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Lucy knelt at his feet and took his large, familiar hands firmly in hers. “A terrible thing happened, Adam, but we are going to face it. We’re going to name it. We are not going to be afraid any longer.”

He stopped his murmuring, his head tilted to listen to her.

Lucy gave his hands one last squeeze and rose and crossed to her father’s wardrobe, taking the key from the ring at her waist, kneeling, and opening the drawer where her father had long ago put away her list of Adam’s words.

The key turned. The drawer was stuffed and the wood swollen with age, but as Lucy pulled, it came open. Her father had saved a sheer white dress with raised dots, a sampler with her first alphabet in colored stitches, a package of her letters to him from school, a lock of her hair, a bundle of school bills, and a pair of tiny shoes. There was an old quilt and a limbless doll. Everything smelled of cedar and lavender and long ago. There was nothing to answer her suddenly pressing questions about her mother.

She pulled the letters into her lap and untied the ribbon around them. These were her letters from school, but the list she’d made of Adam’s words was not among them. She put them aside and dug deeper into the drawer. An old edition of the peerage made her shake her head. Her father had so wanted her to be a lady. She put aside a primer she remembered as one of her first books, another book of the Adventures of Tom True, and a box of pencils and chalks. She was sure she had watched her father put her list of Adam’s sayings in this very drawer.

Beneath the books lay another bundle wrapped in thin, yellowing crepe, the fabric brittle at the edges as she lifted the bundle from the drawer and set it aside on the rug. There was no sign of her list at the bottom of the drawer, only the faint smell of cedar and old things. She had counted on her list, sure that if she could see it again, she would discern the order in the narrative that she had missed as a child.

She pulled the bundle into her lap and began to unfold the crepe. Adam stirred slightly. “Adam stayed,” he said.

In the folds of fabric she found the white lace cap of a child of perhaps two and a white knitted mitten for a tiny hand. Beneath the cap and mitten was a gown of the finest white muslin, elegantly embroidered. She unfolded the gown, and stopped, shocked by a long brown stain from the smocking to the hem. She put the garment aside and unfolded the last item in the bundle, a child’s coat in pale blue wool with knotted silk embroidery to match the gown, stained with the same terrible dark stain.

She knew with utter certainty that her father had hidden these things to keep them secret because they had come with Adam to the inn. Adam had brought them from the terrible scene he had witnessed. An image that could not be stopped sprang into her mind of Adam holding a bleeding child. He had held Lucy often enough as a girl. She knew his strength and the way he cradled her in his arms. She had always felt protected in his hold.

She laid the dress and coat back in the yellowing crepe and put the bundle next to the other things she had taken from the drawer. Lined up across the floor they made a sort of history from the most recent items in her life, her letters from school, to items from perhaps before her life, from Adam’s arrival at the inn. She shook each one to see whether it might hold the missing list, but she didn’t find it.

“Adam.” She turned to him. “You must help me. I know it hurts to remember. I will ask only this one time.” She laid the child’s clothes in his lap.

His hands closed around the folds of the tiny garments. His body began to tremble.

“Tell me, Adam,” she said.

His throat worked. His nose ran. He lifted the clothes to his chest and held them there. “Mr. Tom say Adam not talk. Not tell.”

Lucy stood and put her hands on his shoulders. “It’s time now, Adam. Talk to me. Talk to Lucy.”

With a violent shudder he began to speak. “Adam take Lucy to the bulrushes. Adam stay. Geoffrey ran away. Adam saw. No, no, no, no, no! Adam go.”

His head fell forward on his chest. She wiped his running nose with her pinny and rocked him gently. The story was still incomplete. There was nothing about the child. And the bulrushes made no sense. She closed Adam’s fist around the baby gown in his arms. “Did you bring the baby to the inn?” she asked him.

“Adam bring Lucy to the inn,” he said, nodding emphatically.

The words stunned her. She could not have heard him right, but he repeated them, as was his way. “Adam bring Lucy to the inn. Mr. Tom promise keep her safe. Adam stay. Not talk. Not tell.”

The remnants of her childhood lying on the rug told the story in their own way. She was not Tom Holbrook’s daughter. Adam had brought her to the inn in bloodied garments, and Tom Holbrook had hidden them both, protected them. It was Adam’s blood on the baby clothes. She shuddered, understanding why Mountjoy feared for them, because Adam had not been blind. Whatever he had seen was locked in his mind, tormenting him.

Lucy took the bloodied clothes from his hands and returned the items to the drawer. She wet a cloth and washed his face. There was one more question she had to ask him. “Adam, what did you see?”

In a perilous Season there is one painful difficulty the husband hunter may face, which a thorough sense of duty compels this writer to reveal. From time to time it happens that—from reckless inattention to circumstances, indifference to the world’s opinion, or precipitate intimacy without true knowledge of one another’s character—two people who appear headed with all possible dispatch for the altar must sever their connection. For the husband hunter it appears that her Season has ended in failure. Nothing could be further from the truth. As painful as is the discovery that she and one particular gentleman do not suit, it marks the beginning of her path to true happiness. The necessity of continuing her engagements, appearing in society, and of meeting from time to time her lost love with some semblance of composure demands the greatest exertions of spirit and courage, but leads inevitably to a healed heart.

—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London

Chapter 21

Harry stood outside of Richard’s London house, looking across the square, his friend Blackstone beside him. The air of a London street, for all the effluvia of dirt and smoke wafted into the mix, smelled sweeter and fresher than the stale interior of his dead brother’s house.

Harry’s other friend Hazelwood had gone round to the mews to summon Harry’s carriage and Blackstone’s horse. His friends had not left him alone since they’d brought him the news of Richard’s death. Together they’d faced Richard’s wasted body and sent it on its way to Mountjoy for burial. Together they’d routed the duns gathered at Richard’s door and listened to the solicitor’s bleak appraisal of Richard’s affairs. With Blackstone and Hazelwood at his side, Harry appeared to be up in his count of brothers, having gained two for the one he’d lost.

It was a dry, cold day with a stiff breeze that bent the daffodils in the park low to the ground, bright as the brief dream of Lucy Holbrook as his wife. He had escaped Mountjoy as a boy; now, ironically, Mountjoy had taken hold of him, got him by the throat and wouldn’t let go.

“You know,” said Blackstone at his side, “you can’t let Richard’s folly rule your life.”

Hazelwood returned and glanced at the two of them. “You know what we need to do,” he said.

“Break a few heads?” Blackstone referred to Hazelwood’s usual style of dealing with troubles.