I read Catherine’s news of her family with little interest, scanning the page until Eliza’s name caught my eye.

... and so Harry has divorced her.

Divorced? I sat back in my seat, rocked.

I steeled myself to read on.

It is not to be wondered at. Harry drank, it is true, and gambled, and had numerous mistresses, but Eliza should have borne it. I always knew that she was unsatisfactory. There was something ridiculously romantic about her, for which I blame you, James, for you encouraged her. It is true that Harry should not have invited his mistresses into their London home, but if Eliza had only been sensible and withdrawn to the estate, instead of going into a decline and then falling prey to the first man who showed her a little kindness, she would be a married woman still. I have no patience with her. She should have valued herself, and her good name, more. Of course, Harry was obliged to divorce her, and I would not be surprised if he marries again. He has run through Eliza’s fortune, and you know how Harry has always needed money. If he finds an heiress who will have him, I feel sure he will take another wife.

I put my head in my hands. All that hope and beauty coming to nothing. She was divorced, disgraced, cast off, and by my brother, a fiend who should never have been allowed to marry her. I felt ill, even worse than I had felt when hearing of her marriage. At least then I had been able to hope she would not be too unhappy. But now I could hope for nothing.

I read on, feeling worse and worse with every word, for she had been abandoned by her first seducer. Without an adequate allowance, for my brother had been mean and vengeful and had not given her an income that was either adequate to her fortune or sufficient for her comfortable maintenance, she had sunk still further, finding another protector and sinking yet again.

I folded the letter at last and willed myself to turn to stone, for if I remained a creature of flesh and blood, I feared the pain would kill me.

1782

Monday 9 December

How strange it feels to be in England again after almost four years away. I had forgotten how low the sky was, and how grey, and how it leached the colour from everything, leaving the world a dreary place.

As I stepped ashore, I fastened the buttons of my greatcoat and hunched my shoulders against the rain. My countrymen hurried past with their colourless faces, dreary and sad, and I felt a stab of homesickness for the Indies, for sunburnt skin and bright colours and the heat of the sun, but then I shook it away. It was not England that had called me home again, it was Eliza.

I thanked God that I was at last able to take some leave so that I could do what I had longed to do ever since I had learnt of her sorrows. Return to England and find her. Care for her. Comfort her. And, perhaps, make her happy.



Wednesday 11 December

I set out early this morning, walking to the inn where I would catch the stage for home.

Home! Delaford is no longer my home. It ceased to be my home the day I was cast out, the day my father irrevocably set Eliza and me on a path to misery.

The coach arrived, and amidst the general bustle, I climbed aboard. The gaiety of the other passengers could not touch me. I was lost in my memories, and in my distaste for what was to come, for having learnt that my sister no longer knew of Eliza’s whereabouts, I knew that, in order to find her, I had to see my brother.



Thursday 12 December

As the coach approached Delaford, to my surprise I was thrown back in time to the day I returned from Oxford as a young man, full of hope and optimism. I remembered it clearly, and not only remembered it, felt it, with the same sensations assailing me.

When the carriage came to the bend where, all those years ago, I had seen Eliza walking through the fields, and when I remembered my elation as I had leapt from the carriage and rolled down the hill to meet her; when I recalled the love that had coursed through me as I had picked her up and swung her round, then I was nearly unmanned.

How could it have happened? How could such love and happiness have led to such misery and despair?

My hands clenched themselves into balls, and I began to wish I had not come.

The coach rolled on, past the scene of such happiness, and continued along the road. Before long it was pulling into the inn yard. There were the usual cries of the ostlers as they changed the horses. The door was opened and the steps pulled up. I waited whilst a well-dressed woman and her daughter climbed out and then I followed them, looking about me.

The inn was very much the same, with its half timbering and its freshly painted sign, and the yard, though larger, was still clean and well run. I had no difficulty in hiring a horse to take me on, and I was gratified that Bill Sanders, who still worked at the inn, remembered me.

