“The last time?” Berry asked, her eyes still vacant. “I think … I think it was—”

“I had a very reliable horse once named Matthew Corbett,” Hudson said. “I’m trying to locate where he might—”

“You were warned,” Nash interrupted, and he put his hand on the pistol that lay atop the table to his right. “None of your nonsense, sir.”

“And all this is sense? Fuck that,” Hudson said, with a snarl and a quick glance at the gun. “I would warn you that before you can level that little toy at me you’d go out through the front window, so take your hand away from it.”

Nash didn’t hesitate very long before he obeyed. “It matters not a whit,” he said. “Our daughter is content as she is, with all the comforts we can give her. Isn’t that right, Mary Lynn?”

Berry took another drink of tea as if none of this exchange had transpired. When she put her cup down into its saucer she frowned at her visitor. “That’s a strange name for a horse,” she said, with a faint and crooked smile upon her painted mouth.

“More like an ass than a horse, but—” Hudson shrugged. He decided he could bear no more of this, and the situation was getting him nowhere except closer to another night without proper sleep. He stood up, noting that the motion made Nash flinch as if the man feared he might be attacked. “I thank you for your time … and for the tea,” he said to Berry. Could he keep his throat from constricting to choke off the words? It was a difficult battle. “I’m sure I’ll have the pleasure of your company again.”

“My pleasure, sir.” She stood up as well and gave him a curtsey that made Hudson think some invisible demon was actually floating above her, manipulating the marionette’s strings.

Nash swept an arm toward the door. “I believe you can find your way out.”

“That’s exactly what I intend to find, and not just for myself.” Hudson wrenched his brown corduroy coat off its wallhook so hard the hook came with it and fell to the floor’s timbers with a ringing noise. He put it on over one of the flannel shirts that had been given to him, along with the coat and two pairs of breeches, since his own clothing had been removed during his first half hour in this damnable village and probably thrown into a fire; at least they’d returned his own boots to him, which was one positive thing. He braced himself for the chill outside, since Nash’s house was so warmed by its fireplace, and without another glance at fictive father and delirious daughter he went through the door onto Conger Street, where four men with torches, pistols and swords were waiting for him in the blue twilight of evening.

One of them—a foolish man—reached out to grasp Hudson’s shoulder and guide him on his way.

Hudson stopped short. Steam swirled from his nostrils. “If you want to keep that hand, you’ll drop it to your side.”