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calling one of the servants to bring his father’s horse round to the front door.
    As soon as his father had disappeared down the long drive, Daisy following close behind, Brook went upstairs to see his wife. She had fallen asleep and the nurse was tip-toeing round the room tidying the various medicines and paraphernalia round her patient’s bed. She looked sympathetically at the handsome young man standing in the doorway. She had perforce seen the distress and sympathy on his face when he’d first been allowed into the room after the unhappy miscarriage. He had held his sobbing wife in his arms so tenderly that, surprising herself, tears had come into her eyes.
    Regardless of the nurse’s presence, Brook had lent his cheek against Harriet’s and told her that he loved her and that what had happened was unimportant – that they would soon have another baby, ‘Two, three, fourteen …’ he’d added in the hope of making her smile through her tears.
    The doctor had given strict instructions that his patient was not to have any visitors for at least two days other than her husband, who should stay no more than five minutes at a time, but now, for the first time in her long life as a nurse, the woman found herself disobeying a doctor’s instructions. She had not been able to bear to part them as Brook had rocked Harriet gently in his arms.
    ‘There’ll be another one on the way afore long, sure as ducks is ducks,’ she said later to Cook as she accepted a welcome cup of tea in the big, busy kitchen. ‘Like two lovebirds, they were! Wouldn’t surprise me one bit if she don’t end up with a dozen or more.’
    What the nurse had no way of knowing was that Fate had other ideas.

THREE
1865
    I t was a beautiful spring morning and, for the first time since her miscarriage, Harriet’s former joy in her life had replaced the months of depression. Worrying continuously about her, Brook had decided to indulge her further by dismissing the nurse who he had insisted must remain to oversee her recovery long after it was necessary for her to do so.
    Harriet had disliked the way the woman fussed over her all the time, even, on occasions, interrupting her evenings alone in the drawing room with Brook, saying, ‘Time you were in bed, madam!’ and, ‘Tut-tut’ when Harriet protested she was not in the least tired and had no wish to retire.
    Holding her hand, Brook would look anxiously at her and at the implacable face of the nurse, and say reluctantly, ‘My darling, much as I have been enjoying our conversation, I think you should do as Nurse says, otherwise you will never get your strength back!’
    It was useless for her to protest that she felt perfectly well again, that she wanted to stay with Brook with whom she was more in love than ever. In the daytime when he was busy somewhere on the estate, or out shooting or fishing, silly as she knew it to be, she missed him.
    On occasions, Jenkins, their coachman, would drive Brook to London to his father’s offices in the city in order to be brought up to date with the situation in Jamaica where his family owned a vast and profitable sugar estate. Shortly before Brook’s marriage, Sir Walter had handed over to him the responsibility for the running of the estate. During the three years Brook had spent on the island after he’d left university, he had learned everything necessary for good management of the sugar plantations and his promotion had earned him an increased allowance which enabled him to fulfil more than adequately his future duties as a husband and, he hoped, father.
    Brook disliked the days and nights in London apart from Harriet as much as she did, but in view of her pregnancies – and subsequent miscarriages – he had ruled against taking her to London with him. Whilst there he stayed at his club for as short a time as was necessary before hurrying back to Hunters Hall and his beloved wife.
    Harriet had assured him that he had no need to worry about her when