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I nodded. ‘I know, Perry,’ I said soothingly. We got hold of him again and started the ascent up to the next landing.

  ‘I am too,’ Perry said sadly. ‘It just didn’t seem so important.’

  I was watching his feet in the expensive boots. He was half-walking, half-dragged by us.

  ‘Papa always said I looked like Mama. Not like him,’ he said. ‘He said I looked like a girl. He used to call me little Miss Peregrine.’

  This time it was me who stopped, it cost us a few steps downwards.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘He called me Pretty Miss Peregrine,’ Perry said. ‘I never got the feeling he really liked me. Sent me away to school when I was six. Never had me home for the holidays when he was there. All over the place I was. Scotland, London, even France one holiday. Never home with him and George.’ The tears had overflowed and his face was wet. ‘Once George and Papa were dead I thought it would be different,’ he said. ‘But I suppose I just don’t look like a lord.’

  ‘You do!’ I said fiercely. ‘You do look like a lord. You look like an angel, Perry. You are the best-looking man I know. And if you could stay sober you would be a really good man.’

  ‘You think so?’ Perry looked a little brighter. ‘Well, I think I might be.’ He thought for a moment. ‘But I’d rather be a drunk,’ he said.

  We were at his bedroom door now and the maid and I pushed him through.

  ‘Should we take his boots off?’ I asked her.

  She dipped me a curtsey. ‘Please’m, I’m not allowed in the bedrooms,’ she said.

  ‘That’s all right,’ I said. I was weary with the conventions of this house, of this life where a six-year-old boy could be sent away to school and never allowed home again. ‘You can go now.’

  I put my hand in my pocket and found a sixpenny piece. ‘Here,’ I said. ‘Thank you for helping.’

  Her eyes widened, and I suddenly remembered how far sixpence could go if you were just a young girl like this one. Like the two of us had been.

  She went out and closed the door behind her, and I set to work on Perry’s boots. By the time I had them off he was lying on his back and tears were seeping out from under his closed eyelids. When I sat on the bed beside him he turned his head to me and buried it in my lap.

  ‘I’ll never love anyone like I love George,’ he said sorrowfully. ‘I wish he was still here, and then I wouldn’t have to be a lord any more. I wouldn’t have to get married or have an heir, or anything.’

  I stroked his blond curls and twisted one perfect circle around my index finger.

  ‘I know,’ I said gently. ‘I miss someone too.’

  His grip around my waist tightened, and I could feel his shoulders shaking as he sobbed.

  ‘Sarah,’ he said, his voice muffled. ‘Oh God, Sarah, get me out of this mess. I seem to be more and more unhappy every day and nothing helps.’

  ‘There,’ I said helplessly. I patted his shoulder and stroked his back as if he were a little boy crying from some secret hurt.

  ‘I’ve got to take Papa’s place and everyone knows I’m not good enough,’ he said. He lifted his head and looked at me. His eyes were red from weeping and from the drink. ‘I’ve got to take George’s place and no one will ever love me like they loved George,’ he said.

  I put my hand up to cup his cheek. ‘I will,’ I said. I hardly knew what I was saying. My grief for her, and my sorrow and my loneliness at the emptiness of the life we were all living seemed to well up inside me and call that there should be love between us. That at least Perry and I could be kind to one another. That here was a man suffering like a little child, and that he was brought so low that even I, with my own pain and failure, could help him.

  ‘Don’t grieve, Perry,’ I said gently. ‘I can care for you. We’ll not be here much longer and then we can go home and live near Wideacre together. People will forget George, they will forget your papa. We’ll run the estate well together and people will see what a good man you can be. Even your mama will be pleased when she sees how well you can run the estate.’

  ‘She will?’ he asked, as trusting as a child.

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘We will both learn together. You’ll see. We’ll be happy in the end.’

  He let me press him back gently to the pillow, and pull the coverlet over him. He closed his eyes but he held on tight to my hand.

  ‘Don’t leave me,’ he said.

  I held his hand firmly. ‘I won’t,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t ever leave me, Sarah,’ he said pitifully, then his grip on my hand loosened and in minutes he was asleep and snoring. I remembered a friend of Da’s, who had choked on his vomit and I turned Perry’s young face to one side on the fine linen pillow so that he was not lying on his back. Then I tiptoed to the door and went softly downstairs and out of the front door where Sea’s ears went forward at seeing me.

  The groom lifted me into the saddle and we headed for the park, riding in silence. As I moved instinctively with Sea, and checked him when a top-heavy wagon swayed past us, too close, I thought of Perry. I thought of him with such a great tenderness and pity. I thought of him with love, and sympathy. And a tiny little part of me spoke with the voice of the hard-faced gypsy who was always there, in the back of my mind. That voice said, ‘This is a weakling and a fool.’

  He was still asleep when I got back, but Lady Clara’s maid was walking up the stairs with her ladyship’s pot of hot chocolate.

  ‘I’ll take that,’ I said impulsively, and carried it in.

  Lady Clara was awake, she smiled when she saw me.

  ‘Why Sarah! Good morning! How nice to see you so early! How very strong you do smell of horse! My dear, do go over to the window and air yourself a little!’

  ‘I am sorry,’ I said, immediately confused. ‘It may be my boots.’

  ‘Of course it may,’ she said agreeably. ‘But don’t mention it. I am sure the rugs will wash.’

  I flushed scarlet. ‘Don’t tease me, Lady Clara,’ I said. ‘Are you telling me I should not have come?’

  She smiled. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You are welcome, even smelling of hunter. Ring for another cup and tell me why you have come to see me so early.’

  I waited until the maid had brought up another cup, and poured the chocolate, and brought Lady Clara the morning’s post, and taken herself off, and then I took a deep breath and started.

  ‘It’s about Perry,’ I said.

  Lady Clara’s blue gaze at me was clear and guileless.

  ‘Did he not come home last night?’ she asked coolly. ‘Is he drunk? Or gambling?’

  ‘No!’ I exclaimed. ‘I found him on the doorstep this morning. He got himself home but he is dead drunk.’

  She nodded and gestured to me to pour her another cup.

  ‘His drinking is getting worse and worse,’ I said. ‘And he seems to be very unhappy. I can’t help thinking that this town life is very bad for him. He should have some occupation. All he does every day is ride with me in the afternoon and then go out every night. He does nothing else.’

  ‘There is nothing else,’ Lady Clara pointed out. ‘He is leading the life of a young gentleman of pleasure. What do you want him to do, Sarah? Steer a plough? Take up silk weaving?’

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But he drank less when he was down at Havering. It is making him ill, Lady Clara. He is paler and thinner all the time. I have seen men very bad with drink. I would not like that to happen to Perry.’

  She looked suddenly alert. ‘Not before there was an heir, certainly,’ she said.

  I scrutinized her face. She was not speaking in jest. She meant it.

  ‘What?’ I said blankly.

  ‘Not “what”,’ she said instantly.

  ‘I am sorry,’ I said. ‘I meant to say: I beg your pardon?’

  She nodded. ‘If Perry died without an heir then the whole estate would go to my late husband’s brother, a commander in the Navy,’ she said. ‘I would have only the Havering Dower Ho