A decade had passed since he’d last seen Jenny Seaton. He’d never meant anything to her, and she’d never meant anything to him. Now wasn’t the time to start feeling protective of her.

“A game girl, she was,” Mullens went on. “But she were never friendly with Tuck. Never met him, don’t think, excepting once—a fair dustup they had.”

Maggie’s brows lifted. “They quarreled?”

“Something like. Saw him drinking when she came in. He was fair done for, couldn’t see straight, nor walk upright. Had to be doused with the pump afore he could get himself home. ‘What’s that vicar doing here?’ she asks. ‘Him, a vicar?’ we says. ‘This here sot who’s pissed himself?’ Crying with laugher, we were. Then she commenced crying herself, flew at the man with her fists. Had to pull her off him, we did, the mad cow.”

St. Clare gave him an alert look. “When was this?”

“Don’t rightly know.” He shrugged. “A long time hence.”

“Was Gentleman Jim still her beau at the time?” Maggie asked.

“Her beau!” Mullens laughed. “Is that what you heard?”

St. Clare went still. For an instant his breath seemed to stop in his chest. “Wasn’t he?”

“Pour me another.” Mullens blindly thrust out his dirty glass.

This time Maggie took it. Rising from her chair, she crossed the small room to the table with the bottle on it, returning with a fresh drink a moment later. She helped Mullens to find the glass with his hand. “We understood that Jenny Seaton and Gentleman Jim were… That is… That she was his sweetheart.”

“Oh, he fancied her, he did. But he were a strange one, Jim was. A right mysterious devil.” Mullens downed a swallow of his wine with another congested cackle. “He never had no sweetheart.”

St. Clare held the chair as Maggie sat back down.

“May I ask…” She hesitated. “When Jenny quarreled with Father Tuck…was she with child?”

“Not so’s anyone would know. I did hear tell she might have been, but never did find out for certain. She disappeared not long after. Went home, some of the fellers said, to that farm she come from.”

“Where was Jim?” St. Clare asked.

“Gone, some weeks before. We gave him a right send-off.” Mullens breath rattled on a sigh. “The best days of me life, those were. Downstairs, with Jim and the lads. Every night were a feast when he dropped in. Oh, but the lasses were in a fair swoon over him, with his golden hair and fine gentlemanlike ways. Women came for miles to sit on his knee.”

St. Clare wasn’t surprised. An earl’s son at a hedge tavern? With his commanding figure and his aristocratic ways? He’d been handsome, of course. St. Clare knew that much. Handsome and reckless and dangerous.

Maggie leaned forward in her chair. “Did Gentleman Jim know Father Tuck?”