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“I grew up with him,” he said. “And with Ellen, his sister. Our aunt and uncle raised us.”

“Oh?” She looked at him with interest but said no more. It occurred to him that she knew almost nothing about him. If he seriously intended to court her, it was time he told her more.

“I could tell you the whole story if you have a week to spare,” he said.

She laughed. “As continued evidence that you are not more than?” she said.

He smiled ruefully as he remembered those words he had uttered at Vauxhall. “I never was, Stephanie,” he said. “Just as you never were less than.”

“Tell me at least some of your story, then,” she said. “I have a morning to spare, and we are not likely to be disturbed. The Westcott aunts have seen to that.”

“Are they not superb?” he said, chuckling.

“I think there must have been some sadness in your life,” she said. “You were very young when your mother died, were you not?”

“Not quite a year old,” he said. “She fell from a window in our nursery to the terrace. Our father had been up all night walking with us, as we were cutting teeth at the time and there was scarcely a moment when at least one of us was not fussing or crying. But at last he had got us both to sleep at the same time and was going to go for an early-morning ride. But Mama came in and quarreled with him for being up instead of calling the nurse. Both of us woke up again. Papa nudged Mama out of the way and she caught her heel in the hem of her dressing gown and somehow fell out the window to the terrace below.”

“How absolutely horrifying,” she said.

“We have no direct memory of the disaster or of her, of course,” he said.

She shook her head sharply and clenched her eyes tightly shut for a few moments. Perhaps she was visualizing the scene.

“My uncle and aunt, my mother’s elder sister, came,” he said. “Then they leased out their own house and brought their children to Elm Court to live with us. They stayed until Estelle and I were seventeen.”

“It must have been an enormous help and comfort to your father to have them there,” she said. “He would have found it difficult to raise you alone, especially as there were two of you.”

He sighed audibly. He did not want to tell the rest.

“There should be blankets in the boathouse,” he said. “They are always kept freshly laundered. Shall I fetch one so we can sit awhile and talk? Or, rather, while I tell my story? But only if you wish to know me better than you do, Stephanie. You may well not.”

“I do,” she said, and stood on the bank while he went to fetch a large blanket. She helped him spread it on the grass and seated herself on one side of it. He sat on the other.

He rarely talked about his childhood. He did not like much even thinking of it. But if he was hoping to embark upon a serious relationship with Stephanie Ware, then she ought to know everything about him, including, or perhaps especially, the dark shadows.

“My father was distraught over our mother’s death,” he said. “He blamed himself and fled almost immediately after the funeral. Except for a few brief visits, he stayed away for more than sixteen years, by which time he had inherited Redcliffe and the title and we had been moved here to live—still with our uncle and aunt and cousins.”

“Oh,” she said, clearly distressed as she gazed out at the lake. Blue was her color, he thought irrelevantly, particularly the pale pastel shade of the dress she was wearing today with a spencer of a slightly darker shade. She was not wearing a bonnet. He supposed it would be difficult to do over her thick braids, which shone golden blond in the sunshine. She had a parasol instead, lying on the blanket beside her.

“One might expect,” he said, “that with no real memories of him at home as our father, we would have seen him as a remote sort of figure who was of little or no real interest to us. Perhaps that might have happened if he had stayed away altogether. As it was, we spent most of our childhood pining for him and dreaming of the day when he would come home to stay.”

“Were your aunt and uncle good to you?” she asked.

“Our aunt is a pious woman,” he said. “She has strict notions of behavior and upbringing. She was something of a disciplinarian. But she always treated us as she treated our cousins. She was invariably fair, and she undoubtedly loved us. Our uncle was and is ruled by her in many ways, but he is good-hearted. We had a decent upbringing. I will be forever fond of Aunt Jane and Uncle Charles and grateful for all they did for us at what must have been great personal sacrifice.”

“But…” she said when he did not immediately continue.

“Yes. But.” He was quiet for a while. “There was a game we played. We had a bit of a hideout in the attic at Elm Court. There was a window that overlooked the driveway and part of the road beyond it. There were all sorts of trunks and boxes and other things stored there, including an old telescope, which did not work. Or, if it did, we never uncovered its secrets. We nevertheless set it up before the window and peered through it almost daily to watch for our father. He rarely sent word ahead when he was coming. Even when he did, he did not always come just when he said he would. And often he did not stay as long as he had planned. But we watched anyway, dreaming that this time when he came he would be all smiles and open arms to announce that he was staying forever. We used to dream of all the things he would do with us. He never did appear in that telescope lens or even to the naked eye as we peered outward. When he did come, his arrival was almost always unexpected. And always disappointing. He made hearty conversation with us in the form of questions that required only a single word answer. And we initiated nothing in return. We were being raised to believe that children spoke only when spoken to. After a few days of intense discomfort on all our parts, he would disappear abruptly, sometimes early in the morning before we were up, and we would shed secret tears, usually up in the attic, and the long vigil would begin again.”

“Oh, you poor children,” she said.

“It was not as though we had a hard life,” he said. “We did not. And we had each other.”

She turned her head and looked at him fully for the first time. “When did things change?” she asked. “They have changed.”

“The crisis occurred when he was expected at Redcliffe just before his fortieth birthday,” he said. “Estelle was seventeen and persuaded our aunt to allow her to plan her first party, an elaborate affair with a long list of guests. It was to be a surprise for him, which we all ought to have known was a huge mistake. He did not turn up, of course, and Estelle was crushed. Uncle André did come, though. Our father had sent him on in the carriage while he remained behind at a small inn in a village whose name our uncle could not even remember. Estelle’s disappointment turned to rage, something very uncharacteristic of her. Indeed, I do not believe any of us had seen it before. She was convinced there was a woman involved and insisted upon going to find them. No one and nothing could stop her, not even Aunt Jane. She was a force of nature. So we went, four of us—Aunt Jane, Uncle André, Estelle, and I. He had indeed gone off with a woman—with Viola, as it turned out. We ran them to earth several days later at a remote cottage he owns in Devon. I will leave out all the details. But Estelle ended up giving her party after all, though later than originally planned. The revised event was supposed to be a betrothal party, except that…Well, it reverted at the very last moment to its original designation when the betrothal broke up even before it was officially announced. It is amazing that we all kept our sanity. Poor Estelle.

“After several twists and turns in the saga, our father and Viola did end up marrying on the following Christmas Eve in the presence of all the Westcotts, and one might say we all lived happily ever after. Estelle and I had forgiven our father after listening to his story, which, to do him justice, was offered as an explanation but not an excuse. He did not expect to be forgiven. One would not have thought him a broken man when one saw him, but that is exactly what he was. It was not easy to forgive because we had been the lifelong victims of his brokenness. Estelle was more ready than I was, but finally I realized that by withholding my own forgiveness, I was actually hurting her and myself more than anyone else. I have never regretted being reconciled with him, though I have had to keep working on it through the years since. He is my father when all is said and done, and I love him.”