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“How was your first day in London?” he asked.

“Long,” she said.

“Found a husband yet?” he asked.

“Miss Throckmorton and I were just speaking of every young woman’s obligation to look for one,” she said.

“I’m sure your hostesses will do their best to put you in the way of eligible men.”

Miss Throckmorton intervened. “Miss Holbrook is most advantageously situated here with such friends to help her.”

Lucy felt the awkwardness of their situation. She wanted to ask much more about Adam, and about him, Harry Clare, without Miss Throckmorton’s curious gaze. The door to the drawing room opened again, and the other gentlemen entered. Suddenly, everyone was talking and moving. Harry Clare was going to walk away, caught up in the general air of change in the room.

“You’ve put aside your uniform, Captain,” she ventured.

“I’m not always at war,” he said.

Another of the guests came up to him at that moment. Lucy had met her earlier, a woman near sixty. Harry turned and offered her a grin and quick kiss on the cheek. “Aunt Louisa.”

“You scapegrace,” she said. “You don’t get around me so easily. You’ve been avoiding your aunts for far too long. Now that I’ve tracked you down, you must tell me about yourself. Out of uniform, at last, I see.”

He offered his arm to the older woman. “You’ve met Miss Holbrook and Miss Throckmorton?”

She nodded. “Come, tell me if what I hear about your brother is true.” His aunt linked her arm in his as they walked away.

“Younger son,” said Miss Throckmorton.

“What?” asked Lucy. Her conversation with Harry Clare had ended before it had really begun. The vexed question of his interest in her remained.

“He’s only a younger son,” Miss Throckmorton repeated. “It’s terrible when they’re handsome like that, but a woman who wants to be secure of a comfortable position really can’t be swayed by a man’s appearance.”

“Of course not,” Lucy said.

Miss Throckmorton sighed and gave herself a little shake. “They say his brother, Richard, has ruined the estate entirely.”

Lucy now felt she must change her seat or be subjected to Miss Throckmorton’s assessment of Harry Clare’s finances. With the arrival of the tea tray, she seized her opportunity. “Shall we have some tea?”

A little movement, a few words spoken to other guests, and the business of securing her own cup of tea freed her from Miss Throckmorton. When she dared to look around for her former companion, she spotted her engaged in conversation with Harry Clare and his aunt.

* * * *

Nate clung to a pot of ale in the small taproom as long as he dared. Any longer and the landlord would doubt the story of a young husband accompanying his worried wife to London to care for her ailing mother. Any longer and his imagining of Miranda’s preparations for bed would overheat his brain.

He had a bit of experience of women, none of it satisfying. Once in his Bread Street youth he’d admired an older girl named Eliza. He had watched her pass from a brief bold prettiness to coarse misery under the necessity of pleasing hard-fisted men. It was the way of Bread Street. The grand ladies he’d met since that time hardly moved him. They were as aloof and indifferent to men such as he as stars in the sky. Only Miranda combined the plucky cheek of those Bread Street girls before they became women and the haughty elegance of a true lady. She made him witless, and he needed his wits about him to finish the captain’s job.

He said goodnight to the landlord, took a candle, and made his way up the stairs to the room at the back of the inn. Earlier when he and Miranda had put their cases on the bench at the foot of the bed, he’d been pleased by the clean and simple comfort of the place. A rag rug covered a large portion of the floor. A painted clothes press and old chest of drawers with a speckled mirror stood against the wall, with a chair and low table near the hearth opposite. The bed looked roomy, and the patchwork counterpane was clean.

In the light of day from two small high windows on either side of the bed the room seemed spacious enough. There was a screen in the corner for privacy.

Only now, as he tried the door, did he recognize how impossible it would be to ignore the presence of another person.

Miranda had locked it as he’d instructed. He knocked. “It’s me,” he said. “Open the door.”

“No lamps,” she reminded him.

He waited, listening to her movements. The key turned, the door opened, and he stuck his foot in at once.

“You’ve got a candle,” she cried, smacking the door against his boot.