Page 35

The door opened wider to reveal an elfin figure. He was small and of indeterminate age with a lively expression on his yellowed wrinkly face. He nodded. ‘Come.’ They were led through the echoing space of the vast hall to the back of the house where he rapped on a double door.

A faint voice said, ‘Enter.’

Eliza asked Polly if she would wait for her and then stepped into the room. The curtains were drawn and the light so low she could barely see from whence the voice had come. The air had the miasma of the sickroom: a pungent camphor combining with the sweet smell of opium.

By the fire was a makeshift bed and there, amongst the mound of bedding, lay the Marquess, his large head as bald and smooth as an egg.

He had his back to her and she saw him put out a bony hand to grasp a perruque and place it haphazardly on his head.

‘Come closer, girl, let me see you,’ he said in a querulous voice.

Eliza held her breath. Here was her father at last. She stood before him and gazed tentatively into his face – so thin and dessicated it looked barely more than a skull, paler than parchment, the skin tight across the bone, his sunken eyes the only sign of life, restless with pain.

‘Good afternoon, my lord.’ Not certain what to do, she gave a small curtsey.

‘None of that’s necessary, my dear.’ The old man’s voice was kinder as he grasped her hand.

‘Lean closer, I need to see you properly. Just keep away from my foot, I’m in the devilish agony.

’ She glanced down at his swollen foot, bandaged and placed on a cushion.

‘The gout, you know. Such intensity of sensation makes a naturally irascible man a brute.’

‘I’m sorry you endure it so, sir.’ Eliza felt a rush of sympathy for his suffering. Indeed there were beads of perspiration glistening on his waxy pallor, his anguished eyes scanning her face.

‘You’re a beauty like your mother,’ he said in a strangulated voice that cracked with such emotion that it took Eliza aback.

‘I heard from Lady Dauntsey that she had died soon after I was lost. I’m sorry for us both in that.’ He cast her hand away from him with some force, his face distorted.

‘Can I fetch you anything for the pain?’ she asked.

‘No! My pain is unassuageable, beyond endurance!’ His hands covered his face.

Eliza felt powerless to help him and sat on the edge of the chair next to his bed.

She searched intently for some familiarity in his face.

He continued, his voice barely audible, and she leaned closer to hear.

‘I have not the energy for politeness or dissembling. I’m not long for this world. Look into my eyes, Miss Gray.’

Eliza met his tormented gaze, puzzled and increasingly alarmed. He turned away. ‘I can barely look on you. Your eyes are the evidence that damned your mother.’

Eliza’s pulse began to race, so fearful was she of some terrible revelation to come. ‘Sir. I do not understand,’ she said, her own voice barely audible.

‘I could not make your mother happy, but when at last you were born she was filled with joy. As was I. Until your baby blue eyes began to change and become this devilish mixture of green and grey Then I knew that you were not my daughter.’

This news hit Eliza like a body blow. She sat back as if winded. ‘How can that be, sir? What do you mean?’ Her voice trembled.

But Lord Bathwick was not listening. It was as if a dam had burst and he had to unburden his spirit at last. He continued, quiet and intense, his emaciated hands gripped together until the knuckles shone white.

‘She would not tell me who your father was so I was unable to demand satisfaction with the sword. Neither could I endure her pleasure in you. I could not bear to look on you, the daily reminder of my wife’s betrayal, my humiliating cuckoldom. I was driven almost mad with jealousy.’

Eliza feared what she was about to hear.

Had he killed her mother? She could barely allow such an unnatural thought into her mind.

It was unendurable hearing any more, but she was rooted to the spot, unable to move.

Her eyes fixed on his wig, which was slightly askew, and this trivial detail helped her to still her racing heart.

Lord Bathwick continued, speaking rapidly and with anguish.

‘I have to tell you. I have to confess this guilt before I die. When you were seven we came to Bath to take the waters for my gout. The physical agony was a magnification of the pain in my heart that tormented me so. I had to exorcise it the only way I could.’ His hands fluttered to his face as his voice sank even lower.

‘I am filled with the shame of bribing your nursemaid to lose you during the Solstice revelries when the streets were thronged with every kind of roisterer and merry-maker.’

Eliza’s head dropped with the weight of this terrible fact. ‘So it was not an awful accident? I was lost on purpose?’

His nervous fingers touched her hand briefly and his voice softened, but he still could not look at her.

‘Almost immediately, I understood the cruelty of my deed. Your mother was so grief-stricken I was filled with remorse for her suffering. I tried to find you, through every office of enquiry. I even contacted London’s Bow Street Runners and offered a large reward. But you had disappeared.’

‘The circus folk found me and I remained with them until a month ago.’

‘I am sorry I did such a wicked thing. And I have been in hell these long years for it. Your mother’s grief turned into malaise and the doctors could do nothing for her.’ He hesitated as if he could hardly bear to continue. Then with a sigh, he said, ‘She faded away and was dead within the year.’

‘So you did kill her!’ The words burst out of Eliza in an agony of shock and horror.

She had leapt to her feet, incapable any longer of stillness and self-effacement.

‘You deprived me of my mother and her of me! You deprived me of my family, of knowing to whom I belonged. You destroyed my chance of love! I carry these wounds inflicted by you throughout my life. You have unburdened yourself but have plunged your confessional knife into me. And I still don’t know who my father could be and whether he might love me.

’ Her voice rose with the heartbreak of it all and she strode towards the door, intent on leaving.

‘Wait, Miss Gray.’ His voice was still weak but carried a force that made her pause.

‘I have her jewellery box for you.’ She walked slowly back to his bed.

‘There’s nothing of value. All her jewellery was Bathwick jewellery and so goes to my heir, but this box contains some of her own beads and brooches.

They are for you.’ He pointed to a small rosewood box on the floor by his bed.

Eliza’s emotions were in so much turmoil; to be offered something of her mother’s was almost too much to bear.

She picked the box up and ran to the door.

Before she left a thought struck her with the clarity of revelation. ‘Pray, my lord, who is your heir?’

‘My will has long been ratified. As I have no legal male heir, I have left what I have to a distant cousin. I would have preferred to leave something to you, now I know you have survived, but I have not the strength to change it. Instead it remains as it always has been.’ His voice was fading with the effort of speech.

In barely a whisper he added, ‘My heir is Lord Davenport.’

Eliza’s dispossession could not have been more complete; with neither family, nor home, and the inheritance that might have been hers placed instead in the avaricious grasp of the most despicable person she knew, her shock was too deep for tears.

The old man sensed the terrible import of all he had told her and, in a last gesture of attempted conciliation, pulled from his finger his great ring glinting with its ancestral crest, and offered it to her.

‘This is the Bathwick seal. The family crest is centuries old and it now belongs in your keeping.’ It fell like a stone into her hand.