‘I left my father’s beliefs behind when I left his home, long before the war.’

Adelaide drew in a breath. She could say much the same thing, but for different reasons.

‘That is what war does to you,’ he added.

‘Was there only your father?’

Caleb did not answer for a long time. ‘Ma died just before the war and my brother and sister contracted a fever after they took a couple of sick Northern soldiers into their home. They died. The soldiers lived.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Caleb shrugged. ‘Pa didn’t live to see the peace either. He went to Washington to petition for my release from the prisoner of war camp. For days he knocked on doors but to no avail. He died of a heart attack on the Union Station. I’ve no one left.’

Adelaide could find no words for his grief and the silence lay between them for a long moment.

‘But what about your family?’ Caleb said eventually. ‘Is it only your father in England?’

She chose her words with care. ‘My father and I are estranged. My mother died when I was born. I never knew her.’ She resisted a sudden urge to confide her life story to this stranger. ‘My father was … distant. His world was his business.’

‘No siblings?’

Adelaide gave a bitter laugh. ‘He wanted an heir and he married again, twice in fact, but one wife died in childbirth, the child with her, and the other in a riding accident. That left me, another chattel to be sold as he saw fit. We … we parted on bad terms. I’ve had no dealings with him in ten years. He may have remarried and had the heir he so craved. I don’t know and I don’t care.’

‘Did he not approve of your marriage?’ Caleb asked.

Marriage? In this moment of honesty, the old lie almost caught up with her. ‘He liked Richard well enough,’ Adelaide said. That at least was the truth.

‘I see,’ Caleb said, but the uncertainty in his tone indicated he didn’t.

Adelaide chose not to fill the silence that followed.

‘What business was your father in?’ Caleb asked.

Adelaide hesitated. ‘Shipping.’ She prayed he would not ask her any more. How did she explain that Daniel Lewis’s fortune had been founded on the misery of others? In the years before abolition, he had been actively engaged in the slave trade.

A flash of lightning lit up the sky in the west and the distant rumble of thunder heralded an approaching storm.

Adelaide took a deep breath. ‘I hope that lightning does not start a fire,’ she said. ‘The bush is tinder dry.’

‘There would be no escape from this valley if a fire were to come through,’ Caleb observed.

‘None,’ Adelaide agreed. ‘Just pray that it doesn’t.’