The following morning, though surely he had not sought him out, he saw Drummond-Smith in the chamber. Alone. He hesitated on the threshold and in that moment Drummond-Smith saw him and the mocking smile on the man’s face sealed his fate. Perhaps all their fates. A confrontation could not be avoided. Alasdair marched boldly in.

‘What do you mean, man, following my wife about like that last night? It is unseemly at best—’

Drummond-Smith sat back in his seat, shuffled together a pile of papers, settled his gaze on the man before him. ‘If your wife has shown a preference for me over her own husband, I cannot be held responsible—’

‘How dare you—’

‘—and I would advise you, Dunlevy, not to make a fuss. I hold in my possession certain letters from your wife to me that are, shall we say, less than discreet.’

‘I do not believe you!’

At this Drummond-Smith shrugged, delighted it seemed. He crossed one leg over the other as though he were watching the final overs of a particularly intriguing test match.

‘Then by all means go to her,’ he said. ‘Go to your dutiful wife and demand the truth.’

Alasdair tossed off a laugh at this. At the absurdity of it, the arrogance of the man. But the laugh died, almost at once, on his lips. The enormity of Drummond-Smith’s words—

That thing that he most feared—

Even the suggestion that it might be so—

An indiscretion. A liaison.

He could not speak. He could not think.

A liaison between his wife and this—this man!

There were no letters, of course. Eleanor was not so stupid. But to think that was to admit her capacity for subterfuge, for deceit.

He could not catch his breath.

He turned around. He walked away, a pace, perhaps two. He turned back.

Drummond-Smith just sitting there, observing him.

By all means go to her!

The words taunted him, as they were intended to do. He would not go to his wife with such an accusation. He knew it, instantly and as surely as Drummond-Smith knew it. No marriage could survive such an accusation. He could not countenance her denial, would know at once that she lied. And if she did not deny it …

No, this thought was the most terrible to him.

That she might be innocent of the charge had become, already, an impossibility and he wondered at how far he had travelled so quickly without even knowing he had departed.

He turned on his heels and left.

But something had changed. Some small but vital part of him that had survived the death of the child, the loss of the vote, had succumbed. He had thought about his wife with George Drummond-Smith, whose walrus moustache rivalled that of the Premier himself.

What he had laughed off as absurd had become tangible. Become the Truth.

‘I know about Miss Trent.’