Not so fast, Grey cautioned himself. In all likelihood, Mayrhofer had only referred to Trevelyan’s association with Lavender House. And it was by no means unusual for a devoted servant to be privy to a master’s intimate concerns—he shuddered to think what Tom knew of his own intimacies at this point.

No, these were mere shreds of something less than evidence, he was obliged to conclude. Even less tangible—but perhaps the more trustworthy—was his own sense of Joseph Trevelyan. Grey did not think himself infallible, by any means—he would not in a hundred years have guessed the truth of Egbert Jones’s identity as “Miss Irons,” had he not seen it—and yet he was as certain as he could be that Joseph Trevelyan was not so inclined.

Putting modesty aside for the sake of logic, he blushed to admit that this conclusion was based as much on Trevelyan’s lack of response to his own person as to anything else. Such men as himself lived in secrecy—but there were signals, nonetheless, and he was adept at reading them.

So there might in fact be nothing on Trevelyan’s side, nothing beyond heartfelt appreciation of a good servant. But there was more than devoted service in Jack Byrd’s soul, he’d swear that on a gallon of brandy. So he told himself grimly, clambering monkeylike into the bowels of the ship in search of Finbar Scanlon, and the final parts to his puzzle.

And now, at last, the truth.

“Well, d’ye see, we’re soldiers, we Scanlons,” the apothecary said, pouring beer from a jug. “A tradition in the family, it is. Every man jack of us, for the last fifty years, save those born crippled, or too infirm for it.”

“You do not seem particularly infirm,” Grey observed. “And certainly not a cripple.” Scanlon in fact was a handsomely built man, clean-limbed and solid.

“Oh, I went for a soldier, too,” the man assured him, eyes twinkling. “I served for a time in France, but had the luck to be taken on as assistant to the regimental surgeon, when the regular man was crapped in the Low Countries.”

Scanlon had discovered both an ability and an affinity for the work, and had learned all that the surgeon could teach him within a few months.

“Then we ran into artillery near Laffeldt,” he said, with a shrug. “Grapeshot.” He leaned back on his stool and, pulling the tail of his shirt from his breeches, lifted it to show Grey a sprawling web of still-pink scars across a muscular belly.

“Tore across me, and left me with me guts spilling out,” he said casually. “But by the help of the Blessed Mother, the surgeon was to hand. Seized ’em in his fist, he did, and rammed them right back into me belly, then wrapped me up tight as a tick in bandages and honey.”

Scanlon had lived, by some miracle, but had of course been invalided out of the army. Seeking some alternate means of making a living, he had returned to his interest in medicine, and apprenticed himself to an apothecary.