“Young,” he said firmly. “Quite young. But not a child,” he added hastily. He withdrew his finger from the glass and licked it, making a face. “And some decent wine, if you please. A lot of it.”

Much to his surprise, the wine was decent; a rich, fruity red, whose origin he didn’t recognize. The whore was young, as per his request, but also a surprise.

“You won’t mind that she’s Scotch, me dear?” Mags flung back the chamber door, exposing a scrawny dark-haired girl crouched on the bed, wrapped up in a wooly shawl, despite a good fire burning in the hearth. “Some chaps finds the barbarous accent puts ’em off, but she’s a good girl, Nessie—she’ll keep stumm, and you tell her to.”

The madam set the decanter and glasses on a small table and smiled at the whore with genial threat, receiving a hostile glare in return.

“Not at all,” Grey murmured, gesturing the madam out with a courteous bow. “I am sure we shall suit splendidly.”

He closed the door and turned to the girl. Despite his outward self-possession, he felt an odd sensation in the pit of his stomach.

“Stumm?” he asked.

“’Tis the German word for dumb,” the girl said, eyeing him narrowly. She jerked her head toward the door, where the madam had vanished. “She’s German, though ye wouldna think it, to hear her. Magda, she’s called. But she calls the doorkeep Stummle—and he’s a mute, to be sure. So, d’ye want me to clapper it, then?” She put a hand across her mouth, slitted eyes above it reminding him of the cat just before it bit him.

“No,” he said. “Not at all.”

In fact, the sound of her speech had unleashed an extraordinary—and quite unexpected—tumult of sensation in his bosom. A mad mix of memory, arousal, and alarm, it was not an entirely pleasant feeling—but he wanted her to go on talking, at all costs.

“Nessie,” he said, pouring out a glass of wine for her. “I’ve heard that name before—though it was not applied to a person.”

Her eyes stayed narrow, but she took the drink.

“I’m a person, no? It’s short for Agnes.”

“Agnes?” He laughed, from the sheer exhilaration of her presence. Not just her speech—that slit-eyed look of dour suspicion was so ineffably Scots that he felt transported. “I thought it was the name the local inhabitants gave to a legendary monster, believed to live in Loch Ness.”

The slitted eyes popped open in surprise.

“Ye’ve heard of it? Ye’ve been in Scotland?”

“Yes.” He took a large swallow of his own wine, warm and rough on his palate. “In the north. A place called Ardsmuir. You know it?”

Evidently she did; she scrambled off the bed and backed away from him, wineglass clenched so hard in one hand, he thought she might break it.