One last despairing hope was finally laid to rest. I had not allowed myself to form an idea of a single piece of paper, hastily scrawled with the word Jane and sealed in black wax. But the idea had formed itself even so. I longed for a parting gesture from the man — a bit of foolscap I might carry in my reticule like a relic of the True Cross. But there was nothing. How could there be? Lord Harold had written his will in anticipation of that duel; but never had he truly believed he would die. I reached for a packet of letters at random and slid the first from beneath its bonds of faded blue silk.

It was dated January, 1770, Eton College — and bore the direction of Eugenie, Duchess of Wilborough. My dearest Mamma — I must thank you for the box of comfits you sent down with Attenborough, for they have made me the toast of the form, as you might expect. My brother would have denied me the whole, but that I hid the parcel amidst the soiled linen until he was safely away in his own house, and brought out the feast last evening with a stub of candle that I had secured in my gown. I received twelve lashes across the buttocks this morning when the Crime was discovered, but care nothing for that; my alienation from the Realm of College at present merely affords me the occasion to compose a proper letter of thanks to my most Beloved Mother.

Such assurance! In 1770, he had been all of ten years old — and I was not yet born. I held the childish scrawl between my fingers and tried to imagine him: thin, lanky, with a shock of blond Trowbridge hair. He had cultivated even then the talents of a spy.

I ran my fingers swiftly through the packet: there were more than twenty letters preserved from Eton days. Had the blue satin ribbon been Eugenie’s? I folded the missive carefully and returned it to its place, selecting as I did so another quantity of envelopes.

Calcutta

17 August 1784

My dear Fox—

I received your last, written nearly six months ago, only yesterday; and must assume that the news of Whig politics it contains is now irrelevant. I cannot read your strictures on my respected employer, however, without offering this response. You speak of crimes — of offences that stink in the eyes of the Nation — with all the fervour of one unduly influenced by Edmund Burke. And yet, of what can you honestly accuse him? Mr. Hastings has engaged in all manner of peccadilloes: a devious military campaign against the Afghans; a bit of extortion in the matter of Benares; an injudicious killing of a native ruler; a duel in which he failed to despatch his principal enemy and thus ensured the man would poison his Company’s councils ever after. But against this accounting is all the glory of Mr. Hastings himself: a cultivated mind that has mastered both Urdu and Bengali; a commanding knowledge of the historical, geographic, and commercial truths of the Subcontinent; a subtlety of manner and appreciation for the customs of the region that have won him numerous friends, vital to our interest. Should this bill of Pitt’s succeed in wresting the Company’s power to the side of Government, it will ensure Mr. Hastings’s quitting his post — a loss not only for the East India Company, but for the Crown. I must urge you to transcend the petty divisions of party and class. Far more is at stake than a toss of the dice at Brooks’s. You will be happy to learn that I have succeeded in winning to my side the Princess of Mysore, who proclaims herself to have abandoned everything for love of me; or love of my pocketbook, as the case may prove. I anticipate a scented paradise in her tent these next three months as she follows me to Madras.

Do not die of apoplexy, old fellow, before I glimpse the cliffs of Dover again. My exile shall conclude in another year, at which point I intend to cut up my father’s peace most dreadfully—

I reread this letter twice in some puzzlement. I knew Lord Harold to have been an intimate of the late Whig leader, Charles James Fox; yet never had he mentioned a period of employment with Warren Hastings, the former Governor-General of Bengal. Indeed, I had not understood the Rogue to have lived in India at all. Mr. Hastings, on the other hand, was remotely connected with my family, as the putative father of my cousin, Eliza de Feuillide; he was a man whose reputation we had been taught to both revere and suspect. And what was the exile to which Lord Harold referred? Had he fallen out with his father at the tender age of four-and-twenty? I could well believe it possible. A duel — an elopement — a significant loss at cards. or simply the defection of his interest from the Tory party to the Whigs, might have achieved it.

Another letter, this time from 1788:

His Majesty’s bilious attacks continue apace, with the novel variation of insanity: this morning he cawed like a crow and defecated in his bed, called the Queen a whore and a poxmonger, while Her Majesty cried out and could not be comforted, tho’ her Ladies attempted to restrain her. His madness certainly increases, and the moment for the Prince to seize power is nearly ripe.

And this, from a year earlier:

Mrs. Fitzherbert is brought to bed of a son, and how we shall prevent a revolution when the truth is out, I know not—

The henhouse was growing hot. I was aware that a considerable interval had passed, and that my mother would soon be rising. I surveyed the wealth of packets with dismay. There was too much to be read, too much to digest in an ordered fashion, beginning with the earliest dates, to achieve much. I should have to devise a more orderly method — and I must secure a place of safety and solitude in which to work.

I replaced the correspondence and was about to close the chest’s heavy lid, when of a sudden I reached for one of the leather-bound copybooks. Perhaps, in his journal, he might once have made mention of me.

Paris

8 September 1793

I walked out into the Rue de Sévigné this morning convinced that I should be seized and thrown into the tumbrel myself as a renegade and an Englishman, and caring little for the outcome. If my head were to fall to the blade, what would it matter, in the end? There are corpses piled beneath the trees of the Luxembourg and the stink is unimaginable. What we require is a cleansing fire — a fire that might rage like a storm about the limestone walls of this city and burn its evils to ash, as the souls of the dead in India are sent up in smoke on the holy river of Benares. This is Liberty, then, that Burke was wont to prattle of: The freedom to exact revenge for the inequities of life; to tear down and trample beneath one’s feet all that is beautiful and forever denied; to cut and maim as one has been maimed. Last night, as I stood beneath the vaulted walk of the Palais de Justice, I saw the tumbrel go by: and in it a young girl with her hair shorn for the blade, her face as white as her cotton shift: Jouvel’s daughter, with whom I danced the quadrille two summers ago at the château near Cluny. Her brother stood beside her: face stark and shadowed, an expression of rage about the lips — quite useless. A smear of shit on his brow where someone had insulted him. He was perhaps fifteen. At that age I thought of nothing but riding to hounds. They are both dead this morning — they were dead even as I watched them roll past, and stepped backwards against the archway’s wall that they might not recognise me — might not hope for a fleeting second in their own salvation. The long brown hair is tossed like offal into the basket, her terrified gaze fixed on God or Hell — one and the same, for those who ride in the tumbrel. I could kill myself for failing to save them. I could place a pistol against my head and pull the trigger. All that stops me is my duty to the boy—

I slowly closed the book, my hands no longer steady. He had given me much in this cavalier bequest: the key to a lifetime of agonies and dreams. I had believed that I understood his character — I had even thought that I loved him. But it was clear to me now that I had tasted only a draught of the deep waters that o’erwhelmed Lord Harold’s life.