ve often thought it’s more unfair for women,” said Tom, as we strolled across the damp, soft field. “They have to follow their husbands wherever they are, whatever they do.”

“Some don’t. Some people live completely separate lives after the birth of the heir. They even set up their own households.”

“Most do. It’s only the high born who can afford to live as two households instead of one.”

We walked for a while in silence, listening to the sounds of our county, the seagulls above us, shrieking above the sounds of the birds in the woods we were approaching. I would miss this. “It’s been a bit frantic recently. This is much better. I should have come up here before.”

“Rose?”

“Yes, Tom?”

He stopped short of the gate into the wood and turned me to face him. “I’ve wanted to talk to you about that.” He studied my face. “Are you quite sure about all this? When I heard your brother had inherited the earldom, I thought you’d stay in Yorkshire, and I might never see you again. Then you decided to come home, and I thought things might settle down. Then I heard you’d decided to marry Lord Strang, a man with a dreadful reputation, and I was worried. I must say he seems a better man than I’d feared, but he’s a lord, a member of a world we’ve never even considered. He’s sophisticated and worldly. Are you sure you want all this? Really sure? “

My heart went out to Tom, that he should care so much for me. He was as dear to me as my own brothers. With friends like these, I need never be alone.

“How can I be sure of anything, Tom?” I leant my forehead against his, an old childhood habit of ours. “I’m as sure of Richard as I can be. As for the rest, no, I’m worried and I’m nervous, but I must try. I can’t let the world pass me by any more. I must go out to meet it while I have the chance.”

Tom withdrew and we opened the gate and went into the wood that marked the start of his father’s estate. “I hope you’re happy in your new life. For myself, I can’t imagine being happy anywhere else.”

Gradually, a chill seeped through to my bones, and the lingering dampness crept around me. The arching branches above us cut out the sun. As we walked further up the path, I became aware of the hush in the wood. The birdsong from the field had ceased, and there was none of the usual rustlings of the wildlife amongst the debris beneath our feet. We stopped at the same time, aware that something was different, not quite right.

Tom saw something behind me, and the expression on his face changed to alarm. “Rose, run!”

Without looking back, I took to my heels.

I raced towards the gate, back into the open, back to my home to fetch help, but it was too late. Someone behind me caught my heel, and I fell headlong into the damp earth, kicking to try to free myself from the powerful grasp.

The man pinned my arms to my sides, and fastened them firmly behind my back, then someone else bound my ankles together. I did the only thing left to me. I screamed, as loudly and as long as I could, but a filthy hand clamped over my mouth. When I tried desperately to bite, the hand was removed and a stinking rag tied around my face, choking off my cries. I struggled, but I couldn’t prevent being thrown over a burly shoulder, where I could only squirm, like a freshly caught fish in a net.

The man took me back to where Tom lay. Blood trickled from a wound on his head. I was terribly afraid they had killed him, but he was bound in the same way I was, trussed like a cut of meat ready for the spit. He must be alive, or they wouldn’t have bothered to tie him.

The fight was getting me nowhere, and sapped my strength to no purpose. When I stopped struggling, the man who