Thomas smiled ruefully. “Ah, dear Nan, always so astringent. It is one of the things I have always loved about you—”

“You never loved me!” I was infuriated. “You wanted me, and I wanted you, and that is why it happened and that is all there is to it.”

Thomas caught my hand. “You know that is not true, Nan. It was always you I loved, right from the start, from the time we were children—”

“Right up until the moment you chose to marry Muriel instead of me,” I said.

“You are right to reproach me,” Thomas said. “I was a fool. When we were young I thought I loved you as a friend. Too late I came to see that a pretty face and docile manner was no substitute for wits sharper than my own and a spirit so fierce and brave.”

“Such fine words,” I said, but I let my hand rest in his for a moment longer than I should have done, remembering the heat of our affair, a dazzling excitement that had lit up a cold and barren winter for me after baby William had died and my husband had withdrawn from me in grief. A common enough story, of another man willing to offer me comfort in my loneliness and misery, but I knew that in some ways Thomas was right; we had always been drawn to one another and I had certainly loved him from the time I was old enough to understand what love was. Now, though, I had other loyalties.

“It is far better now, twenty years later, to leave Robert a Catesby,” I said, “and let him believe that his aunt is sick and her ravings are the product of a disordered mind.”

I heard Thomas sigh. “Very well,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said. “It might help,” I added bitterly, “if you stayed away from Knightstone. Muriel cannot understand your closeness to Robert and resents it.”

Thomas scratched his chin. “You resent it too, do you not?”

“Robert already has a father,” I said, not answering his question directly. “He does not need you.”

“But I need him,” Thomas said, startling me. “Do you not see, Nan? Robert is everything my sons with Muriel are not. He and I are so alike—he has that questing spirit, that confidence, that ability to inspire and attract. And you are wrong—he loves William as a father, as indeed he should, but that does not mean that he and I cannot forge a different sort of relationship. I am his godfather, after all. I can guide and inspire him too.”

I wanted to deny that Robert was like Thomas because to agree would be to tacitly admit he was Robert’s father. And when I did not immediately answer, Thomas continued:

“I think that you resent me because you and Robert cannot find a way to be close. You never have been and now he does not need you, and you are jealous of those who do have a place in his life.”