‘I thought you were content to like me just as I am, the present here-and-now me,’ I said sulkily.
‘Circumstances have changed,’ she replied, leaning back in her chair. ‘When Kitty retires to Dieppe, I shall be required to take her place at The Academy, and that will allow me to give up my gentlemen.’ She rested her steady gaze on me. ‘It is important to me, Eddie, under these new circumstances, to know everything about the man I have fallen in love with.’
It was her first outright declaration of what she felt for me; the first time that the word love had been spoken. I could see that she was waiting for some reciprocal response. But how could I tell her what she wished to hear, when my heart still ached for another, whom I could never now possess?
‘Do you have nothing to say?’ she asked.
‘Only that you are my dearest friend in the world, as I have often told you,’ I replied, ‘and that I cannot bear to see you distressed.’
‘So do you like me – love me, even – merely as a friend?’
‘Well, I see that you are now starting to play the philosopher with me, so I suppose I have my answer.’
I reached out and took her hand.
‘Bella, dearest, forgive me. If you wish to call my feelings for you “love,” then so be it. I am more than content for you to do so. For myself, I am devoted to you as the dearest, sweetest friend a man could have. If this is love, then I love you. And if it is love to feel safe and comfortable in your presence, then I love you. And if it is love to know that I am never happier than when you take my face in your hands and kiss me, then I love you. And if …’ And so I went on, until I could obfuscate no more.
I smiled, in what I hoped was my most winning manner, and was rewarded by the sight of a faint animation of her lips.
‘Then I suppose, Mr Edward Glapthorn, that your many ingenious definitions of love must suffice – for now.’ She removed her hand from mine as she spoke. ‘But for the sake of all we have been together, and for all we may be, you must set my mind at rest – completely at rest. The note—’
‘Is false.’ I looked at her steadily. ‘False as hell – written by someone who wishes to do me – us – harm, for some reason we cannot yet know. But we shall defeat them, dearest Bella. I promise you shall know all about me, and then they shall have no hold over us. We shall be safe.’
If only it could be so. She was, as I had sincerely maintained, my dearest friend in the world; and perhaps what I felt for her was a kind of love. But in order to spare her from hurt and scandal, and perhaps for her own safety, I could not tell her that I had just killed one man in preparation for killing a second, or that I was not who I claimed to be, and that my heart would always be enslaved to another. But she deserved to know something more about me, to set her mind at rest until such time as I could unmask the blackmailer, and put the danger from us permanently. And then? Even when I had vanquished my enemy at last, and revenged myself for what he had done to me, could she ever replace what I had lost, dear to me though she was?
The Clarendon was a respectable hotel, and we had no luggage; but the manager was an old acquaintance of mine and discreetly secured us a room.
We sat up late into the night. This, in summary, is what I told her.
My mother’s family, the Mores of Church Langton, were West Country farmers of long standing. Her uncle, Mr Byam More, was land-agent for Sir Robert Fairmile, of Langton Court near Taunton, whose only daughter, Laura, was nearly of an age with my mother. The two little girls grew up together and became the closest of friends, their friendship continuing when Laura married and moved to a Midlands county.
Within a month or so, my mother also married, though hers was a much less grand match than her friend’s. Laura Fairmile had become Lady Tansor, of Evenwood in Northamptonshire, one of the most enchanting houses in England, and the seat of an ancient and distinguished line; my mother became the wife of a wastrel half-pay officer in the Hussars.
My father – always known as ‘the Captain’ – served inconspicuously in the 11th Regiment of Light Dragoons, the celebrated ‘Cherrypickers’, which later became famous, as the 11th Prince Albert’s Own Hussars, under the command of Lord Cardigan, though the Captain was long dead before the regiment’s immortal action in the Russian War. He left the regiment after sustaining injury in the Peninsula, and was promoted to half-pay; but his leisure was productive of nothing except a renewed dedication to a long-held love of strong liquor, which he pursued vigorously, to the exclusion of all other occupations. He spent little time with his wife, could settle at nothing, and, when he was not engaged with his local companions at the Bell and Book in Church Langton, was away visiting old regimental comrades, and partaking of the usual lively debauchery that such occasions afford. The birth of a daughter, it appears, did not encourage him to mend his ways, and on the evening of her untimely death, at only five days old, he was to be found in his usual corner at the Bell and Book. He compounded his iniquity by being absent – I know not where, but I can guess why – on the day of the poor child’s funeral.
My mother and the Captain, on the latter’s insistence, left Church Langton soon afterwards for Sandchurch, in Dorset, where remnants of the Captain’s family resided. The change brought no improvement in his behaviour; he merely exchanged the Bell and Book in Church Langton for the King’s Head in Sandchurch. I have said enough, I hope, to demonstrate the Captain’s execrable character, and his utter contempt for the duties of a husband and father.
In the summer of 1819, my mother accompanied her friend, Laura Tansor, to France, where she stayed for several months. I was born there, in March of the following year, in the Breton city of Rennes. Some weeks later, the two companions travelled together to Dinan, where they took lodgings near the Tour de l’Horloge. Lady Tansor then departed for Paris whilst my mother remained in Dinan for several more days. But just as she was preparing to leave for St-Malo, she received terrible news from England.
The Captain, returning home late one pitch-black night from the King’s Head in an extreme state of inebriation, had wandered off the path, missed his footing, and tumbled over the cliff not twelve yards from his door. Tom Grexby, the village schoolmaster, found him the next morning, his neck quite broken.
The Captain appears to have been perfectly content to let his wife gad off to France with her friend. He found it not in the least inconvenient to have the house to himself, and to be able to spend his leisure unencumbered by even the few domestic duties required of him when his wife was at home. And so he died, a miserable mediocrity.
On a June evening in the year 1820, my mother brought me home to Dorset, tucked up in a plaid blanket and
