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She appeared to consider it. “There was a guest Monday who skipped, a gentleman, Hannah said. He ordered the fish, but left without eating or paying.”

* * * *

It was late when Harry returned to the inn. A few lamps remained lit. The doors and shutters had not yet been closed. Lucy and Adam occupied the usual bench at the back of the common room. Adam leaned against the tall back of the bench, his mouth slightly open, his breathing regular, the cat curled in his lap. Lucy slumped forward onto the table, her head resting on an open ledger. The cook’s desertion had helped Harry’s cause by exhausting the girl.

He closed a fist around the keys hanging from a brass ring at her waist and cut the ring free of its ribbon tie. The cat blinked at him, but neither the girl nor the old man stirred. Harry summoned Hannah the maid.

He handed the sleepy girl Lucy’s keys. “Open your mistress’s door, put a lamp on in her room, and report back to me.”

Hannah blinked at him, but turned to do as he’d asked.

Harry stood for a minute listening to her tread on the stairs. Somewhere above the guest chambers were smaller rooms for maids and one for Lucy herself. He’d spent more than a fortnight trying not to think about Lucy Holbrook’s bed. Now it was his duty to place her in it. He grinned. Not all duties were unpleasant.

Hannah returned with a curtsy and the keys. Harry gave her a coin for her trouble, which brightened her look. “Are you ready for your next assignment?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Good. I’m putting you on sentry duty. You’re to sit with Adam on his bench while I take Miss Holbrook up to her room. Can you do it?”

Hannah glanced warily at the sleeping Adam and swallowed. She looked as uncertain as the rawest recruit hearing big guns for the first time. At last she nodded.

“You can do it, Hannah. A quarter of an hour, no more.”

She put her coin in a pocket and settled on the bench beside Adam. Harry turned to Lucy. What little light glowed from a few candles and a low fire seemed to find her golden head and make it shine.

An effective officer is an efficient officer. Harry repeated the line to himself as he lifted her arms and head from the table, swung her feet to the floor, and caught her up in his arms, her head resting against his chest. She was as curved and soft and warm and womanly as he’d guessed from his stolen glances of her across the inn. The scent of her hair and skin made his head swim briefly.

Harry had moved wagons up mountainsides in the mud. He had moved horses across rocky gorges of rushing streams. He had moved men forward in the face of withering French fire. Now he had only to move one sleeping woman to her bed.

He repeated the line about efficiency many times as he made his way up two flights of stairs to her room. The door was open, and Hannah’s lamp on the mantel illuminated a small, neat room, softened by feminine touches. He lowered them onto the canopied bed with its virginal muslin hangings.

He settled the girl on his lap, leaning her forward against one arm, so that he could work the buttons on the back of her gown. The tiny buttons covered in the fine black wool of the gown and the weight of soft breasts against his arm and bottom in his lap interfered with the steadiness of his fingers.

“Almost there,” he whispered to the girl as he spread the sides of the gown, pushing it down off her shoulders.

It stymied him a moment that her stays closed in the front. She was a practical woman, after all, not a fine lady with a maid to lace her up. So he stood and turned and laid her out on the bed. He looked down at the sleeping girl, but he wasn’t about to retreat now with the job half done. With sudden efficiency, he lifted her skirts, dispensed with her shoes, pulled the black gown down over her hips and legs, untied her petticoats and stripped them away, too.

Now she lay before him in plain fine cotton so sheer it gave the illusion of a mere veil over the sweet soft curves and shadows of her that he wanted to touch. His twelve years of soldiering had come to nothing more than a few relics in a glass case, yet he did not regret his time in the army. Whatever the harsh lessons of war, the army had also refined his senses, taught him nuances. He had learned to quiet every competing thought so that he might suck the pleasure from a rare moment of peace, like watching a sleeping girl.

But Tom Holbrook’s solid bulk no longer stood between Lucy and himself, so he took a step back from the bed, tossed her discarded garments on a chair by the hearth, and allowed himself one last look before he drew the white counterpane over the sleeping girl.

He turned to put out the lamp and saw the portrait of a picnicking lady on the wall above the small hearth. Even in the dim light of a single lamp, the portrait was striking in its overlarge size and its subject, surely remote from the girl. Harry did not recognize the lady, but he was sure he knew the house, that he’d been to that house, in his youth, perhaps when he was thirteen or so and tagging after Richard on some shooting expedition. The name of the place would come to him. He put out the lamp. His mission, for better or worse, was to get the old man’s information. So he would leave Lucy Holbrook to her dreams and rouse tall, lanky Adam and help him through his nighttime ritual. He shut the door and descended the stairs.

He found Hannah awake and edgy. He thanked her, gave her a coin for her trouble, and sent her off to bed.

He put a hand on Adam’s shoulder and spoke to him as Lucy would. After a minute the old man stirred, and Queenie jumped from his lap.

“You like cats very much,” Adam said to him.

“I do,” said Harry. “Let’s get you to bed, Adam.”

Harry helped Adam to his feet, put the old man’s hand on his shoulder, and turned them toward the passageway to Tom Holbrook’s room.

Together they shuffled down the passageway. Harry used Lucy’s key to open the door and made Adam stand in the doorway while Harry lit a lamp, conscious of how easy it was for him to go from darkness to light, how the room sprang into view at the flaring of the wick, while nothing changed for the old man.

Adam talked of Tom Holbrook while Harry helped the old man remove his clothes and shoes and put on a long nightshirt. The old man’s slow deliberate attention to each step of the process allowed Harry to study the room again. If Tom Holbrook had kept any clues to Adam’s past, a likely place was the locked bottom drawer of the wardrobe.

“Mr. Tom dead?” Adam asked.