Harry made his way through the crowd to the bar, passing a table of workmen and farmers. One of the men—a farmer named Mallow—looked up and nodded in greeting as he passed. Harry nodded back, surprised but pleased. Mallow had asked Harry for help back in June about an argument he was having over his neighbor’s cow. The cow kept escaping its enclosure and had twice trampled the lettuce in the Mallow’s kitchen garden. Harry had settled the difficulty by helping the elderly neighbor build a new wall for his cow. But Mallow was a taciturn man and had never thanked Harry for his trouble. Harry had assumed Mallow was ungrateful. Obviously, he’d been wrong.

The thought warmed him as he reached the bar. Janie was working tonight. She was sister to Dick Crumb, the owner of the Cock and Worm, and sometimes helped at the counter.

“Yeah?” she mumbled. Janie spoke to the air over his right shoulder. Her fingernails drummed an uneven beat on the counter.

“Pint of bitter.”

She set the ale down in front of him, and he slid a few coppers across the scarred counter.

“Dick in tonight?” Harry asked quietly.

Janie was close enough to hear, but her face was blank. She’d gone back to the drumming.

“Janie?”

“Aye.” She stared now at his left elbow.

“Is Dick in?”

She turned and walked into the back.

Harry sighed and found an empty table near a wall. With Janie it was hard to tell if she’d gone to tell Dick he was here, went to fetch more ale, or simply tired of his question. In any case, he could wait.

He’d gone stark, raving mad. Harry took a sip of his beer and wiped the foam from his mouth. It was the only explanation for kissing Lady Georgina this afternoon. He’d walked toward her, his head bleeding and his gut aching from the beating. He hadn’t been thinking of kissing her at all. Then somehow she was in his arms, and there was nothing in the world that was going to stop him from tasting her. Not the possibility of being attacked again. Not the pain in his limbs. Not even the fact that she was aristocracy, for pity’s sake, and all that meant to him and his ghosts.

Lunacy. Plain and simple. Next he’d be running through the high street, naked and waving his John Thomas. He took another glum sip. And what a fine sight that would be, the state his cock had been in lately.