‘No!’ Rosa spoke without thinking, but the words died in her throat when their faces turned to her, Alexis’ red and angry, Sebastian’s pale, one eyebrow raised in enquiry. Only Luke did not look at her. His eyes were on the ground, as if in resignation.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Alexis’ crop twitched against his thigh again, only this time his anger was not at Luke. ‘How dare you contradict me in front of a servant?’

‘I didn’t . . .’ Rosa twisted her fingers together. ‘I mean, I wasn’t – I only thought—’

‘What you thought doesn’t interest me,’ Alexis snarled.

‘Greenwood.’ Sebastian cut across him, his voice like a whip. ‘Please have the courtesy to let your sister speak.’

Rosa would not have thought it possible for Alexis to turn any redder, but he seemed to manage, a tide of fury flooding from his throat to his hairline. But he said nothing. He gave a stiff nod towards Rosa, inviting her to speak, and Rosa swallowed.

‘I’m sorry, Alexis,’ she managed. ‘It was only that – I should have said . . .’ Inspiration came and she stood up straighter in spite of the pain in her foot, taking courage from the lie, and from Sebastian’s hand supporting her elbow. ‘I should have said, I adjusted Cherry’s girth, not Luke. It’s my fault.’

‘How does that explain him overlooking the broken buckle?’ Alexis exploded. ‘He’s in charge of the tack. If he didn’t properly examine it—’

‘I broke the buckle. Cherry stepped on it while I was adjusting the straps, but I thought it would be all right. I – I was in a hurry to catch up.’ She hung her head. The blush that coloured her cheeks was real, lending credence to the lie. ‘I thought it would wait. I meant to tell Luke later.’

For a long moment Alex said nothing. He just stood, his crop tapping against his thigh, his breath coming quick and angry. Then he turned on his heel and swung himself back into the saddle.

‘Well. Then you have only yourself to blame,’ he hissed at Rosa. ‘And you . . .’ He pointed his crop at Luke. ‘You’re on your final warning. Consider yourself lucky I’m not sacking you anyway for allowing a woman to fiddle with the tack.’

He gave Brimstone a crack with his crop that made the horse jump and whinny. And then he was off across the park at a gallop, the riders scattering before him, and Rosa and Sebastian looked at one another.

‘I’m sorry,’ Rosa said. She wasn’t sure if she was apologizing for herself or for Alexis. She let her eyes flick towards Luke, sitting motionless on Castor. His face was blank, unreadable. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be silly.’ Sebastian gave a short laugh. ‘Alexis is a fool and a boor. That’s no fault of yours.’

‘Then why are you friends with him?’ she shot back, before she could consider the wisdom of the question. Sebastian only looked at her, his blue eyes pale and cool as the winter sky. For a minute he held her gaze. Then he looked away.

‘I leave you to decide that for yourself.’

In the silence that followed, Rosa groped for a remark but found nothing. She only stood, searching, trying to find the perfect riposte and failing.

Then Sebastian broke in.

‘I’m so sorry, Rosa. Why am I leaving you standing around on your bad ankle like a fool? We must get you home. The only question is how. Is your carriage at home ready?’

He looked at Luke.

‘No, sir,’ Luke said. Rosa breathed a sigh of relief. The carriage was in perilous need of repair and hardly used, and Mama would be out in the governess trap.

‘Please, Sebastian.’ She put her hand on his arm. ‘I can ride, honestly I can.’

‘Ride? With a broken buckle?’ Sebastian said shortly. ‘Don’t be foolish, Rosa.’

‘Well then, I’ll walk.’

‘Nonsense. We’ll send for my phaeton . . . You.’ He spoke to Luke. ‘D’you know where Hanington Square is?’

‘No, sir.’ Luke shook his head. His eyes were on the rutted surface of the Row. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I’ve never been up west before.’

Sebastian clicked his tongue and Rosa stiffened, almost expecting another flash of cold rage. But when he spoke his voice was calm and even; preoccupied, but no hint of that dangerous icy fury that had consumed him before.

‘There’s nothing for it, I’ll have to go for mine. Stay here,’ he said to Rosa. ‘Your man will look after you.’

‘Sebastian . . .’ Rosa felt exasperation rise in her. ‘Truly, there’s no need. I can walk, I promise you.’ She thought of all the times she’d fallen or been thrown at Matchenham and limped home, sore and bleeding. No carriage then. She was lucky if she got a bowl of hot water and a healing spell.

‘I’m going,’ Sebastian said firmly. He swung himself back up on to his horse, tipped his hat to her and cantered off down the row.

Rosa sank on to a bench and let out a tremulous breath. In truth her ankle was hurting and the idea of walking home on it was not pleasant. But the idea of being driven in Sebastian Knyvet’s carriage was somehow even more disquieting.

She watched him galloping across the park, his horse’s shining coat flickering between the trees. And a strange feeling rose up in her – a mixture of excitement and fear. He wanted her – she’d known it from that first moment his eyes met hers in the candlelit drawing room, but now she was sure. Sebastian, who could have had any girl in London or Delhi for the asking and their dowry too, wanted her, Rosa Greenwood, a girl without two shillings to rub together. She was no longer the pursuer – she was the pursued. The thought made her shiver.

But as she watched him disappear into the throng by the gate, an image came into her mind: it was the image of a fox, a little vixen she’d seen at Matchenham, chased by a hound.

Luke slid from the horse on to legs that felt like they would give way any second. His limbs felt like they had the time he’d had the influenza – weak and shaky, with joints made of jelly, not bone. His heart was beating in his throat so that he felt almost like throwing up. For a minute there it had been all over – and she’d saved him. Why? Why?

