“I made an arrangement,” Bradshaw said heavily. “A private one. I heard of a woman offering cheap labour, and I went to meet her. She was the headmistress of an orphanage school in Halifax. We struck a deal; I paid her the price of two grown men’s wages, and she allowed me use of twenty or so orphan boys for the summer.” He lifted his chin in a faint gesture of defiance. “If you ask me, being up here under the sun and in the fresh air with good food in their bellies was the happiest most of them had ever been, but for some of them . . . well, they were too young and too sickly to be here, yet I kept on working them—I had to. Some of them . . . perished . . . and were taken to the orphanage to be buried. When the season was finished, she came and took the rest of them down again, back to the orphanage. She offered me the same deal the next year, but I didn’t take it again.”

“Why not speak of this before?” Charlotte asked him. “It is not the practice of a good man, but neither were you alone in the exploitation of impoverished children, Mr. Bradshaw. I don’t even believe you to have broken a law.”

“Because now I have a shame that I did not then,” Bradshaw told Charlotte. “Those boys were younger than my own son, and I treated them worse than dogs. I did not take one aside and kill him and brick him away behind my walls, but I might as well have done, for those who died did so because of my greed. That inhuman abhorrence I will confess to—I will wear it on my chest like a brand—but the death of that hidden child, that was not my doing.”

“Mr. Bradshaw,” Lady Hartley said, standing up abruptly, gesturing at Charlotte to fetch her cloak, “perhaps you are not as familiar with my life and my work as you should be, for I work tirelessly for improved conditions, education and justice for all children—for the many and the one. I will name the killer of that lost child for all to hear. Do you believe me?”

“I do,” Clifton Bradshaw said, standing to meet her gaze. “And do you believe me?”

“That remains to be seen,” Lady Hartley said. “Your fate remains in your own hands . . . for now. You should do what you know to be right, sir.”

—

As the carriage pulled away, Charlotte kept her eyes fixed on Clifton Bradshaw’s face for as long as she was able, trying to interpret what emotion she saw imprinted there, but Top Withens was already far behind them before she was able to draw a conclusion.

“Well, wasn’t that fascinating?” Lady Hartley said. “He is guilty—I’m sure of it—and we almost had him, Charlotte. We almost had him. But he is a practised liar.”