‘Mama! Mama!’

Max stopped and looked back to see a small, golden-haired boy standing halfway down the stairs. Ellen gave a little cry and rushed up to catch the child in her arms. The child laid his head on her shoulder but for a moment he looked directly at Max, a long, unblinking stare, before his eyelids drooped. He was already asleep as Ellen handed him to the nursemaid.

‘Take him back to bed, Hannah. And this time please make sure the door is properly closed.’

Max’s brain was working frantically. When he had first seen the boy on the stairs he had been forcibly reminded of the portrait hanging in the drawing room at Rossenhall, the one of Hugo and himself as children. When he had been barely four years old. Then he had seen the child’s eyes, green as emeralds, and suspicion hardened into certainty. He stared at Ellen as she turned and made her way back down the stairs toward him and his simmering anger turned again to ice-cold fury. He forced out his next words through gritted teeth.

‘This, madam, changes everything.’