‘If it isn’t Master James!’ he said, his face creasing in deep lines — his only appearance of age — as I asked him for a horse. ‘You’re looking well. Been in the Indies, have you? ’ he asked.

‘Yes, I have.’

‘Thought so by the colour of your skin. Shouldn’t like it myself, but they do say it’s an interesting place.’

We exchanged news, and he assured me that he would tell his wife he had seen me, for she would be pleased to know I was keeping well, and then I mounted the horse — ‘the best the stable has to offer, Master James, a real beauty, with a soft mouth and a sweet temperament, but spirited with it’ — and was away.

The day was cold but bright, with a weak sun shining from a slate-blue sky, and every moment brought with it a new memory as I travelled the familiar road, each one more painful than the last.

I turned into the drive at last and halted for a moment, too overcome with emotion to go on, though whether the emotion was anger, fear or sorrow I could not say. And then I continued up the drive, with the parkland stretching away on either side of me; that same parkland where Eliza and I had played as children, chasing kites, throwing a ball, running, laughing. Always laughing.

I saw the house rising up before me with feelings so painful I could hardly bear them. There was her window, with the vine beneath it; there the terrace where she had walked.

I came to a halt in the turning circle and dismounted. No groom ran forward, as he would have done in my father’s time. With deep misgivings I climbed the steps to the house. The tall windows flanking the doors were dirty. I rang the bell, which clanged with a cracked note. And then the door was opened by a servant I did not know.

He asked my name and then he stood aside to let me in, and I entered the house. As I stepped over the threshold, I saw the same signs of neglect that I had seen outside. There were no flowers in the vases. The mirrors were dull and the console tables were filmed with dust.

I was shown into the drawing room, and I was overcome once again with memories as I saw the familiar wallpaper and the Aubusson carpet. I stood a moment looking round, and then my eyes came to rest on my brother. He was heavier than the last time I had seen him, with the signs of dissipation already on him. His skin was an unhealthy colour and his eyes were dull. His clothes had an unkempt look, and as he rose to his feet, he almost fell back again. I smelt his breath and knew that he was already drunk. He righted himself, smirking as he said, ‘Well, well. James. The prodigal son returns. Our father is dead — ’

‘I know.’

‘Then what are you doing here?’ he asked.

‘You know why I have come.’

‘To ask after that harlot who was once my wife, I suppose,’ he said.

I took a step towards him and he laughed, then poured himself a drink. He waved the decanter towards me in invitation.

‘Not at ten o’clock in the morning, I thank you, no,’ I said scathingly.

‘You are as self-righteous as ever,’ he said mockingly. ‘I see the Indies have done you no good. It seems that not even foreign climes could make a man of you. So, what do you want to know?’

He sat down, lolling in his seat; I doubt if he could have sat upright.

I had intended only to ask him where she was, but in the familiar surroundings where the memories of Eliza were all around me, from the vases that she had filled with flowers, to the carpet on which she had danced, all my feelings rose up inside me and my anger poured out of me in a torrent.

‘Why did you marry her? You were never in love with her. Why did you ruin her life? Why did you take her from me? ’

‘Because she was rich. Why else?’ he said. ‘The estate was encumbered and we needed her money. But you know all this.’

‘But why Eliza?’ I demanded. ‘Why not some other heiress? Some woman who would have sold herself happily in order to gain a respectable name and an old estate? Someone old enough to have given up on all idea of love, or someone too practical to look for it in the first place? Why Eliza, who would be crushed by such a marriage, her health and happiness destroyed?’

‘Why go to all the trouble of courting a stranger when Eliza was right here?’

‘Did you have no feelings for her? No tenderness? No pity? You had known her all her life. Did you have nothing inside you that said, “No, I will not do this. Not to Eliza”? ’

He looked at me as though I was speaking a language that was unknown to him and then said, ‘No. Not at all.’

‘How could you! How could you do it?’

He took a drink.