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Lark met her disdainful gaze while she said what the world had always thought of him. The words were so much empty noise, a blast of fear and resentment that couldn’t touch him. He was no hollow man any longer, no picture of a gentleman. He was someone new now, the man who loved Viv Bradish. When her attack faltered, he spoke again.

“Say what you like, you can’t change what you did to Viv.”

“Viv left me. She resigned.” It was a plea for pity, but he wouldn’t yield, not yet anyway.

“She stood up to you. She refused to salve your vanity, by pretending that the book was all your work.”

“I taught her everything. And she has time to write other books, while I can’t hold a…a pen steady.” The imperious voice wavered between anger and desperation.

“Viv will write other books. In any case you can’t stop her. But you know she was glad to write with you. She admired you. She was eager to learn from you. And you betrayed her, used her.”

Her gaze faltered under his. Her voice grew thin. “She was not supposed to fall in love. She was not supposed to leave me. She is well-served for choosing a charming villain. You’re no better than that stepfather of hers.”

“Do you want her back? Or do you prefer your cousins and Nurse Coates?” His voice was low, and he hoped, not unkind. The suffering brought on by her illness was real, but it couldn’t blind him to the suffering of her own making.

“What do you know of Nurse Coates?”

“What does it matter?” Lark stood. “I know Viv. I know the difference between mean and kind, between judgmental and generous. She’s a bit rash, our Viv, obstinate, maybe, tenacious, and fearless. She doesn’t back down. Do right by her, and she’ll think the best of you, as she once did. She might even return to London. If you have Viv in your household, you will laugh, you will pull the curtains back, you will find a way to go on writing. Together you will have adventures and shake up London. But if you let her go, you have nothing. If you publish without acknowledging her, you have a printed lie with your name on it.”

From below came sounds of a bustle in the hall. He set the little silver bell on the table at Lady Melforth’s side. “You may want to have Jenny or Thomas open the drapery. I believe her grace, the Duchess of Wenlocke means to call upon you this morning.”

*

An ornate iron gate swung open on a tree-lined path to a red brick house with an air of substantial prosperity and a white pedimented door.

“Ready?” asked Wenlocke at Lark’s side.

“Not at all,” Lark replied, and passed through the gate. The house, Lark’s mother’s childhood home, was the end of the journey he’d been on since the great fire, a journey that had taken him to the Penitent Women’s Hospital and from there to a private hospital in Surrey and a grave. From the grave he had circled back to a small church in the East End where the vicar remembered marrying Miss Ada Wheatley to Captain Caperton. Now Lark was to meet his great-aunt Beatrice, sister of his deceased grandfather Sir Henry Wheatley, founder of the Old Clock Bank. At every stage of the journey his friends had helped him, Wenlocke and his brothers, and Robin, Finch, and the others, their fellowship restored. Only Rook was no longer part of the gang. Soon Lark would get his old friend out of prison.

A lean, brisk-looking butler with a trim moustache admitted them to the house and led them to a light-filled yellow drawing room, where a tall white-haired woman in a pewter-colored silk gown stood erect and keen-eyed by the mantel.

“Your grace,” she said with a slight bow to Wenlocke. Then, turning a warm gaze on Lark, she said, “My dear boy, you have no idea how gratifying it is to welcome you…home.”

“Ma’am.” Lark bowed. His throat ached, and he did not trust himself to say more.

“Aunt Bea,” she corrected.

Lark felt Wenlocke’s hand on his shoulder. “I will take myself into the garden while you and your aunt talk.”

“Shall we sit?” asked his aunt.

Lark nodded. He should not keep his elderly aunt standing.

“I want you to tell me everything about yourself. Everything, good and bad, with no fear or hesitation. You must consider Wheatley House your home now whenever you wish it. But first, I expect you want to know more of your mother. Do you remember anything of her?”

“I remember watching her hands turn the pages as she read to me. She wore rings.”

“Ah, she did like to wear rings, from the time she was a girl.” His aunt did not prompt him to say more. She seemed content with what he offered. Maybe it was the place itself that bred a kind of peace, just a short distance from the noise and smoke of London, but above it, surrounded by trees and swathes of heath.

He hesitated over the next memory, the one it had taken so long to recover. But the mystery nagged at him. Everything around him spoke of love and comfort. The great gap in his mother’s story was how she had become separated from such a life. “I remember watching her carried into the women’s hospital by my father and a man named Sneath.”

His aunt’s expression sobered. “We do not know what happened in that marriage. My brother was against it from the beginning, distrustful of Captain Caperton and his intentions, but your mother would not be cautious or suspicious. That was not in her nature. She ran off with him and sent word that they were married and living in London. Your grandfather refused to see her with her husband, and she refused to see him without her husband.”

A little breeze came into the room through an open window fluttering the linen curtains. Outside birds sang. His aunt in her unhurried way took up the story again. “For a time, there was little correspondence except for a brief notice of your birth and christening. Then an alarming letter came, unlike the others, written in haste, and promising that everything would soon be well again. That was shortly before her twenty-fifth birthday. On that birthday she came into her full inheritance. The money was sent to her account, but no further letter came. Within a few weeks, your grandfather received notice that the account had been emptied and closed by Captain Caperton.

“Your grandfather went to the house they had taken in Chelsea, but the place was leased to new tenants, and none of the neighbors seemed to know what had become of the previous family. With your mother’s disappearance and the failure of his efforts to find her, your grandfather became distraught. He ceased to care about himself. He became a figure of curiosity hereabouts, wandering, speaking only to himself, picking up whatever fell in the roadway, falling into more and more decay. He could not bear not knowing your mother’s fate.”

Lark understood.