Clem’s face clouded over. The bastard. Bastard-crow! So, it was straight in on the attack. To belittle him with the fact that it was Philip’s wrestling purses and the one thousand pounds settled on Catherine which had bought him his new position.

After ten disrespectful seconds, Clem spat, ‘Harry’s as much my grandson as yours.’

‘He bears my name.’ Oliver smiled grimly under constricted eyes.

‘Even so, the Almighty won’t hold back his angels from watching over him. And,’ Clem also had a sword with which to pierce the other man’s heart, ‘he has my blood in him, not a drop of yours, Kane being sired elsewhere.’

Oliver rested his large hands on the pommel of his saddle and leaned slightly forward. ‘Kane has done well in his own right. You never will, Trenchard. You’ll never have the means to get anything you really want.’

So, as always, everything came back to Kerensa. Clem recalled again her last show of affection to him.

Slowly replacing his hat, nudging his mount with his knees to move along, Clem mouthed in a scathing manner, ‘See you in church, m’lord. My regards to Kerensa.’ He heard Pengarron’s angry intake of breath and laughed to himself.

Oliver stole upstairs to the master bedchamber. He had a present for Kerensa, an exquisite diamond bracelet to give her on the day of the baptism, to wear as part of their own private celebration of the event.

He smiled at finding the bottom drawer of her dressing table slightly open and things protruding from it. Kerensa kept the things she cherished in there and had likely hidden away a gift for him. He pulled the drawer out further to rearrange the things and close it properly. He did not want any surprise she had in store for him to be spoiled for her.

A river of shock, distaste, hurt and betrayal rushed up his spine.

It was unbelievable! Lying crammed in amid the miscellany of empty perfume bottles, good-luck charms, babies’ milk teeth and first-hair clippings, was a box, and in the same way in which he had found the drawer, it was not quite closed. Something fair was sticking out of it at the corner. The tips of a lock of hair. No one in the family had such colour hair. There was only one explanation for this and it sent the world he thought he had delighted in for so many years of devoted love and honour, crashing down, splintering his heart. Reducing him to a fool, a blind, deceived fool. Other things that complemented the lock of hair were also in the box, things which he had come across during the first fateful year of his marriage, while nursing Kerensa, fearing he was losing her to foul-water poisoning.