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“I didn’t know you could jest.” He had not heard his brother laugh in twelve years.

“I gave you a year to raise the money.”

And Harry had been so close. One last assignment and he would have been paid for his year and a day of spy service to king and country. “Do you have another offer?”

Richard waved the brandy glass, sloshing its contents. “When I say the word, Finchley will get me all the offers I want.”

Harry had no doubt it was true. Finchley, their dead father’s man of business, must be eager to sell Mountjoy and see creditors paid and mortgages cleared.

“You’re willing to let Mountjoy go, then?”

Richard snapped the fingers of his slack left hand. “Like that. Don’t tell me that you are sentimental about soggy acres and that moldering ancestral pile you were so eager to leave?”

Harry looked away. No one in the subscription room seemed to note their conversation. “You know me better than that.”

“Do I?” Richard started to shake his head, but winced at the movement. “I don’t think I know you at all. Who are you? The bluff, hearty captain? The hero of Waterloo?”

“I’m a survivor, Dick. That’s all.”

Richard took a swallow of his brandy and wagged a finger at Harry. Apparently, he could still move his extremities, if not his head. “I know who you are. You’re the spare who aspires to be the heir. You fancy being the next Earl of Mountjoy after I’m gone. You’ll get yourself an heiress, sire some brats on her, and restore the noble line of the Clares. Duty and honor and all that rot, while me and my father will be a dead branch on the old family tree.”

Harry did not answer. He had chosen years earlier to save himself. With an instinct for self-preservation, he had recognized his own danger, but he had apparently failed to see the danger to his older brother.

Richard stared into his glass. “I really shouldn’t let you do it. The house is in shocking disorder. Tenants have fled. Rents are abysmal. Restoring the place is a pipe dream. Have you ever tried the pipe, Harry? Of course not. Father introduced me to it after you left.”

“You could have stood up to him.”

Richard brought his glass down on the arm of the chair, spilling more brandy. “Hah! You didn’t stand up to him any more than I did. You ran away, remember.”

It was an old accusation, and it should not sting, but Harry’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t follow him in every vice and folly.”

Richard’s eyes abruptly filled, and tears spilled over down the ruined cheeks. “Damn you, Harry. Remember, one offer is all I need, so if you’re buying the Mountjoy mortgages, you’d better get your blunt together.”

* * * *

When Harry returned hours later from his bitter meeting with Richard, he found the common room deserted, quieter than any camp the army ever made. He shook his head. He did not miss the bench sitters’ boisterous camaraderie. He had regarded them as part of the furnishings, but now that they had vanished like the guests of an enchanted castle, he felt the life had gone out of the place.

Adam’s bench, too, was nearly empty. The cat had taken Lucy’s place, and the fire had sunk to a red glow in the grate. The girl’s little book lay abandoned on the floor. He scooped it up, flipped it over, and read the title. The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London. Perhaps it was a sign, the book that had helped Hazelwood crack their last case. Harry laughed at the idea, but another thought followed immediately. It was possible that he could use the book to his advantage. He dropped it in his pocket.

The cat lifted its head, arched its back, and mewed loudly for his attention.

As a woman of property is likely to receive several offers of marriage, it is necessary to consider the mode of a gentleman’s declaration. There are gentlemen who, carried away by ardor or avarice, will rush to declare themselves without any regard for a woman’s readiness to hear those addresses. There are other gentlemen of a more cunning and strategic disposition who will contrive the time and place, often public, of a declaration so as to ensure that a woman will have the utmost difficulty in refusing their proposals. And, there will be those men who from a spontaneous excess of feeling find themselves unable to offer a polished and coherent address, but only to press a woman’s hand and gaze into her eyes. A woman may note these differences in the manner of a man’s declaration, but of greater importance for her happiness is to note her suitor’s words. She is advised to refuse any man who, in making his addresses, speaks principally of his happiness rather than hers.

—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London

Chapter 3

Lucy woke in Papa’s chair, her feet curled under her, one of his old jackets over her. Adam snored peacefully in his bed. In sleep he looked untroubled, but she knew his past lay waiting for him.

Memory was a land Adam never traveled to except for those times when some word set off one of his frenzies. Then he became trapped in the past surrounded by things and people only he could see. The summer when she was twelve his spells had been alarmingly frequent. Lucy had written down all his odd pronouncements. She had taken the list to Papa to see whether together they might make a story of the disjointed fragments, but Papa had looked solemn and told her not to trouble herself to understand Adam, just to go on caring for him. He had taken the list from her and tucked it in the drawer where he kept Adam’s things. Her gaze settled on that drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe. Now that she was solely responsible for Adam, she supposed that she should know more about him.

A knock on the door interrupted her thinking. Hannah called, and Lucy swung her feet to the floor. It was time to start her day. First, she would take care of Adam, then herself. Later, she would ask Captain Clare exactly what had disturbed Adam so deeply.

Once she had Adam settled on his bench, she dashed upstairs to her own room to put herself to rights for the day. She did not miss the book her friends had given her until she went to tie her ring of keys to the plain muslin pinny she wore over her mourning clothes. With her keys at her waist, she had looked up at the portrait over her small hearth.

The portrait, which was rather large for her room, had been a gift from her father when she started school. She had been reluctant to part from him, and he had presented her with the painting to remind her of the goal of becoming a lady. In the portrait, a true lady sat on a Turkey carpet spread on a vast lawn stretching up to a grand stone house. A little red book lay open against the lady’s pale blue skirts. White lace at her sleeves and bodice caught the sunlight. The day must have been breezy, because the laughing lady held her hand to a straw bonnet with a fluttering blue ribbon that appeared ready to take flight.

Lucy had daydreamed of that picnic. But always she woke from those reveries to ask her lady questions. The lady only laughed and held onto her hat, so Lucy was none the wiser from her counsel. Lucy did not mean to be unjust to her lady, but she wished to know more of a lady’s life than picnicking on the grass suggested. She wanted to know who baked the bread and packed the basket, who carried the blanket and heavy hamper out onto the lawn, what army of under-gardeners scythed the lawn, and who would wash the grass stains from the lady’s white gown at the end of the day? She wanted to know how a lady mourned a father or bathed a frightened old man or stood up to the persuasion of friends.