“The prospect is wonderful,” she said, “but I would make an awful duchess.” She took him by the hand and led him into the bedroom.

*  *  *

“Who knew how much there was to move?” Pammie said, looking around her little parlor.

She’d taken down Jack’s sketches from the walls, packed up her crockery, and untied the bundles of dried herbs that had hung from the rafters.

To Jack’s eye, the parlor had gone from humble to bleak. “Why not wait until spring?” he asked, taking the larger of the two chairs before the hearth. “Why go north now, when it’s too bloody cold and dark even here in London?” Jack would have put that question to Clyde, but Pammie’s husband was apparently avoiding him.

“Clyde’s cousin has some work,” Pammie said, extracting two cups from a wooden crate and swinging the kettle over the coals on the hearth. “Loading ships or unloading them, probably both. It’s good work for a man like my Clyde. The harder the work, the better he likes it.”

Clyde did prefer manual labor, which made no sense to Jack at all. “Where is Clyde?”

“Doubtless having a pint or two.” Pammie fished a tea strainer out of another box. “He unpacks a box as fast as I pack it, and then the children get involved. We’ll arrive in Scotland with neither quilt nor thimble to our names.”

The children were asleep in the other room, darkness having fallen some hours ago. Jack would miss the little beggars, which was proof he’d lost his wits.

“You’ll stop in York?”

“I’d like to bide there for Christmas,” Pammie said, as the kettle began to whistle. “Clyde wants us in Scotland for the New Year, so we’ll have to get right back on the packet come Boxing Day.” She used the edge of her shawl as a potholder and took the kettle from the coals to pour boiling water into the two cups. She set the strainer over the larger mug. “Grandmother always had the best plum pudding.”

To mention that plum pudding to a man who hadn’t eaten for two days was cruel. “Don’t suppose you have some shortbread to go with this tea?”

The tea was again real China black, the scent hitting Jack like the music of a skilled violinist gusting up a cold, dark alley—beautiful and bittersweet.

Pammie went to the window box and produced a pitcher of milk. “What will you do with yourself, Jack?”

“I could go north with you.”

She set a single square of shortbread before him. “Clyde said you’d best wait until we’re settled. We’ll be staying with his cousins at first. When we have our own place, you can visit.”

Visit, not join them. Jack took the strainer from his tea and set it in Pammie’s cup. “I might look Mick up.”

“You haven’t heard from him, have you?”