“I’m sure you’re right, Miss Simpson,” Walter said. “But, gad, how would one get on with one’s life without a leg? No riding. No sports. It doesn’t bear thinking of.”

“Poor man,” Anna said.

Lord Eden was smiling at her, Jennifer saw.

ON THE SAME AFTERNOON, Ellen called upon the Earl of Harrowby. She took no one with her and even thought, as she raised the brass knocker outside the huge double doors of his house, that perhaps it was improper to visit him alone. But she smiled at the thought. This had been her home for fifteen years. He had been her father.

He had been drinking again, she could see as soon as he hurried down the stairs to meet her instead of waiting for his butler to show her up to the drawing room.

“I wouldn’t have touched a drop if I had known for certain that you would come, Ellie,” he said, flashing her a smile as he offered his arm. “I thought you wouldn’t, once you had thought about it.”

“But I did come,” she said, looking about the drawing room and finding it exactly as it had been the last time she saw it, except that perhaps the carpet was slightly more worn and the draperies at the windows more faded.

“I didn’t invite anyone else,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind. It will be just you and me, Ellie. Besides”-he smiled apologetically-“there are not many ladies who would accept an invitation from the Earl of Harrowby these days. I am not considered quite respectable, y’know.”

“Are you not?” she said, looking at the marked signs of dissipation about his face and figure as he stood with his back to the fire. They did not speak as the housekeeper-like the butler, someone she did not know-brought in the tea tray. She felt awkward. She did not know what to call him. “Shall I pour?”

“If you had not left me,” he said, extending one hand to indicate that she should take a seat behind the tray, “I would not be the wreck you see. I loved you, girl. You should not have left.”

“You did not take up drinking just after I left,” she said, holding up a full cup and saucer to him. “Now, be honest with yourself. I do not need the blame for that heaped on my shoulders.”

His smile was almost boyish. “You are quite right,” he said. “But you were always good for me, Ellie. You never did put up with any nonsense. You always said what was what. You used to tell me to go away when I was in my cups. Do you remember?”

“Yes,” she said.

He laughed. “Sometimes, not often, I admit,” he said, “I used to stay sober just so that I could come to the nursery or the schoolroom and see you. And then I would drink afterward. But not so much in those days, girl. Not so much then. Have some cakes.”

They looked at each other.

“You were always my St. George,” she said, “who would slay all my dragons.”

“Was I, Ellie?” he said. “Was he good to you?”

She knew he was not referring to Charlie. “Yes,” she said, “he was good to me.”

“But he didn’t slay any dragons?” That boyish smile again.

“I was older,” she said. “I knew that no man is infallible. Not even fathers.”

“Tell me about your life,” he said. “It is as if you were dead, Ellie, and have come back to life again.”

She told him about Spain and about Belgium. She told him about Charlie and Jennifer and her other friends. She must have talked for half an hour, she realized with something of a jolt as she finished telling him about her meeting with Sir Jasper Simpson. But he was interested. He had scarcely moved or withdrawn his eyes from her face.

“It is me you should be turning to for support, Ellie,” he said, “not him. Do you feel that he is more your father than I am?”

How could she answer the question? “He is Jennifer’s grandfather,” she said. “That is why meeting him is so important, Papa.” And she bit down hard on her lip and closed her eyes.

“Perhaps I am too,” he said. “Perhaps I am your papa, Ellie. But the important thing is that I was for all those years. I was your papa. I loved you. I wasn’t perfect, but I didn’t ever mistreat you, did I?”

She shook her head, her eyes on the silver milk jug on the tray.

He got to his feet and pulled on the bell rope for someone to come and remove the tray. He rested an elbow on the mantelpiece and tapped one knuckle rhythmically against his teeth as he waited, saying nothing. But he turned back to her when the footman had disappeared, and came to sit down beside her.

“Don’t go yet,” he said, taking one of her hands in his. “Stay and talk awhile longer, Ellie.”

She looked down at his hand, fatter now than it had been, but a hand she would have recognized anyway, with its blunt, dark-haired fingers, the nails broader than they were long. Hands that had held her as a child, hands that she could remember clinging to sometimes as she walked, though she could no longer remember where it was they had walked.

