Through the screeching of the gulls swooping across the Grand Canal, Byron set down his pen and muttered to himself, ‘And now I’m cornered in a trap from which I fear there’s no escape.’

His fingers gripped the silver base of the goblet with a bowl constructed from a human skull, once the relic of a monk who’d died some centuries before and was more recently discovered in the grounds of Newstead Abbey.

‘Ah, Newstead,’ Byron mused as he swallowed down the dregs of any wine still in the cup, and in his mind pictured again the dilapidated halls of the ancestral family home he’d sworn to never sell – which was another broken promise he could add to all the others.

A bitter smile played on his lips as mournful eyes caught the glitter of the candle at his side. One moment they looked blue, the next a grey, and then a violet. The whites were streaked with broken veins. The skin beneath was darkly bruised with the shadows of exhaustion as he turned towards the window where, an hour or so before, fizzing chrysanthemums of fireworks marked the end of Carnevale and lit the Venice skies with gold. Now, a dawn of rose-quartz blush appeared below black wings of night. The crumbling stones and iron grilles of the palazzos opposite loomed eerily above the veils of mist on the canal, in which the melancholy waters lapped as languid as desire.

Consumed with brooding ennui, Byron felt old. He was not old, yet in the course of thirty years what extremes of light and shade he had experienced in life. What heights of virtue, depths of vice he had discovered here in Venice, whether with whores in the brothels, or contessas in palazzos. But then, what was the local saying?Women,theyhavetwopockets.Onefortears,andoneforlies…

Still pondering the loss of Newstead, he reached towards a silver box with the engraving of a mermaid and the ancient family crest. ‘Trust in Byron,’ he sighed as he lifted the lid to see a folded handkerchief with two initials stitched in silk. An acorn lay on top of it, the memento he’d once found in the grass below an oak tree where he’d kissed a lovely girl with hair as soft as burnished silk. She’d been as slender as a boy, flesh as pale and smooth to touch as any of the marble statues admired on his Grecian travels. Her name was Susan. Susan Vaughan. But Susan Vaughan had lied to him. Susan Vaughan, the maid from Wales who’d captured Byron in her spell, before she’d played him for a cuckold with another of his servants.

Why was he thinking of her now, of how she’d looked in a gown he’d brought back for her from London? Black trim of lace, like gossamer. The velvet lustre of the skirts, shimmering a forest green. When she’d worn it, who would guess at her humble origins? So fine the manners she’d affected, so pure the vowels as she’d disguised the natural lilt of her Welsh accent. And then, the night when they’d lain sated and sweat-soaked on his bed, and she’d recited lines from Shakespeare as well as any actress on the stage at Drury Lane.‘What’sinaname?Thatwhichwecallarose,byanyothernamewouldsmellassweet?’

During such moments – reckless moments – empty promises were made about inviting her to London to meet the theatre managers. But left unspoken was the truth that he preferred his pretty maid kept on his private stage of Newstead. And surely, she had known his words were spun from nought but dreams. That come the dawn all dreams must fade.

For himself, there’d come the morning whenChildeHarold was first published and life had changed beyond all measure, transformed into a gilded palace from a children’s fairy tale. Whether his palacehad been gold, or rendered of a baser metal, he’d been subsumed into a whirlwind world of fame and adulation, besieged by women of the ton bent on offering him sex. Newstead Abbey was forgotten. So was Susan … until now.

What had become of the girl? For a long time he stared at hands where nails were bitten to the quicks, but at last he steeled himself to dip his pen into the ink and...