She knew that chin, that nose, that brow. It was so like her own husband. There on the floor was Bamfylde Caxton, eldest and only son of Theodore Caxton, Lord Calaway, the man who was due to inherit the family’s fortunes. Bamfylde, the long-lost heir.
Bamfylde, the man who had been seen on the steps to Digby Nettles’ house the night that he was killed?
Bamfylde, the man who had been secretly conversing with his half-sister Charlotte, skulking in shadow? But she had said that she’d been talking to – no, could it be? Adelia’s train of thought ground to a halt.
And hurrying footsteps sounded behind them, accompanied by feminine moans of complaint. Charlotte and Robert caught up with them, and Charlotte cried out in alarm.
“Father! Do you not know who you have brought to the ground? What is happening here?”
Theodore rocked back onto his heels, taking the pressure of his weight from Bamfylde’s body, allowing him to sit up.
“It is my son,” Theodore said, a note of wonder in his breaking voice. “He is my ... son.”
A POLICEMAN CAME ALONG on his beat, alerted by the noise of the scuffle. Theodore and Bamfylde got to their feet, standing awkwardly apart, staring at the ground as everyone else assured the constable that there was nothing untoward occurring. He seemed unwilling to believe them, and lingered, watching them until they all turned and went into a nearby public house together. Adelia shuddered as they passed along the corridor past the open doors to the bar at the front, and the saloon, but the landlady led them up to a small private room right at the back where they were safe from prying eyes. Robert paid over the odds for wine to be brought to them, wine that they didn’t want, but it bought them the privacy along with it.
There were wooden benches in the room, and a table that wobbled, and a low lamp in an alcove away from the draughts of the window and the door. Adelia and Charlotte sat down. Robert perched gingerly on the edge of the table, making it scrape on the wooden floor. Everyone was watching Theodore and Bamfylde, who stood at some distance apart from one another, each nervously waiting for the other to speak.
Adelia could not stand it, and anyway, they were going to be late for the exhibition. That made her say, quite directly, “Bamfylde. Are you the mysterious and celebrated Lord H?”
Bamfylde nodded without hesitation. Half a dozen things fell into place. Adelia studied him. She had not seen him for many years – what, nearly a decade? He had gone up to Cambridge, already then a youth prone to drinking, dancing, carousing, with a hankering to be Lord Byron but with none of that man’s talent. Word had come back to them, from time to time, of his exploits. Eventually Adelia had had to close her ears to them. Theodore had paid off magistrates when Bamfylde’s excesses brought him into real trouble. When word stopped coming, Adelia was ashamed to realise she’d thought ... perhaps she’d hoped ... he was dead, killed at last by his life of excess.
But the man in front of her now was not an opium-raddled minion of pleasure. He had clear skin, bright eyes, a well-trimmed neat beard and a satisfying bulk to his stance which spoke of healthy walks and a good diet.
“Yes. I am Lord H,” he said at last, his voice mellow. He turned his gaze to Charlotte. “You managed to keep my secret all this time,” he added with a smile. “I have heard what fearsome investigators they both are – you’ve done well. I hope it did not inconvenience you too much.”
Charlotte said “No,” and shot a look at Adelia that was a mixture of triumph and sadness. Adelia looked away, not sure what to think.
“But why?” Theodore said.
“Art is my passion. I did not realise it for many years. I have always sketched, and I dabbled; I amused my friends with shamefully bawdy little scribbles. But in recent years I have found myself drawn again and again to paint and to pencils. So I studied, spending long hours in the galleries, sketching the works of the great masters. I was apprenticed for three long years in Italy, and I fear I’ll never get the stain of the pigments that I ground out from my skin.”
Italy. That would account for the years when they had heard nothing from him, Adelia thought.
Theodore was shaking his head. “I did not mean, why art. I meant, why the secrecy? Not to the world – I care not why you might be Lord H to the world – but to us? To me? Why could you not tell me?”
Bamfylde hung his head, becoming like a small boy again, chastised and trembling in front of the patriarch of the family. “Because it was art, father. Mere art. I am nothing but a painter. You sent me to study clever things, highbrow things, and I hated it. I cannot sit and read and read and think and think and think. I open a book, and it is as if time slows down around me. I read a sentence. The letters dance. I read the next sentence and forget instantly what the first sentence ever said. Remember how my tutor used to beat me? Remember how stupid he said that I was?”
“You lacked a little application, perhaps...”
“No, father! I was more applied than anyone. I sweated over my books and yet it was like as if I was trapped in a glass box, unable to reach the meaning of it. Words, words, ideas, debates, clever thoughts. Even now I trip over my own tongue, struggling to explain to you what it is like to be me. For the first twenty-five years of my life, I was not me. I was a very angry, very lost, very scared version of what I thought I was. I
