Stubbs glanced at Grey, a question in his eyes. Grey lifted one shoulder slightly, then gave the faintest of nods. Whoever had done for Sergeant O’Connell, it was plainly not his wife—and the money was not theirs to withhold, in any case.

Stubbs gave a small growl, but reached into his coat and drew out a purse, which he tossed onto the table.

“A small token of remembrance and esteem,” he said, hostility plain in his voice. “From your husband’s comrades.”

“Shroud money, is it? I don’t want it.” The woman no longer leaned on Scanlon, but drew herself upright. She was pale beneath the bruises, but her voice was strong. “Take it back. I’ll bury me husband meself.”

“One might wonder,” Grey said politely, “why a soldier’s wife should wish to reject assistance from his fellows. Conscience, do you think?”

The apothecary’s face darkened at that, and his fists closed at his sides.

“What d’ye say?” he demanded. “That she did him to death, and ’tis the guilt of the knowledge causes her to spurn your coin? Show ’em your hands, Francie!”

He reached down and seized the woman’s hands, jerking them up to display. The little finger of one hand was bandaged to a splint of wood; otherwise, her hands bore no marks save the scars of healed burns and the roughened knuckles of daily work—the hands of any housewife too poor to afford a drudge.

“I do not suppose that Mrs. O’Connell beat her husband to death personally, no,” Grey replied, still polite. “But the question of conscience need not apply only to her own deeds, need it? It might also apply to deeds performed on her behalf—or at her behest.”

“Not conscience.” The woman pulled her hands away from Scanlon with sudden violence, the wreck of her face quivering. Emotions shifted like sea currents beneath the blotched skin as she glanced from one man to the other.

“I will tell ye why I spurn your gift, sirs. And that is not conscience, but pride.” The slit eyes rested on Grey, hard and bright as diamonds. “Or do you think a poor woman such as meself is not entitled to her pride?”

“Pride in what?” Stubbs demanded. He looked pointedly again at her belly. “Adultery?”

To Stubbs’s displeased surprise, she laughed.

“Adultery, is it? Well, and if it is, I’m not the first to be after doing it. Tim O’Connell left me last year in the spring; took up with a doxy from the stews, he did, and took what money we had to buy her gauds. When he came here two days ago, ’twas the first time I’d seen him in near on a year. If it were not for Mr. Scanlon offerin’ me shelter and work, I should no doubt have become the whore ye think me.”