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‘Of course it is your affair. We are engaged to be married. If I were to be involved in an irregular manner with another woman – let alone my own brother’s widow – whose affair is it but yours?

You say the betrothal is not real, but all the world, including Lavinia, believes that we are to be married. And so I must tell you.’

‘Very well,’ she said with a fair show of indifference.

‘Tell me.’ It was her own fault that this interview had taken a dark turn.

She might as well have saved her best muslin with its tempting buttons; he wasn’t looking at her now, but deep into the past. She could have been anyone to whom he had chosen to unburden himself, she thought.

He plainly wasn’t thinking about kissing her better.

‘Lavinia and I were in love when we were both very young, but my father and hers drew up a match between her and my brother. So much of the tale she has spun is true. She is something of an heiress, will inherit Sir Lionel’s estates, which are not entailed to the male line.

And Ambrose, of course, was my father’s heir where I was destined for the army.

I cannot claim that anyone in either of our families – except perhaps for my poor brother, who was away at Oxford – was ignorant of our feelings for each other, but it was dismissed as mere calf-love, which in truth perhaps it was.

My mother could not persuade my father to change his mind; he was that sort of man, mistaking stubbornness for integrity.

But I think I knew even then that Lavinia would not do well following the drum, or living on what little I could give her in some dreary lodgings, or back home with her parents as though we had never been married.

So I gave her up – not out of some great noble renunciation to filial duty, as she would have everyone think, but just because…

it was plain it could not be. I had no means with which to support a wife, still less children.

There was one painful scene when we parted, we were both most distressed, and yes, we lay together that one time, as we had never done before – not quite.

So it is possible that Priscilla is my child. ’

‘You can’t be sure?’ If she could trust her own judgement at all, she could see that he was being honest, and that it cost him. And really it was still none of her business, as she had told him.

‘How could I ever be? If it were a matter of resemblance, that would prove nothing, and in fact, Priscilla is a copy of her mother and nothing more that I can see. I know only that Lavinia never wrote and told me, there was never the slightest hint of anything while Ambrose was alive; I never heard from her or anyone else the slightest hint that his baby was an eight-month child. Lavinia broke the news to me only when I returned home this year, once my brother was gone. So yes, it might be true. Perhaps even she does not know, or does not want to know for certain. But Amelia, the rest of it is all wicked lies.’

‘You told me you had not kissed a woman for eight years,’ she said with a tremulous little smile. Though it should not affect her, it was undeniable that it would hurt her if that had been a fiction. He had had no need to say it, after all. She had not asked him.

‘And it was true. And I said too that I have not wanted to, and that was true as well. If she told you she had been naked in my room, as she said most spitefully that she might do when I informed her of our engagement, you may mark the careful use of words. That is not a lie, but it is not the whole truth either. She has been used to spending nights in my home when she chose to, with the child as an excuse. And late at night, when all the house is quiet, she will come into my chamber and abuse me for my cowardice, and refuse to hear me when I say I will never wed her, and then at last she will undress herself and try to tempt me. It is her last card, and she never fails to play it. She is beautiful and desirable, and I loved her once, but I have always refused her. I don’t care if you say it is your affair or not – I need to tell you this.

Outrageous that she should come here and abuse you and tell you falsehoods she hoped would distress you.

If we were truly betrothed, the damage might be incalculable. ’

She gave a little hiccup of laughter. ‘I think I held my own. Those scandalous Wyvernes, you know – impossible to shock. Do you bundle her out of the door into the hall and throw her clothes after her, then?’ It was an outrageous thing to ask, but she could not help herself.

She could not imagine how a man could extricate himself from such an overheated situation.

‘Generally, I pick up a book and feign to read it,’ he replied with a flashing grin, gone as soon as it had arrived.

