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Below him in the common room, the last bench sitter wiped the ale from his mouth, called a farewell to the tapman, and headed for the door. Harry followed the man out to summon the ladies’ servants. When he had things in motion for their departure, he returned to the inn. Neither the girl nor the old man had moved. Harry approached cautiously until the girl sensed his presence. When she looked up, her eyes were deep pools of self-reproach.

“Your friends want you to leave the inn with them today.”

She straightened at once. “They mean well, but I won’t leave Adam.”

“I’ll sit with him while you say your farewells.”

“You won’t set him off again?”

“Talk from the benches set him off.” Harry did not mention what that talk had been.

She whispered something to Adam and rose. Harry watched her cross the room with a light brisk step, momentarily distracted by the sway and rustle of her skirts. In minutes the ladies emerged from the private dining room, and the murmur of female voices—pleading and stern, and Lucy’s quiet firm replies—reached the bench. Beside him Adam tensed, listening.

“I see Lucy, Adam,” Harry reassured the old man. “She’s saying farewell to her lady friends. She’ll return soon.” He kept his voice calm and matter-of-fact.

The footman appeared with the ladies’ coats and cloaks, and when these were put on, Lucy steered her guests out through the inn door over their protests. Her friends might be interfering, but they offered escape. In Harry’s experience it was the moment to run. He could see no advantage to the girl in staying to manage the Tooth and Nail, a form of drudgery in which she must soon grow old and coarse. He could imagine her friends urging her to take a husband. A husband, even one of her neighbors, would make a better partner than the old man.

In Lucy’s absence Adam grew restless, his arms and legs twitching, until at last he leaned forward and laid his head and arms on the table. His mouth fell open, and he slept. Just when Harry thought her lofty friends must have snatched Lucy up in their carriage, she returned and stopped on the landing, looking lost and uncertain. When she caught his glance, she straightened and descended. He admired the effort to show no weakness.

“He’s asleep.” Harry stood and moved to cut her off before she reached the bench. He wanted to ask her about Adam without disturbing the man.

“What happened to him?” From his vantage point he could look down on the neat part at the top of her pale golden head. There was a simplicity to her dress and person that he preferred to the feathers and lace of her visitors. He wondered if she would lose that if her friends had their way.

“I used to ask Papa about Adam. I realize now that he told me very little. Only that Adam was in service in a great house before he came to us.”

“A blind man in service?”

She shook her head. “I think he was attacked and blinded on the road and wandered to the inn. It was after the attack that my father cared for him.” She shrugged. “And kept him with us.”

The girl’s explanation told him that she had little notion of the old man’s past. Her father had told her a story that made sense of the old man’s outbursts. But Harry guessed that the attack had been aimed at someone who mattered in England’s wars, someone whose loss made the spymaster Goldsworthy put Harry on the case. The greater mystery was Tom Holbrook’s part in the story. Why did a man with an inn and a family take on a burden like Adam? Most men would have offered alms and sent a stranger on his way. Harry was far from understanding why Tom Holbrook, by all accounts a practical man, had done something so unlikely.

“I have business to attend to this evening. Will you be able to manage him on your own?”

“As I have done most of my life?” She spoke defiantly, but she looked drawn, her eyes dark smudges in her pale face. “Pardon me. You’ve been helpful. Adam isn’t very often so...agitated. It’s only...that he doesn’t like change.”

“Sit down. You look burnt to cinders.” His voice sounded harsh in his own ears. The thought of meeting with Richard had him on edge.

Her gray eyes flashed briefly. “Do you expect civilians to salute and obey, Captain?”

He smiled. He would like life outside the army better if he could give a few orders now and then and have them obeyed. “I expect a rational woman to behave with sense.”

“Very well.” She took a seat beside Adam, setting a little book on the bench beside her. The orange cat appeared and leapt into her lap, circled, and settled facedown against the girl’s leg. Harry turned and strode away. He could count on the girl to keep the old man safe for the moment.

* * * *

Harry found his brother, Richard, Earl of Mountjoy, sunk in a chair in the subscription room of Richard’s club, a glass of brandy in his hand. Harry supposed he should be shocked at Richard’s appearance, the white hair and sallow skin tight on the bone, the watery eyes and thin frame. Richard had always been considered the handsomer of the two brothers. At forty-one he looked more like their father than the brother Harry had once followed on youthful adventures.

The hush of the club subscription room was nothing like the din of the Tooth and Nail. Every gentleman sat in an island of silence with his paper or his magazine. No one shouted for another round. Waiters came and went across the vast carpet, alert to a man’s glance or his beckoning finger.

Richard looked up at Harry’s approach, but did not stir, a man being careful not to jar his head. “Do you have it?”

“Hello, Dick.”

“Don’t ‘hello’ me, Harry. Do you have the blunt?”

“No.”

Richard glared at him. “We had an agreement, Harry. Did you think I was jesting?”