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Madeleine could not help the shuddering sobs that began to wrack her body. All the past griefs of her parents’ deaths, her lonely life without a soul to love her, broke over her and she could not stop her tears. Ferdy led her to a chair and gave her his handkerchief. He poured out a glass of brandy for them both.

Madeleine was attempting to dry her face and stifle her hiccupping sobs. Deeply embarrassed by the spectacle she was making of herself, she said in a small voice, ‘Forgive me, Mr Shilton. I don’t know what’s come over me.’

He sat beside her and put a hand on hers. ‘It’s completely understandable. We both had great affection for Billy, didn’t we?’

She nodded miserably. ‘He felt like family. His presence in our lives made me believe I had a family again, as if he was our family.’ And she glanced up fleetingly, her eyes pink-rimmed, her eyelashes clumped with tears. She blew her nose and straightened her back. ‘Isn’t it ridiculous how we console ourselves with stories?’

Ferdy was serious. ‘No, it’s not ridiculous at all. Not just Billy needs to be loved, you know.’ His voice sounded so bleak that Madeleine involuntarily placed her other hand over his.

They remained silent for a while, united in sympathy, then Madeleine picked up the damp handkerchief she had crumpled in her lap. ‘I won’t return this to you, Mr Shilton, until it is once more freshly laundered.’ She gave him a tremulous smile. ‘I shall be fine. I’ve learned it is possible to survive every defeat and disappointment.’

Ferdy squeezed her fingers. ‘Even marrying your cousin, Lord Lockhart?’ he asked with a searching look.

Madeleine’s expression brightened with the unspoken joke between them. ‘Perhaps even such a catastrophe as that.’ Her smile widened.

Ferdy stood up and looked down at her sitting in his chair, still wearing her pelisse and bonnet. The emotion of the moment seeped away and he suppressed a chuckle and said, ‘That feather in your bonnet is so absurd, Miss Rose, I know you must have a sense of the ridiculous!’

Tears and laughter are so closely aligned, they were both overtaken with sudden amusement; Madeleine’s delightful bell-like laugh cascaded over his in a perfect expression of unexpected joy. Then they were silent once more. She looked into his eyes, her own, questioning and full of feeling. ‘Do you think Billy’s story will end happily?’

‘I will do what I can to ensure that it does. I’ve asked Mrs Blythe to keep in touch. I’ve told her I will be happy to fund any education he might need or, when he’s older, the setting up of an apprenticeship, or commission in the army.’

Madeleine stood up and grasped his hand in gratitude. ‘That is generous indeed, Mr Shilton. You will become his godfather?’

‘I am happy to do what I can.’

‘Even though our part in Billy’s story has ended happily, I still have my plans to do what I can for orphaned or abandoned children. I would very much like to have a home in the country to care for and educate them.’

‘So, my dower house at Nonsuch is not yet safe from your acquisitive eye?’

‘Not quite. But don’t forget the Lockhart mansion also has a dower house. I could turn my gaze to that.’

‘I forget you’re a capricious heiress.’

‘In most ways an unwilling one, too.’ Her face was shadowed with the responsibilities of this controversial legacy. ‘Grandmama has cast a conundrum into my lap.’

Ferdy looked down at her with a kind of melancholy tenderness. ‘Will you solve it?’ he asked softly.

She met his eyes for a moment. ‘I’m working it out,’ was all she said. Then, aware she was without Dot as chaperone, she turned to go. As Ferdy held open the library door, she burst out, ‘Oh, how I’ll miss Billy!’

‘I will too. But perhaps we will both create our own families in time?’

Madeleine slowly shook her head. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever marry.’

Ferdy’s face registered a strange mixture of surprise and relief. ‘So marriage isn’t one of the answers to your conundrum?’

‘Why should a woman of property marry, only to give it all away? Unless it’s the demands of the heart, and then gold is of little consequence. Nothing is more precious than love.’

Ferdy took her hand with a laugh. ‘You are an impossible romantic, Miss Rose. I hope such exaltation of feeling shall not disappoint you. It’s a risky path, perhaps best left to fiction?’

Madeleine could not suppress a smile at her own unworldliness. ‘I know, Mr Shilton. But this is the freedom of choice my inheritance has given me. Perhaps all along, Grandmama meant to give me that? I no longer have to marry some unprepossessing suitor in order to have a home and a life.’

‘Well, I’m more than relieved at that,’ he murmured as they passed into the hall and Maltby watched them with an unfamiliar quirk of humour on his lips. Mr Shilton walked with Madeleine towards the front door. He took her hand in farewell. ‘Miss Rose, we will both miss Billy, but I feel assured that his mother is competent and cares deeply for him, and all will be well.’

She looked up into his face, with its fine cheekbones and expressive blue eyes, and realised how beloved he was to her, how beautiful she thought him in body and soul. Madeleine held his gaze, unaware that her countenance and flushing skin betrayed her vehement heart. She was oblivious to time and the world, the passers-by and the horses in the street, even Dot joining her on the step, as she continued to look deep into his eyes, which met hers with the same intensity.

Then Mr Shilton broke the spell by squeezing her hand and asking in some confusion, ‘Miss Rose, is everything all right?’

Sprung from her reverie, she nodded.