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Raven half listened as the waiter did his business. The leaded diamond panes of the window told the long history of the inn, the oldest panes made of broad glass, thick and uneven with surface scars from being ironed and a green tint from iron oxide, the newer panes with the smoother surface but the tell-tale concentrate ripples of crown glass. A freshening breeze through the open casement brought the sounds of ostlers tending to the horses of patrons impatient to be underway. Raven, too, was impatient, with dead dukes and their living offspring whose inability to hold onto a fortune now obliged them to let Verwood Park.

Raven knew toffs. He’d dealt with them in London and studied with them briefly at Cambridge. They’d been unavoidable in the few terms he’d spent at college. His tutor there, Mr. Clumber, an old fellow, had stretched his income by taking on private pupils preparing for a tripos or honors.

Raven had studied with those young men, ridden with them, drunk with them, and bowled them out on the cricket pitch. He had thought himself one of them until Mr. Clumber explained that there would be no tripos or honors for Raven. I daresay you’re a clever lad, Cole, but you’re sadly out of place among your betters at college, boy. There’s an order to be preserved after all. Raven had been busy overturning the order of things ever since.

Only one of Clumber’s pupils had remained a sort of careless friend over the years. Chance meetings with Ned Farrington in town had twice improved Raven’s luck. Once when Ned told Raven to stay in the funds during a mild banking panic in London, and again when Ned had taken Raven to a rout party at Lord Ramsbury’s London house to celebrate the knighthood his fire engine had earned him. A Cole-designed engine had been one of the engines deployed to save Westminster Hall from the October fire that had consumed the palace where Parliament met.

Trimley wrapped up his history with an explanation of how the unentailed property around the original site had been sold off, while the remaining thousand-acre estate had been preserved as a residence for the late duke’s mother.

“She must be an ancient specimen. Make her an offer.”

“Oh, she’s an octogenarian to be sure, but it won’t do to disturb the dowager. It’s a matter of proceeding with some . . . delicacy and discretion. These old families, you know, they can’t be seen to need to . . . retrench.”

“Trimley, with whom are we actually dealing?”

Trimley shuffled some papers on the table. “We deal with C. J. Lavenham, who represents the dowager. A servant will meet us at the porter’s lodge and escort us to the house. Where, I dare say, Lavenham will meet us.”

A disturbance outside the window drew Raven’s gaze. He glanced down into the courtyard, where a fine chestnut gelding whinnied piteously. A gentleman in a caped greatcoat and beaver hat at the horse’s head handed the animal into an ostler’s care and turned to a tall, sturdy youth in rough country dress, his hands outstretched in an apologetic manner. Every schoolboy who ever had a tyrant for a master knew that gesture, knew the stinging rebuke about to land on the youth’s outstretched palms. Raven came to his feet without thinking.

The gentleman shouted, and raised his driving whip when a woman stepped between the two men. She spoke in a voice too low for Raven to hear. The whip remained raised. Raven tossed his purse on the table and headed for the door. “Pay the shot, will you, Trimley? I’ll be in the yard.”

In the courtyard the ostlers had stopped their work to gawk at the little drama underway. The angry gentleman in the greatcoat, flapped his whip arm up and down, ranting about his curricle. According to him, the vehicle had been reduced to a pile of kindling in a ditch and his horse irreparably injured through the boy’s stupidity.

The youth was taller and more broad-shouldered than his accuser, but his posture was cringing, as if he would shrink into himself if he could. Raven guessed his age to be eighteen. At that age Raven would have knocked his opponent down and walked away, but the lad said nothing in self-defense as the gentleman’s tirade blasted over him.

The boy’s champion was a straight, slim woman in a plain brown cloak, her hem six-inches deep in mud, her face obscured by the brim of a serviceable country bonnet, a closed umbrella hooked over one arm, and a brown paper package clutched to her bosom.

“Are you quite finished, now, Hugh?” she asked the gentleman. Raven immediately revised his estimate of the woman’s age and condition in life. He had assumed that she must be the boy’s mother, but the voice was young, and the cool tone, unmistakably well-bred. He should walk away. A public row between a pair of strangers was no business of his. But the youth’s anguished gaze, shifting back and forth between the two speakers held him there.

“What, are you his dry nurse, Cassie?” the angry gentleman continued. “The stupid lout is a menace. His people need to keep him confined at home. He has no business being on the public road, and you have no right to defend him.”

“He’s the best farrier in Wormley, Hugh, as you well know. He’s on the road because his work is in demand. His cart is belled as a signal to other drivers, and, I dare say, with a little caution, you could have avoided the accident.”

“I could have avoided? The great hulking slow top is supposed to pull aside for his betters. He can’t even manage his donkey. The damned beast brayed at the worst possible moment.”

“And Prince took exception to the donkey, did he? Let Grandmama look at him. I’m sure she has a poultice for that foreleg to keep Prince from being scarred.” The woman stepped forward and laid a hand on the horse’s nose, offering a soothing stroke.

“Damn your grandmother’s poultice. It’s compensation I want, and I’ll have it, too. That rig was London made.”

The woman’s head came up. “Very well, Hugh, produce a witness to the event.”

Raven shifted his position to see the lady’s face, but the bonnet still hid her from him.

He had to admire the bold tilt of her head. She would not back down.

“What?” Hugh cried. “Are you doubting my word as a gentleman?”

“And your sense of fair play. If Dick Crockett truly is at fault in the affair, then of course, compensation must be made.”

“You’re not listening, Cassie. You can tell old Crockett his son has cost him sixty guineas. If he can’t pay for the damages, he’d best keep the idiot off the road.”

“Hugh, stop calling him an idiot, for he is nothing of the sort.”

The gentleman looked over her head at the youth. “I’ll call the bacon-brained slow top what I like. He can’t hear a word, can he?”

“Not with his ears, but he hears you. Make no mistake about that.”

Raven glanced at the youth again. The intense concentration in the anguished face made sense now. The lad might not understand the words, but he knew Hugh was a threat. An argument between a pair of toffs, who appeared to know each other well, might be none of Raven’s affair, but he didn’t like a man who would callously reduce another man to beggary.