‘Or a newspaper, if one is to hand. There is something particularly off-putting and insulting about a newspaper. It enrages her sufficiently that she takes her leave, after more abuse of me. I dare not lay hands on her. And not because I fear that I could not then refuse her, I assure you. It’s her reaction I dread. ’

‘She said you were afraid to marry her, though you loved her, and I told her if you were afraid, it was because she is mad as a hatter.’

‘She can’t have enjoyed that. Lavinia stands very much upon her dignity, which is odd for someone who has created such a vulgar bustle.

She came to see me as soon as I was somewhat recovered from my wound, so that my mother could no longer keep her out, and told me to my great consternation that Priscilla was my child, and that I could yet be hers if I only had the courage, and she has held that line ever since.

I think her great scheme to persuade everyone we were some modern versions of Romeo and Juliet was in her head even then. ’

‘Is she not even slightly worried that any children you had would be declared illegitimate?’

He sighed. ‘She has been indulged since birth, and her parents are neither of them very sensible. If they do not want to credit that a thing is true, it is not true. And the law, I suppose they believe, does not apply to them, because they are rich and well-connected. It is dangerous folly. My own heir is a distant cousin of mine – a young man not far into his twenties, and a sharp, ambitious lawyer himself. If I were to contract an irregular union with Lavinia, I am sure Mr Thornfalcon, Esquire, would find it weighed heavy on his conscience, such that – after an internal struggle, no doubt, and only once a child was born – he would object in the most public manner. Of course he would – as my heir, he has a stake in the matter, and would claim it was a matter of the good name of the family. And then the marriage would be voided, and who else would wish to marry me after? And my property, unlike Lavinia’s, is entailed.

He’s a few years younger than me; he can afford to wait for such a great prize.

If he did not get it at last, his son would. ’

‘She can hardly be astonished you won’t marry her. Very few men would, in such circumstances.’ It was a terrible story; she had known the outline, but not the hurtful detail.

‘I don’t know if I would, if I loved her.

I’d like to think so, I suppose, but the damage to my mother and sister, their reputations and their futures…

It is an elegant sort of trap, and an unjust one.

But I don’t love her, not any more, so it is no dilemma for me.

My conscience is not easy about Priscilla, and I have an uneasy feeling that I have not treated Lavinia well, though when I look at the situation, I cannot see what else I could have done at any point.

But if Ambrose had lived, if they’d had a son afterwards, I doubt I would ever have heard a word about it.

And it is not wise for her to be so careless with her daughter’s future. ’

‘She is reckless because she is desperate,’ she said, surprising herself. ‘Women must protect themselves; we have so few weapons.’

‘I know that. And I agree. If she were fighting for her life, for her child, I would respect that. If she were to be cast out into the street, and only I could save her… But she has an ample jointure, she will have her parents’ estate in due course, and it will all pass to Priscilla.

She does not need anything I can give here; she merely wants it.

The simple truth is, she has grown accustomed to being the most beautiful woman in any room she enters, and she is addicted to that attention as any poor soul to opium.

I have come to realise this over the last few difficult weeks.

It contented her for a while to be the lovely young widow who was the object of general pity and interest, but then she came out of her black and society grew bored by her.

A new sensation arose to replace her – Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb, or Byron and Lady Oxford, or Byron and the kitchen cat; I know not what.

She could not endure that.’ He paused for a while and then said heavily, ‘I am sure I sound bitter. I do not like myself when I talk about her. To be abusing one woman to another – it is not honourable. I would not have done so if she had not come to you and said what she did. I was obliged to explain, and to be completely honest. It is a weight off my mind. Thank you for listening to me.’

His words were oddly formal, as if he wished to put a distance between them now, and she blinked away a tear. ‘You saved my life, or something close to it. I do not think there can be any question of debt from you to me, after that.’

‘Nonsense. But I should go – I will have tired you, and you should rest.’ He rose to leave, and then said, ‘I know ours is not a real engagement, as you wisely said. I suspect if it had been, it would have been much harder for me to reveal all that I have.’