Chapter Twenty-One

Oliver dragged me through several rooms, all of which had that same ghostly feeling of abandonment, and he casually reeled off phrases like: "This is the saloon." "This is the smoking room." "This is the pink room."

"You have a room just for … being pink?" I asked.

He looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time, and shrugged. "It was a sort of sitting room. The walls are pink."

"I see."

"And through here is the gallery."

We walked through to a long room bristling with oil paintings that covered the walls almost from floor to ceiling. It was … overwhelming. Particularly as many of the portraits in their heavy (and dusty) gold frames managed to make their subjects seem rather unsavoury.

"Horrid bunch, aren't they?" Oliver nodded towards the paintings of many, many men who looked pleased with themselves, in various stages of historical dress. "Not a decent one among them. Made their money off other people's misery – all to make this house bigger and bigger with the profits. I keep trying to find better ways to use the money. Improving conditions in the factory and the workers' cottages has been a start, and of course there are various charities, but something sickening happens to very rich men after a certain point. They don't need to do anything; their money only keeps making more money. More than anyone could need in a hundred lifetimes, but still less than most of the people who sit on it feel entitled to. I have seen greed that you couldn't imagine."

We stopped in front of a picture of a man, silver-haired and elegant, with hard, cold blue eyes that sent a shiver down my spine.

"My great-grandfather, for example," Oliver murmured. "An extremely bad man. Very vocal in his opposition to abolishing slavery. Ironic, really."

"Ironic?" I asked over the leaden feeling in my stomach.

"My mother's grandmother was a slave in part of the Spanish colonies," Oliver said, moving towards the end of the room, where a painting was hung, low on the wall, tucked away from the rest. "Which means his great-grandson who inherited the lot, including his precious house, is directly descended from slaves."

This painting was different – not only because of the warmth it carried, the splash of colour in this horrible, gloomy room, but because of the subject matter: a woman and two young children.

I recognized Oliver at once. He was about eight years old and already frowning as if he held the artist – or, really, the rest of the world – in weary contempt. Beside him, her hand resting on his shoulder, was a woman who could only be described as dazzling. Here were Oliver's features: the bold, dark eyes, the dangerous cheekbones, the dark, tumbling hair and golden skin. Unlike Oliver, however, there was a light about this woman, a smile in her eyes, a spark of mischief.

"My mother, Violante," Oliver murmured.

"She was beautiful," I said, and the words came out almost in a whisper.

"Incredibly so," Oliver said, his posture rigid as he looked at the painting. "I imagine that even my father, cold-hearted bastard that he was, must have thought so when he met her in Spain and whisked her away to England. Enough that he married her despite the ‘blight' of her heritage, as he so frequently called it later on, presumably when the spell wore off and he realized he wasn't a man capable of love at all."

The words were said coolly, but each one sliced like a keen-edged blade. So much pain delivered so calmly, so brutally, that I felt winded.

"That … that's terrible," I managed.

"Terrible for everyone involved," Oliver agreed, and now he just sounded weary. "Terrible for my mother, terrible for my great-grandmother, terrible for the millions like her, and the legacy that lives within each of us now. That lives within me." Unthinking, he had pressed a hand to his heart. "Here, in a house built on all that pain." He looked about him. "Sometimes, I think I should just burn the place to the ground and be done with it." The words were quiet, as if he were speaking to himself.

I shivered again. How easy it was in my own life to imagine these things so far away, so distant. It had been less than seventy years since slavery was abolished in this country, and everyone knew that finally passing a bill in Parliament was a long way from dismantling a brutal and ongoing reality faced by many, no matter how pleased we liked to feel about ourselves.

After a long moment of heavy silence, Oliver cleared his throat. "And, of course, this is Ellen." He gestured to the girl in the picture, and I stepped forward to look more closely.

"It could be her," I said softly, taking in the small girl, with her light brown hair and wide eyes. There was an energy about her, a glint of mischief in her gaze. "She doesn't look anything like you or your mother."

