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“Uncle Dan was slow to anger, but none of them were saints. Turns out my father was fixing to marry again,” Clem answered, “before my mother was cold in the grave. If he had married beneath him the first time, he did not repeat that mistake. This time he’d caught the eye of the boss’s daughter.”

Theo considered this. “So, he married for love the first and for money the second time, I see.”

Clem gave a short laugh. “You could put it that way. By all accounts, poverty did not suit him.” His lip curled. “My uncles always said he preferred an easy life.”

“Is he good looking like you?”

Clem was silent a moment. “Yes,” he said shortly. “At least, he was the last time I saw him. I don’t know how he’s aged. I only take after him in features, mind. My father’s height was only average.”

“When was the last time that you saw him?” Theo asked curiously.

“When I was fifteen.”

She turned her head sharply to look at him. “That was the last time you saw him?” A vague suspicion entered her head. “On the occasion you finished school?” she guessed.

“Aye, they had me pack my trunk and told me I was now a man,” Clem agreed flippantly. “I knew the direction of my father’s office, for I had seen it on a letter once when he sent in my school fees. It only took me two hours to walk into Winchester. He had a big office,” he reminisced, “likely the best in the building for his father-in-law had retired by this point, so he had taken over the running of things.” He fell to silent contemplation.

“You told him your schooling was done?” she prompted him.

“Yes,” Clem agreed absently. “I remember being surprised by how small he looked. Or maybe it was just his big desk dwarfing him. He looked nervous, ill at ease; told me I should not have come. I had to remind him that Drummond Hall would not board boys after they reached fifteen years. He must have forgotten that fact. Either that or my existence. One or the other.”

“Drummond Hall was your boy’s school?” Clem nodded. “I expect he was astonished to see you had grown to manhood. Likely you reminded him of your uncle who had punched him to the ground.”

Clem laughed grimly. “I certainly hope so.”

“Then what happened?”

“He told me I had best make my way to my family in London, for he had no use for me there. I’d had all the money I was going to get out of him.”

Theo breathed in sharply. “He said that?” she asked indignantly. “Why did he not let you go to your mother’s people in the first place? Why stick you in a boarding school in Hampshire for ten years?”

Clem shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe at first, he had meant to take a fatherly interest, but then that wore off. He gave me a lot of bluster about how he’d done his duty and seen to my education, and I was on my own now. I just looked at him.” He fell into silence, seemingly lost in that memory. “I remember feeling glad,” he said suddenly, “that he had not visited me at the school like the other boys’ fathers did.”

“I hope he saw that in your face,” Theo said fervently. “I expect he did. I expect he saw your disgust and he could not get you out of his office fast enough. Doubtless it made him vastly uncomfortable to see his handsome grown son, beautiful like his mother.”

“I don’t know about that,” Clem snorted. “I was fifteen and there was nothing handsome about my behavior. I had plenty about me even then. I told him to thank his rich wife for my second-rate schooling and told him he could go to the devil. Said the next time I saw him I’d give him the hiding he deserved. Then I tipped a plaster bust off his shelf, knocked a portrait off his wall, and walked out of the office and his life forever.”

Theo lay still, contemplating this in the rapidly cooling water. “Whose was the portrait?” she asked quietly.

“Can’t you guess?”

“His second wife?”

Clem made a noise of agreement in his throat. “And two dear little boys in sailor suits.”

“Your half-brothers?”

“My replacements.”

“He sounds awful. I expect he’s grown bitter and corpulent in later years,” Theo decided. “Unhappy men often do. Either that or look for solace in a whiskey decanter.”

“You think he’s grown into a fat drunkard?” Clem asked, sounding amused. “Why do you think he’s unhappy?”

“Of course, he’s unhappy.” Theo sat up in the tub indignantly. “How could he be otherwise? He let the best thing in the world slip through his fingers.”

“The best thing?” Clem echoed. “An oldest son, you mean?”

“I mean you, Clem Dabney.”