“Just what every gentleman wants,” Matthew muttered. “To be fretted over. One moment.” He stood up and went to the bar; Cordelia felt a twinge of sympathy for the barmaid as Matthew leaned over the polished wood, flashing his charming smile. She hoped the girl understood that Matthew’s flirtation was only a game, a mask he wore without thinking of it. It should never be taken seriously.

Matthew returned with a new ale of a much darker color and flopped back into his chair.

“You haven’t finished the other,” Cordelia said, gesturing to the glass. She could not help but think of her father—he, too, would often start a new drink without finishing the old one. But Matthew was not like Elias, she told herself. Elias hadn’t been able to make it through her wedding without falling to pieces. Matthew drank more than he should, but that didn’t mean he was like her father.

“Since we are apparently unburdening ourselves, I decided to switch to something stronger,” Matthew said. “I believe you were scolding me for flirting?”

“We were talking about Lucie,” said Cordelia, who was beginning to regret she had brought it up. “She does love you—just—”

He smiled, a crooked but real smile. “You needn’t console me. I did think I cared for Lucie romantically, but that is ended. I promise I am not nursing a broken heart and covering it up with wild flirting.”

“I don’t mind the flirting,” Cordelia said, nettled. “It just keeps you from being serious.”

“Is that so bad?”

She sighed. “Oh, probably not—you’re awfully young for serious, I suppose.”

Matthew choked on his ale. “You make it sound as if you are a hundred.”

“I,” said Cordelia, with dignity, “am an old married woman.”

“That is not what I see when I look at you,” Matthew said.

Cordelia stared at him in surprise. He had finished his glass; he set it down on the table between them with a decided thump. She could have sworn there was a flush along his cheekbones. More flirting, she thought. Meaningless.

He cleared his throat. “So, given what you told me in Maidenhead, we’re looking for a mythical barrow somewhere on the Ridgeway Road. How are we meant to find it, exactly?”

“According to the book I read, it’s near the Uffington White Horse.”

“It’s near a horse? Don’t they move about?”

“Not this one,” said Cordelia. “It’s a massive drawing of a horse, on a hillside—well, not quite a drawing, really. It’s cut out of the hill in chalk trenches, so it shows very white against the earth.”

“Is it the Uffington Horse you’re talking about?” said the barmaid, who’d snuck up on them with their steak pies.