All day long the thought of how Emma Tanner meant to ruin him ate into his thinking and filled him with fear, an emotion with which he had never been too familiar. Yet here he was, a man much older and worn with the passage of time, whose comfortable lifestyle was threatened because of what had taken place so many years before; a man who was always used to being the victor, yet in this instance could well be defeated and, consequently, reduced to poverty.

Everything he owned, every penny he had, could be forfeited if the courts found in favour of Emma Tanner. It was a possibility that he must face. Caleb Crowther had never fooled himself on that score. But he would fight that damned woman with every means at his disposal, legal or otherwise. Even though, in his deepest, darkest heart he was made to acknowledge his own guilt. He had betrayed a dying man’s wish and married Emma off to a totally unsuitable young man, in order to cheat her out of the marriage settlement her father had bequeathed her. He had plotted to have her convicted of murder and afterwards transported to the far-off shores of Australia. When she was safely despatched there, he had lost no time in looting her entire inheritance, selling the assets and converting them into hard cash which was duly deposited in his own name. All of these things he had done, it was true. But no one would ever know the full extent of his corruption concerning Emma. Because it went much, much deeper. So awful, so terrible and damning were the deeds he had committed that, even now after long haunting years, he would relive those heinous crimes in his uneasy slumbers, waking in a cold sweat of fear and shame, and horrified for the sanctity of his very soul.

Suddenly that same horror and shame was on him now. Leaning forward in his chair, he dropped his grey, balding head to the desk-top, his small pink-rimmed eyes staring upwards at the ceiling and, for a moment, he seemed almost demented, his eyes beginning to roll and the chilling sound of soft laughter emanating from his loose, open mouth. In that moment, he saw how foul and murderous was his character. In that moment, he was made to relive every terrible act over again. Now, when he screamed aloud and tore his fingernails into the flesh on his face, there was madness in him.

When there came an urgent knock on the door, he snatched himself to an upright position in the chair, desperate to compose himself, for he was trembling uncontrollably, and still in the grip of his terrible thoughts.

‘Grandfather… are you in there?’ Edward Trent’s anxious voice penetrated Caleb Crowther’s troubled mind, and at once the change in him was astonishing. Springing from his seat with a surge of energy, he hurried to the door, quickly unlocking it and, with a smile on his ungainly features and a brighter light in his eyes, he flung open the door to greet his beloved grandson. These two did not always see eye to eye, but underlying their many differences was a degree of love which was forged many years ago and which had somehow survived the numerous upheavals between them.