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“It would be preferable.” He tore off another mouthful of bread. “Why don’t you just kill me now? You’re going to in the end anyway.”

“Here, now, you got no cause to think that. Ain’t I looking after you, feeding you, tending your wounds...?”

“And letting me see your face. You can’t afford to let me live.”

The man laughed with easy contempt. “No harm in letting you see my face.”

Blood seemed to surge into his ears. He knows. But even as the old shame at his weakness rose up, Piers was conscious of relief at the untangling of one mystery. His captor had no reason to kill him because he was aware Piers was incapable of identifying him again.

How was he aware of that?

Because either this was someone who knew him, or someone who knew him had blabbed.

As the man collected his tray and backed out, Piers felt the terrible sting of betrayal. April was the only one he had ever told about his malaise, his inability to remember and recognize faces. But others who knew him well might have guessed. Friends. Family. Servants. Enemies.

The man shoving the tray outside the door and coming back to fetch the chamber pot, could have been anyone. Piers could have chatted with him or dined with him. The man could have served him brandy in White’s or even worn the Petteril livery. Out of context, in different clothing and surroundings, Piers didn’t stand a chance of recognizing him. It made his blood run cold.

As the heavy door closed behind his jailer, shutting out much of the light he realized gloom or even darkness didn’t matter. He was blind anyway.

He wanted to curl up and sleep. He wanted...

It didn’t matter what he wanted in those pathetic moments. He had to get home. So instead of hurling the remains of his bread across the room, he forced himself to finish it. Like a soldier who didn’t know when he might eat again. Like April, alone on the streets when she should have been too young to fend for herself.

He was in a much stronger position than she had been in then, and he had always found ways around his peculiar form of blindness. He remembered other things—voices, dress, prominent features like hair colour, bushy eyebrows, moles, big feet...

For example, he had already consigned to memory that his jailer had short brown hair, longer at the front, a long, broken nose, thin lips, a mole beneath his left eye, a right ear that stuck out, and a short, thick neck. He did not speak like a gentleman. He sounded like a Londoner who had travelled.

Only who the devil was he?

Accents could be altered. Hair...

He regarded the single hair in his hand, then shoved it into the left-hand pocket of his coat. First things first.

He allowed himself a mouthful of beer. It wasn’t enough. He was thirsty. But he knew from the taste that there was laudanum in this cupful too, and he had to make the most of what daylight there was. Rising, he went to the fresh chamber pot left by his jailer and poured in a third of the beer. He managed to add to it, less than last night but hopefully enough not to arouse suspicions.

He returned the beer to its place by his blanket, then felt inside the pockets of his coat, taking the fallen hair from last night into his right hand, and the plucked hair from this morning into his left. Then he stood beneath the window and examined them.

They weren’t the same. One was lighter, almost dark blond, the other a deeper, richer shade. To be sure that the first wasn’t a fallen hair of his own, he plucked one from his head and compared the three. No, the chestnut burnish of his own hair was different again.

He had two different jailers, trying to fool him into the belief that there was only one. Another ruse to avoid being identified. No court in the land would convict on the strength of such clearly unreliable identification. Not even if the word was the viscount’s against the villain’s.

And most especially if the villain was a gentleman too. Like the man who had called to him from the carriage in Park Lane. But had that person been pretending to be a gentleman? Was he even a part of this plot?

Or were his jailers gentlemen and pretending to be of the lower orders?

Piers returned the hairs to their respective pockets in his coat, and advanced purposefully upon the window.

***

RETURNING TO THE FRONT room, Jem Stagger grinned at his partner in crime. “You’re right. He’s got no idea I’m not you, and even less idea who you are. Like taking milk from a baby, innit?”

“Well, we ain’t got the milk yet,” Smith reminded him. “The easy part is fooling him. Just make sure you keep to the plan.”

“Yes, yes. I bathed his lordship’s precious wounds and emptied his bloody chamber pot. In clover, he is.”

“Yes, well if he festers and dies, we’ll only ever get the paltry three thousand out of him. He’s worth a hell of a lot more over the next few years.”

This was why Stagger put up with Smith. The man might be incurably bossy, but he thought ahead, thought big. He was, probably, the best acquaintance Stagger had ever made.