“You will go. There is nothing more to be said.”

Her mother turned her attention back to the sheets of magazine proofs on the writing desk, wielding the golden nib of her pen like a hunter’s knife. Winifred felt her face redden. She had sworn to herself she wouldn’t cry. In an effort to hold back her tears in, the words spilled out before she could prevent them.

“Why? Why do I have to go?”

Lady Jennifer Churchill picked up the pen top with her elegant fingers and with delicate precision placed it over the nib and snapped it into place; and turned the face that was the toast of Society toward her daughter.

“Very well, Winifred. I will treat you as the adult you wish to be. Sit.” She waved at the chair beside the desk where her editorial staff sat when they visited: padded but austere, with its back to the heavy velvet curtains that hid the traffic clattering through the London street below. Awkwardly, in her long skirt, Winifred shuffled back and perched on its edge, feet swinging beneath the hem.

“Why are you not named Lady Winifred Churchill?”

What an odd way to start, she thought. “Father’s title is not inherited, Mother.”

“And why is that? Is it not his title by birth?”

“He was the fourth son.”

“Yes. Probably the wisest decision these English aristocrats made with their Letters Patent. Else by now the whole country would be crawling with petty nobles, instead of petty bourgeoisie.”

Winifred thought that a little rich from her American mother: the second daughter of new-money bourgeoisie herself, but she said nothing. Happily the heat in her cheeks had subsided and the threatened rain of tears with it. Still she could not see where this was going.

“Who will you marry?”

Winifred blinked. “Marry, Mother?”

“Marry.”

“I – I do not know.”

“Well, let us consider: You have no title. That is an unfortunate beginning. So, are you a simpering half-wit of a girl valued only by her fortune, to be wooed by every eligible bachelor and impoverished lordling?”

“I am not Clara Beaumont, Mother.”

“For which we may all be grateful. But where does that leave you? No title, no fortune and you have your Father’s nose.”

Winifred’s face reddened once more. Everyone knew her mother’s great beauty; she had been considered the handsomest woman in Society for as long as Winifred had been aware of such things. It was said she had the ear of every gentleman of note; and the distrust of every wife. At least that was what Winifred had heard one visitor say to another, though she did not quite understand the second point; but for her own Mother to call her plain?

“Frankly, Winifred, your Father’s income, even with my own, is barely sufficient to manage our houses. And without title, fortune or beauty we must rely on education to see you through. And though you may have inherited your Father’s countenance, you at least have your wits from me. That is what we must concentrate on.”

“But why can I not be tutored here?” She could feel the tears welling up again. “I do not want to go to Wimbledon House.”

“The decision has been made.”

“But why? Surely it will cost more?”

“On the contrary, Wimbledon House will cost nothing. As a new establishment they have taken the very practical step of accepting a number of students of good name and respectable bloodline at no charge. That condition at least you can fulfil. From there you will be able to enter one of the Ladies’ colleges at Cambridge. Then you will be equipped to support yourself.”

Winifred felt numb as the inevitability spread through her. She stared at the pattern of the carpet as if it were a maze from which there was no escape. She was plain and without title or fortune. Only education could save her and even then she had been selected not on her merits but ‘for show’.

“What does Father think?”

“Your father will accept whatever I decide.”