Someone else might have said she looked tired. But Cyril had seen tired. He had been tired. Still was. Lillian needed a week of good sleep, and food put in front of her. Cyril needed to lay down and die.

“Lady’s name,” she said. Her hands fell from his face to his shoulders, and then her arms were around him.

He fought his initial impulse—block a knife to the belly, bend to throw her over his shoulder—and simply let her hold him, though he could not make himself relax. The crook of her neck smelled of geranium perfume; the fabric of her collar like cedar and, faintly, mothballs.

“You’re so thin,” she said, fingers closing on his arms. “And holy stones, you must be freezing. Is that all you have? No overcoat?”

“I have a bag with socks,” he said. “A few shirts. No other clothes. It was warm in Dadang.”

She smoothed the wrinkles her grip had put into his sleeves, then held him and looked at him again. Fading daylight caught in a tear gathering at the corner of her eye. Before it fell, she squeezed him once and turned briskly to her driver.

“Martí,” she said. “Is there a blanket under the seat? Will you get it out and air it, please? Yes, just give it a shake.” Then, not quite looking at Cyril, “There’s poached chicken for dinner. But if you want anything else … that is, if Bradley can get it. Given a little notice, of course, anything’s possible, but the market these days … you understand.”

Rationing. Ruined infrastructure. Mistrust. Hoarding. He understood.

“Poached chicken is fine,” he said.

That was when she started crying.

It was dark by the time they passed through the gates. Cyril’s memory supplied the curve of the lane, and the headlights proved him right. He had not forgotten how suddenly the house appeared from behind the hill.

He had forgotten how, at night, the lights of the windows reflected in the rippling water of the Dameskill where it ran along the lane. He had, in honesty, forgotten the Dameskill, and the sound of it rushing over stones where they broke the shallow surface. When the car stopped and Martí came to open his door, he mistook it at first for radio static.

The driver eyed him with the reserved curiosity of domestic staff, and he knew he would be a topic of much discussion downstairs. Maybe he already was. Though, Lillian would have been discreet; Martí might not even know who he was. If any of the old guard were still in the butler’s paybook, she’d find out quick enough, but that seemed unlikely bordering on absurd.