His guts griped and for a moment he thought he was actually going to be sick – right there, in the Row, amid the glossy horses and shiny boots.

‘Luke . . .’ He heard Rosa’s voice as if from a long way off. ‘Luke. Are you all right?’

‘Shouldn’t I be asking you that?’ he said hoarsely, and turned to face her, forcing down the weakness. Get it together, he raged at himself. Get it together, you god-damned yellow-belly.

‘You had a shock too.’ Her eyes were huge in her pale face. She’d lost half her hairpins with the fall and fiery tendrils had escaped from beneath her hat and twined around her white throat and the stark black collar of her habit.

‘Why did you do it?’ he demanded suddenly. He knew he should have been grateful and that his voice was full of an anger he couldn’t suppress and didn’t understand. ‘Why? It was my fault! Why did you tell them it was you?’

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she said softly.

He wanted her to rage, damn him for being impertinent and ungrateful and irresponsible – and instead she was watching him with those wide dark eyes, her face unguarded and full of concern for him.

‘It was my fault.’ The words tore out of him like they were edged with thorns. Good God – not his fault? If she only knew . . . For a crazy second the truth hovered on the tip of his tongue and the urge to blurt it all out was overwhelming – he imagined spitting it out, like a gobbet of poison on the clean sawdust of the Row. She stood and her magic swirled and shimmered around them both. He felt it reach out, insinuating itself into him, trying to soothe and comfort and calm.

No! he wanted to bellow. He raised his hands to press them against his forehead, pressing back the confused desperation that was boiling up inside him. The dressing on his shoulder gave a great throb, as if infected, and for a second he thought he might fall – it was only his grip on Cherry’s reins that kept him upright.

Then Castor nuzzled his shoulder as if to steady him and somehow – somehow – he got it together enough to mutter, ‘It was my fault. I should have checked the buckle. But you still haven’t said why – why did you save me?’

‘Because I couldn’t bear to see you sacked over a stupid buckle!’ she burst out. ‘And Alexis would have done it, you know – he would have sent you packing back to Spitalfields tomorrow without any notice and without a character – and then where would it be, your dream of being a groom?’

He almost laughed. The cover story seemed so thin and transparently stupid, like a tale a child might have dreamt up.

‘I never wanted to be a groom,’ he found himself saying bitterly.

‘What?’ Her brow furrowed. ‘Then what are you doing here?’

Don’t tell her! The urge to spit out the truth was almost overpowering. Had she bewitched him? Was this crazy urge to tell her everything part of some truth-telling charm? But he didn’t feel as if it was he could feel no spells coming from her other than that first soothing, gentling warmth that he’d shaken off without effort.

‘It was my uncle’s idea,’ he said. It was the truth – and the words slipped out without him even thinking about them. ‘Not mine. I wanted – I want – to be a farrier like him, a blacksmith. I always have.’

‘It’s a good trade,’ she said quietly. ‘There’ll always be horses needing to be shod.’

‘My uncle says it’s a fool’s game. He says you end up scarred from your mistakes, and deaf from the hammering, and that no one wants to pay for proper smithing any more, they want cheap factory-made metal that any fool can break and bend.’

That was true too. The relief of speaking the truth for once – of not dissembling and deceiving – was so great he felt like weeping. Why was it so hard to lie to this girl? No – not a girl. A witch. She was a witch and an abomination in the sight of man and God. So why was it so hard to pay her in her own coin, with deceit and trickery and betrayal?

‘And what about you?’ she asked. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think . . .’ He stopped. What could he say? I’ve never wanted anything else but a forge of my own, and a couple of horses, and a woman to come home to of a night and maybe make a child with, one day.

But that was not the truth. Or not all the truth. Because there was something else he wanted more. Revenge. Justice for his father and mother. To be able to close his eyes at night and know that he was not a coward, that he had avenged his parents’ memory at last.

‘I think sometimes we can’t get what we want,’ he said slowly, picking his way between the truth and the lies, like he walked the streets of Spitalfields of an evening, picking his way between the putrid fruit and the thin-running streams of shit and rubbish. ‘Leastways, not all of it. Not at the same time.’

She looked away at that, as if the words hit very near to home, but said nothing.

‘And I think that my uncle wants to see me succeed. And so do I.’

‘So you’re an ambitious man, Luke Welling?’

‘I suppose so,’ he said shortly. Then, in an effort to change the subject on to less dangerous ground, ‘But you should be sitting, miss. Mr Knyvet won’t thank me if he comes back to find you standing around on the leg we’re supposed to be sparing. Please. Sit down. Save me a ticking off.’

‘All right.’ She looked at the bench and then nodded. ‘But only if you sit too.’

‘I couldn’t,’ he said automatically, his fingers tightening on the reins. ‘Castor – Cherry . . .’

‘Nonsense,’ she said, and smiled. ‘The horses are tired. They’ll stand. Loop their reins over the post if you’re worried.’

She was right. He looped the reins over the end of the bench and sat, stiff as a post, and as far away from her as he possibly could. For a moment she looked at him, puzzled, and then she seemed to shake her head and sit back, enjoying the rare winter sun.

Luke sat back too, feeling the thin sunshine soak into his limbs, through his thin, worn jacket and into his exhausted muscles and aching bones, into his shoulders where the brand-mark still ached and throbbed.

He felt tired, so tired he could have lain down his head right there on the hard bench. He had failed. The girl was alive. And the thought of starting all over again made him want to weep.

Rosa couldn’t help wincing as Sebastian lifted her into the phaeton. It was high and built for racing, not for transporting ladies.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, seeing the look on her face, and the way she gritted her teeth against the pain. ‘I wanted the carriage, but my father had taken it. This was the only thing available.’