Instead my mind races and I wonder if Miss Walker is succumbed to the same longing for a child as Mariana? Is that what created such indecision that she would even consider the bastard Mr Ainsworth, purely for the child he could offer her? Is the sad truth of it that I can never truly satisfy either of them without impregnating them? What a pair they make! I should find some orphans, scrub them up and present them one each with a bow on top. Give them a better life of smothering mothers’ love. Girls, definitely girls for them both.

Now free of these two women and some of the guilt over a man’s death, the city awaits with better, more constant friends than those I leave behind. Once in London I visit my aristocratic friends, including Vere and her new baby. She seems happier than I ever knew her to be when we were younger and single, out and about in society. She was always awaiting marriage and the life she now has. Her whole existence was centred on it. I was just a companion, a distraction for her while she waited, and then she secured a husband, became a Lady and now has a perfect baby, which even I think is charming.

Have I been delusional all these years, all my life, that a woman could ever be satisfied with me? That I alone would be enough? Just my love, all of it, a dedication of my life to theirs, a marriage even, security, the freedom to be themselves, nothing more and nothing less? Will they become full of regrets with hindsight, as Miss Walker may be in another ten years when she too may be childless still? By then will it be too late? It is too late for Mariana, it is too late for both of them, for they have broken my heart and chosen something that does not exist over any happiness I could give them, and the result is we are all unhappy. Not one of us has taken a gamble and won.

After a few weeks in London I am left feeling inadequate. After all my visits, it becomes clear that I have nothing to share with my friends, I have achieved nothing this past year. I talk of my plans for improvements to Shibden but nothing has happened yet, and without Miss Walker I’ll barely have the funds. I talk of future travel but what of it? I have not achieved anything, it is all just talk. They are not interested in my coal mines and Halifax politics; it is just a small town they’ve never seen in the inconsequential North, without a gallery or museum to its name. I feel lowly in their company.