I realised I knew what he meant. It wasn’t quite the fashion now, but there’d been a time when I was young when every lady took an African child with her when she went out in public, the darker-skinned the better. Eustace and I had gone to Green Park and seen a young boy, done up in gold with a turban on his head. He’d been sat alongside a woman in a phaeton. To see him cross-legged on a cushion eating cakes, and hungry as we often were, we’d been a little jealous. I couldn’t square the memory of that boy with the man before me now. A young Lucien would have been just like him.

‘My mistress was good to me at first,’ Lucien said. ‘She took me everywhere because the darkness of my skin made hers appear fairer. She’d take me into company and place my arm against hers to show the difference.’

Had not Vincent done that same thing – held his arm against mine for comparison while we lay in bed?

‘She got bored after a time, and I grew up. What had charmed her when I was a child scared her in a man. She had a daughter. We had played together, but when I was fifteen my mistress ordered me out of the house. It was lucky my patron took me in, otherwise I might have ended up in a very different place. He was a rich man. He saw potential in me and had me educated. When he died, he gave me my freedom and left me the funds to start my own shop. He wanted me to be self-sufficient.’

Thank God he had. Otherwise, there was every chance that Lucien could have ended up as one of the Black Poor. Brought to England and then left with nothing when, in the eyes of their masters and mistresses, they’d fulfilled their usefulness. Was it any wonder so many were forced to beg on the streets? It was why the Sierra Leone Resettlement Scheme had first started. I’d spent years averting my eyes from the Black men begging in the gutters. How many had been in Lucien’s situation?

‘Doesn’t it make you angry?’

‘It did, but I remind myself that not all the English are bad. Yes, my mistress threw me out, but my patron took me in, left me money in his will. I would not have Winters without him.’ Lucien’s face was serious. ‘I want you to know all about me, Zillah. Would you like that?’

He had opened himself up to me. Could I be completely honest with him in return? He knew about my mother but could I tell him about Eustace? About Vincent? Is that what he really wanted? I stared into his eyes. His expression was sincere.

‘I would like that,’ I said.

Lucien gave me a slow smile. ‘I am glad of it,’ he said.

XIX