“What did you mean,” she asked, “that you might be?”

He looked at her with his heavy-lidded, rather bloodshot eyes. “Your mother and I,” he said. “We always said what would most hurt, even if it were not always the truth. You might be mine, Ellie.”

“She said not,” Ellen said. “And he did not argue.”

“When your mother was expecting you,” he said, “I never did so much as think of questioning whose you were. I would have if there had been any chance of your not being mine, wouldn’t I? I always knew when she had someone else. I knew she had lovers. But I wasn’t suspicious at that time. Besides, your mother was a careful woman. She would have made sure that you were mine. You were our first-and our only, as it turned out. You might have been a boy, Ellie. You might have been my heir. I think you are mine.”

“But why would she have said such a thing?” Ellen asked.

“To hurt me,” he said. “She must have been feeling particularly vicious. She knew you were the only person I ever really loved. She wanted to turn me against you. You weren’t supposed to know. But I came and told you, didn’t I? I suppose I was foxed at the time. And then your mother went off with Fenchurch and I haven’t seen her since. She was in Vienna for the Congress the last time I heard of her. With someone I have never heard of. We weren’t a pretty pair, girl. It wasn’t all her fault, what happened. But you are the one who suffered most.”

“Yes,” she said, “I did. But everything in life has a purpose, perhaps. I would not have met my husband if I had not gone to Spain. And I would hate to have gone through life without knowing him.”

He patted her hand. “Say it again,” he said, “what you let slip a little while ago. It sounded good, Ellie.”

She looked at him and swallowed. “Papa?” she said. “I didn’t ever call him that, you know.”

He patted her hand again.

She looked at him. And looked beyond the bloodshot eyes and the flushed cheeks, and the double chin. He had been her papa. She had curled up on his large lap and played with the chain of his watch. And had felt as if nothing on this earth could ever harm her.

“I am with child,” she surprised herself by saying suddenly. “And it is not my husband’s. I conceived it from a lover less than a month after his death. And now I have started to let people think it is Charlie’s, and I don’t know what to do.”

Take all your problems to Papa, Ellen. And climb into his lap and let him soothe them all away.

“Are you, Ellie?” he said, his free hand smoothing over the back of hers. “The important thing is, are you happy about it? Did you love him?”

“Yes, I did,” she said. “Totally and passionately, Papa. Nobody else existed in the world for a week. Just for a week. Less, even. He was a friend of Charlie’s and of mine. And then, before either of us knew what was happening, we were lovers. But it was all wrong. I loved Charlie. Or thought I did. Now I am so consumed with guilt and confusion that I no longer know what love is.”

“Well,” he said, patting her hand, “you will have a child to love soon, Ellie. You will find out. Does he know?”

“No.” She gripped his hand. “I couldn’t possibly tell him. I don’t want him ever to know.”

“It is sad, Ellie,” he said, “to be deprived of your child. Does he love you?”

“No,” she said. “Oh, he did for that week, as much as I loved him. But love is the wrong word. It was not love. And he does not feel whatever it was for me any longer. He is leaving London soon.”

“And you will be staying,” he said, “with relatives of your husband’s and a child of your lover’s. Well, girl, you will sort out your own future. You always did. I have great faith in you. But you know, you can always come here, Ellie. This will always be your home. And I will always be your papa even if I didn’t beget you. But I think I did.”

“Oh,” she said, lifting their joined hands so that her lips rested against his knuckles, “if you knew what a burden has been lifted from my shoulders just by telling you all this! I think there is still a little of St. George in you, after all.”

He laughed with some amusement and she smiled up into his eyes.

“You’ll come back again?” he asked. “You won’t disappear altogether again, Ellie? You’ll come back to see me?”

She nodded and got to her feet. “I have been here much longer than I planned,” she said. “I’m glad I came, Papa. You are really the only person of my very own left.”

“Come and be hugged, girl,” he said, and waves of memory washed over her as his arms closed about her and rocked her against him. Memories of bedtime, when her mother had been too busy getting dressed for the evening’s entertainment to come to the nursery to kiss her good night. Even the same smell, some curious mixture of brandy and snuff and cologne.