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‘Career? Are you hearing yourself, Alex?’ Minerva demanded. ‘Because you sound deluded. Women don’t have careers, for heaven’s sake. This may be 1915 and you may well have modern ideas, but your job is to support your husband. You’re going to be the wife of an important man, one way or another, and a mother to his children. We need to know your future is secure. That is your career as a Frobisher girl. We’ve never raised you in doubt of your duty, surely? Daughters from families such as ours have their part to play in the family’s future. It’s time to deliver on all your privileges and do your bit.’

Alex hated to disappoint either of her parents but why couldn’t they understand she didn’t want any of the entitlements to which they both referred? Her uncle’s boys could have it all, if they lived long enough to take it on. This was a battle best fought another day. She retreated, throwing appeasement their way to defuse the heat from her mother’s glare and the disappointment in her father that the two women in his life were at such loggerheads. ‘I cannot marry anyone right now because all our men are fighting for their lives, and ours, in Europe. Look, Dad, Mother, please don’t upset yourselves; the trio you refer to are likely each in trenches. They may not be suitable in my mind but it doesn’t mean they aren’t good men, brave and patriotic.’ She watched her mother’s frown loosen and felt her own relief let go. ‘We can’t make important decisions on marriage while the potential grooms are fighting a war. You come from a different age, both of you; you were born when a queen ruled an empire and we’ve already moved through a king since. We’re one-quarter through 1915 and there is surely another year of war ahead . . .’ She lifted a shoulder. ‘None of us knows what’s going to happen but I suppose the modern woman in me accepts that we can’t halt progress, no matter what. So, of course I will marry and of course I will give you grandchildren, but I don’t know who that will be with or when. Can we agree not to discuss marriage until we know there’s peace?’

‘Deal!’ Charles said with a clap of his hands.

His wife turned her disbelieving gaze on her husband.

‘Alex is right, my dear. This conversation is academic until those three jolly fellows are freely available. Poor old Cameron’s being sent to Belgium or something, isn’t he?’

‘Well, they’ll get leave, won’t they?’ Minerva queried.

Alex groaned.

‘I’m sure they will at some time,’ her father agreed.

‘If they live long enough,’ Alex observed.

‘But I think our only precious child should make an informed decision when the world is in a less wretched frame of mind,’ her father continued. ‘Besides, it’s no good her agreeing to marry a man who doesn’t return from the battlefield. Imagine the trauma of that on all of us. What if she were married, pregnant, had a child?’

Bravo, Dad, Alex cheered inwardly.

‘Enough, Charles.’ The lower half of Minerva’s face seemed to disappear into her neck, as if desperately forcing down a new line of attack, but none of her pinched disappointment was masked. ‘Right,’ she said, finding her new path. ‘So we’re agreed, then? All of us? When peace is regained, within six weeks of it, Alexandra, please will you allow me to make an announcement of your engagement?’ She eyed them both again, awaiting an answer.

‘I think that’s fair,’ Charles remarked to the fireplace. He bent again towards the tray of cooling pikelets.

‘You don’t need another, darling. Remember your indigestion.’

‘Yes, dear,’ he said, stealing a wink at his daughter and another pikelet.

‘Alexandra?’

She shifted her attention back to her mother because the tone was not to be ignored.

‘I want to hear your agreement to this pact we’re making as a family. Six weeks after formal peacetime you will be engaged. You will not break faith with this. I cannot have my daughter a spinster for much longer. This is a solemn promise you’re giving us, darling, all right?’

‘I agree,’ she said, and her mother nodded, seemingly satisfied. Alex glanced away to the tall windows that flooded light into the room each afternoon. It was still a couple of hours to dusk and she needed to take some air.

They could hear the phone ringing distantly, then a tap on the door sounded. A woman with a familiar hangdog expression entered. The often sombre-looking arrangement of her features belied the genial, kindly person who lived behind them. She’d been at Tilsden since before Alex was born and Charles Frobisher had acquiesced to the housekeeper’s insistence that no new butler was required since the war had dragged away so many of the men. She’d stepped up her role from housekeeper to shoulder most of the butlering responsibilities.

‘Yes, Lambton?’ Charles said.

‘It’s a gentleman, a Mr Britten-Jones, on the telephone, sir.’

‘Britten-Jones? All right, Lambton, thank you.’

‘Who is that, darling?’ Minerva wondered.

‘Do you remember the couple we met in Bath? He was involved in the expansion of the transport network in the west.’

‘Vaguely.’

‘Ruddy, built like a block of stone. Old money. New money too and lots of it – mind you, he’d need it. They had quite a crowd of a family, as I recall.’

‘Wife thin as a waif and extremely short, I seem to recall.’

‘That’s the one. Well, I’ve been doing some work with him via the railways this past couple of years. He’s a good sort. I like him. Excellent family. Strange he’d ring me at home, though.’

Alex followed her father to the door, smiling at Lambton, whose quiet yet somehow dominant personality she’d grown up to admire as close to a grandmother in her life.