"Ellen was adopted as a baby," Oliver said. "She was the result of one of my father's affairs, and when her mother left the baby on our doorstep, I think Father would have shipped her off to some horrible institution if my mother hadn't stepped in. She wouldn't hear of it. As far as she was concerned, from that first moment, Ellen was hers." Oliver smiled, a small, soft smile that made my toes curl up in my pretty pink shoes. "I was only one at the time, so we were brought up together – at least until I was shipped off to school."

"And your father didn't mind such an arrangement?" I asked carefully.

Oliver gave a short laugh, every ounce of softness leaving his face. "Mind it? He didn't seem to care much either way. He had very little to do with me, but he barely acknowledged Ellen at all."

"And yet he left her money in his will," I said.

"Mother presented Ellen to the world as her daughter. Ellen might not have looked like my mother, but she certainly looked like our father. Anything he left her was for appearance's sake alone, believe me. And though it is a lot of money, in truth it represents an almost insultingly small fraction of his fortune. Something I intend to remedy."

I took a moment to digest that, and what exactly it meant about Oliver's own circumstances. Perhaps Mrs Lavigne's shock at our connection was more warranted than I wanted to admit. It was also interesting that Oliver planned to settle more money on his sister. I wondered if the Lavignes knew about that.

"I take it that the story Helene told about singing at Christmas was true?" I said.

Oliver reached up, rubbed his brow. "It was. There have been so many things like that, things only Ellen would know. And the scar…" He looked at me. "Why can't I simply accept that she is Ellen? When all the evidence points that way. I feel as if I am going mad, swaying wildly from one conclusion to another."

"Perhaps you are just scared to believe it," I said gently.

We were interrupted then by the sound of the door opening. Swinging round, I found Helene herself approaching us, somewhat tentatively.

"Mother said I should come and find you, Mr Lockhart," she said timidly. "She wondered if you had any special instructions for dinner."

"Why should I have any special instructions?" Oliver asked. "Beth will do just as she usually does. Cook the life out of whatever lump of meat she chooses to serve."

I stifled a giggle at this, while Helene only looked at him, round-eyed.

"I'm sure Beth has it in hand," I said, more diplomatically.

Helene, however, had been distracted by the painting we were standing in front of.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, lifting her hand to her cheek, which was flooded with colour. Emotion washed over her features. "It's her," she murmured.

"It is a good likeness of Mother, isn't it?" Oliver said, his voice more gentle than I had heard it before.

Helene's eyes flew to him. "Y-yes," she said. "A very good likeness." Her gaze moved to the image of a young Oliver. "You hated that suit," she said. "She had to bribe you with cinnamon biscuits to get you to wear it."

"That's right." Oliver exhaled. "I had forgotten."

Helene continued to stare at the painting, the expression on her face strange, almost wistful.

I exchanged a glance with Oliver, and in his eyes I saw nothing but unanswered questions. My heart hurt for them both.

"We should return to the rest of your company," I said. "It must be time to dress for dinner."

"Dress for dinner?" That seemed to break through Oliver's fog of uncertainty. He sounded disgusted.

"Yes, it's what people generally do in polite society," I replied evenly.

"People," Oliver grunted. "This is precisely why people are dreadful. And why I choose to have as little to do with them as possible."

"Well, we are people, and now you have our delightful company for dinner," I said, casting a smile at Helene, who returned it tentatively.

"But why must I change what I'm wearing, only to sit down with the same people I have spent all day with?" he whined.

"Perhaps" – Helene smiled shyly – "we had better ask Beth to make you some cinnamon biscuits."

Oliver gave a surprised bark of laughter. "Good God, don't do that!" he exclaimed. "Let's not ruin that beloved childhood memory with her dire attempts at baking."

And with that, he offered one arm to me and one to Helene, and the three of us made our way back to the doorway.

Before we left, I cast one last glance over my shoulder at the painting of Violante and her children. What happened? I wanted to ask her. Where is your daughter now?

Those dark eyes only looked steadily back at me, and a moment later we were gone, leaving her behind in the shadows.