“Waste not, want not,” Lewis said, emptying the jug into his own glass. “In any case, we had better make our way back soon. I don’t want to upset Julia on my first day here by being late for dinner.”

“Tell me a little about yourself first. I know next to nothing about you, save that you are an artist. You painted those lovely panels in the saloon, didn’t you?”

“In happier days, when Maurice was still alive and Mervyn did not live in fear of my inheriting. In the last few years, I have been many things, an artist, an actor, and an attendant in a lunatic asylum. I worked in a prison, too, as a warder. For a short while only, you understand.”

“Good heavens, why?”

Lewis shrugged. “The same reason that I pretended to be a pauper and begged a bed in a workhouse or dressed up in petticoats to play an elderly spinster in a burlesque. For the fun of it. Because I get bored easily, I suppose. Mostly because I would rather be almost anyone than the heir to the great Powerscourt estates.” He grimaced. “Now that really is the most tedious role I can imagine—unless one imagines actually being Lord Powerscourt.”

“Do you mean that? Truly?”

“Truly, honest to God and cross my heart,” Lewis said, suiting action to words. “I dread the very idea of having to walk in my brother’s shoes. I do wish Julia would hurry up and produce an heir.”

“Don’t say it like that,” Margaret said sharply. “No-one wants a child more than Julia.”

“Save my brother,” Lewis continued in the same flippant tone, quite unrepentant. “Mervyn would do anything rather than see me inherit. It does beg the question, doesn’t it, why he spends so much of his time away from Wicklow. You’d think that after all the effort he has put into the house and gardens, he might strain a sinew to produce a son to inherit them.”

“Lewis!”

“Oh, have I shocked you?”

“You have, and I am aware it was quite deliberate on your part.”

He laughed, getting languidly to his feet, and holding out his hand to help her up. “I think I’m going to enjoy my brief stay.”

“BRAY,” LEWIS INFORMED MARGARET five days later, “is not nearly so fashionable as Brighton. It is a quaint little seaside town with a charming promenade, but has not much to offer by way of diversion.”

They were seated together in Julia’s landau with the top down, for the day was fine and the sun shining. Margaret dragged her eyes away from the view of the River Dargle, which the road had been following for much of the short drive, to smile at him. “I don’t need diversion when I have you.”