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“Well, you won’t like it if you teach me to give you orders.”

“Depends on the orders you give me.” He grinned, and she caught her breath at the change in his uncompromising face.

* * * *

Lucy Holbrook sat on the bench beside the sleeping Adam, the cat curled in her lap. It did not appear that they had moved since the incident with the fish. The old man looked so deep in sleep that Harry thought he could hazard a few of his questions.

“Your father’s death upset him?”

She nodded, her fingers stroking the cat’s white neck.

“Does he have a room or a bed somewhere?”

“He sleeps in Papa’s room.”

“Even now?” Harry could understand if Tom Holbrook had given the blind man a bed in the stable, but that Holbrook had kept Adam as close as family deepened the mystery.

“I... There’s a chair. I keep watch.”

“Not forever.” Harry had a momentary desire to take hold of her slumping shoulders and shake her. It was a youthful mistake to think she could shoulder the burden of the inn and Adam.

“Until I can make some other arrangement.”

Harry shook his head. “Wearing yourself out won’t help Adam. Come on. Let me help you get him to bed. I can sit up with him tonight.”

She looked up at him then, with more suspicion than gratitude. “You have no ties to Adam, no duty....”

“Let’s say, I want my breakfast in the morning and need my innkeeper to take her rest.” That was as much as he was willing to admit, but it gave her pause and made her take a longer look at him. He recognized that measuring gaze, the effort of a fighter to size up his opponent.

He knew what another man, a man like Richard, would see—a half-pay officer in a frayed and faded red coat, a man who’d seen action but not advancement, a down-and-out soldier, clinging to past glory. It was the disguise he had been wearing as a spy in all the low places where old soldiers gathered. He knew what some women would see in him, a hardness and a hunger that would be good to satisfy the itch created by conjugal sameness. He didn’t know what an innocent like Lucy Holbrook would see.

He offered stare for stare, unyielding. It was a test of wills. Hers was strong, but weakened by grief and fatigue, she was no match for him. Her gaze dropped. “Thank you,” she said. “Let me wake him. I know the trick of it.”

Taking one of Adam’s great hands in hers and speaking softly, Lucy coaxed the old man awake. He lifted his head and cocked it to one side, listening to the sounds of the inn, quiet now, with only Frank Blodget closing up in the tap.

“Who’s there?” Adam asked hoarsely.

Lucy squeezed his hand. “It’s me, Lucy, and Captain Clare. You’ve been sleeping. Let me take you to your proper bed. I’ve saved some pudding for you.”

“Adam likes pudding.” The old man turned with unerring instinct toward Harry. “You like pudding, Captain?”

“I do.” The old man might make a better witness than Harry had imagined, if his other senses could supply the deficiency of his eyes.

“Adam,” said Lucy, “put your left arm over Captain Clare’s shoulder, and he will help you to Papa’s room.” She lifted the cat from her lap. The creature raised its tail and strutted off with offended dignity.

Harry moved next to Adam on the bench. When Adam’s arms were positioned over their shoulders, Harry and Lucy rose, steadying the old man on his feet.

“Ready?” he asked.

She nodded, and they began to move toward the hall at the back of the inn.

At the last door in the hall, Lucy stopped and turned the latch. “Can you hold him up?” she asked. “We need a light.”

“I can manage,” Harry answered. Adam was a large, rawboned figure of a man, but there was little weight on his tall frame.

She slipped into the dark and lit a lamp. In its glow a man’s room emerged with the inn’s golden yellow walls and dark beams overhead. Harry understood at a glance how Adam Pickersgill had remained hidden from the world for twenty years. Under the stairs at the back of the inn, the room was a sanctuary. Two tall wardrobes stood opposite a large oak bed. A worn Turkey rug and a faded red velvet easy chair by the stone hearth gave color. Harry took note of drawers, books on a shelf, and a painted wooden box at the foot of the bed, all the places where a man stowed the things that mattered to him.

“Adam sleeps there.” Lucy pointed.