Lucy shivered and drew her wrap more closely about her shoulders. The dead man lay sprawled facedown, naked and battered. The long lines of his back were marred by a mass of blood on his right shoulder. Below were lean hips, muscular, hairy legs, and curiously elegant, bony feet. She blinked and returned her gaze to his face. Even in death he was handsome. His head, turned to the side, revealed a patrician profile: long nose, high bony cheeks, and a wide mouth. An eyebrow, winging over his closed eye, was bisected by a scar. Closely cropped pale hair grew flat to his skull, except where it was matted by blood. His left hand was flung above his head and on the index finger was an impression where a ring had once been. His killers must’ve stolen it along with everything else. Around the body the mud was scuffed, the imprint of a boot heel stamped deep beside the dead man’s hip. Other than that, there was no sign of whoever had dumped him here like so much offal.

Lucy felt silly tears prick at her eyes. Something about the way that he’d been left, naked and degraded by his murderers, seemed a terrible insult to the man. It was so unbearably sad. Ninny, she chided herself. She became conscious of a muttering drawing steadily closer. Hastily, she swiped at the moisture on her cheeks.

“First she visits the Joneses and all the little Joneses, snotty-nosed buggers. Then we march up the hill to old woman Hardy—nasty biddy; don’t know why she hasn’t been put to bed with a shovel yet. And is that all? No, that’s not all by half. Then, then she must needs call round the vicarage. And me carting great jars of jelly all the while.”

Lucy suppressed an urge to roll her eyes. Hedge, her manservant, wore a greasy tricorne smashed down over a shock of gray hair. His dusty coat and waistcoat were equally disreputable, and he’d chosen to highlight his bowlegs with scarlet-clocked stockings, no doubt Papa’s castoffs.

He halted beside her. “Oh, gah, not a deader!”

In his surprise, the little man had forgotten to stoop, but when Lucy turned to him, she saw his wiry body decay before her eyes. His back suddenly curved, the shoulder bearing the awful weight of her now empty basket fell, and his head hung to the side listlessly. As the pice de rŽsistance, Hedge took out a checkered cloth and laboriously wiped his forehead.

Lucy ignored all this. She’d seen the act hundreds, if not thousands, of times in her life. “I don’t know that I would have described him as a deader, but he is indeed a corpse.”

“Well, best not stand here gawping. Let the dead rest in peace, I always say.” Hedge made to sidle past her.