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“They cry,” Robin said, looking at his scuffed boots “They cry too much And they talk too soft”

“Yes, it’s horrid,” Vere agreed He bent and brushed off the boy’s coat The child looked up at hi Vere’s own eyes stung He straightened, cleared his throat, and said, “I was thinking of leaving thehton” He paused, and told himself he was mad even to contemplate it But the boy had come to him, and the boy’s father had never once failed Vere Except in dying “Would you like to come with me?”

“To Brighton?”

“That’s what I said”

The too-young, too-trusting eyes began to glow “Where the Pavilion is, you mean?”

The ioria known as the Royal Pavilion was the analogously ie

“It was, the last ti, back toward the house

His ward pro strides “Is it as fanciful as it looks in the pictures, Cousin Vere? Is it truly like a palace in The Arabian Nights?”

“I was thinking of starting out first thing to,” Vere said “The sooner we leave, the sooner you can judge for yourself”

If it had been up to Robin, they would have started out that very minute If it had been up to his aunts and their husbands, Vere would have set out alone But it wasn’t up to anyone else, as he told theuardian, he didn’t need anybody’s perhton—or Bombay, for that matter

It was Robin himself who silenced their objections, however The sound of thu roo his porth the cavernous hall to the vestibule

“There, you see?” Vere turned to Dorothea, Charlie’s youngest sister, who’d protested longest and hardest “He can’t wait to get away You’re too damned dismal, the lot of you It’s the tears and hushed voices and crepe and borown-ups are crying He wants to be withand noisy Because I can scare away the monsters Don’t you see?”

Whether she saw or not, she gave in, and when she did, the others followed suit It was only for a feeeks, after all Even Vere Mallory couldn’t corrupt a child’s morals irrevocably in a matter of weeks

He had no wish to corrupt the boy’sto return Robin in a fortnight

Vere could not be a father to him or any child, he ell aware He was not a suitable roleone—to do the things feh, uncivilized ways His household comprised one servant, his valet Jaynes, who possessed all the soft, maternal qualities of a dyspeptic porcupine This “household,” furthermore, had not occupied a fixed abode since Vere had left Oxford

It was no way to rear a child, in short, especially one destined to assureat dukedom

Nonetheless, the feeeks sohton they traveled up into Berkshire, to the Vale of the White Horse, to view the ancient etching in a chalk hillside, thence to Stonehenge, and on to the West Country, following the coast and exploring slers’ coves all the way to Land’s End

Autu Then the letters caentle but not overly subtle renored indefinitely, his sisters er the boy wandered, the harder it would be for him to settle down

It was all true, Vere’s own conscience told him Robin needed a real family, stability, a home

Still he found it hard, returning Robin to Longlands, hard to part fro to do The household was not so dismal as before

Dorothea and her husband were settled there noith Robin’s sisters as well as their own brood The halls rang again with the children’s songs and laughter, and in a defiance of convention Vere had to approve, the crepe and jet borders and black boubrious tones of half

It was also clear that Vere had done his job He’d scared away the monsters, beyond question, for within hours, Robin was boso theood-bye, Robin showed no signs of panic He didn’t take a temper fit or hit Vere, but prouardian’s proust for his tenth birthday, then ran off to help his cousins reenact the Battle of Agincourt

But Vere returned long before the birthday Not three weeks after leaving Longlands, he was racing back

The sixth Duke of Ainswood had contracted diphtheria

The disease was not well understood The first accurate account of the infection had been published in France only five years earlier What was understood and not debated was that diphtheria was highly contagious

Charlie’s sisters pleaded with Vere Their husbands tried to stop hier than any of them, and in a fury, as he was

now, a regiment of soldiers couldn’t have held him back

He storreat staircase and marched down the hall to the sickroom He chased away the nurse and locked the door Then he sat beside the bed and grasped his ward’s weak little hand

“It’s all right, Robin,” he said “I’ive it to me, do you hear le with it I can do it, my boy, you know I can”

The cold little hand lay un, warm one

“Give it up, please,” Vere urged, choking back tears, stifling the useless grief “It’s too soon for you, Robin, you know it is You’ve scarcely begun to live You don’t know a fraction of it—what there is to see, to do”

The young duke’s eyelids fluttered and opened Sonition seehost of a smile Then the boy’s eyes closed

That was all Though Vere went on talking, coaxing, pleading, though he clung to the little hand, he could not draw the disease away and into hi but wait and watch, as he’d done so many times before It was a short watch, this time, the shortest, hardest of all

In less than an hour, as twilight slipped into night, the boy’s life slipped away and fled…like a shadow

Chapter 1

London

Wednesday, 27 August 1828

“I’ll sue ’edo bollocks!”

The enor before the editor’s office door lifted her head and gazed with owan to herthat the latter was in no i laid her head down upon her forepaws again and closed her eyes