A middle-aged man in a cocked hat strolled past them, giving Byrd a penetrating glance. Grey felt the boy meet the glance, then jerk his eyes away.

“Me lord,” he whispered.

“Yes?”

“These coves hereabouts. Are they . . . sodomites?”

“Many of them, yes.”

Byrd asked no further questions. Grey let go the boy’s arm after a bit, and they walked in silence through the quieter end of the street. Grey felt all his earlier tension return, made the more uncomfortable for the brief interlude before Byrd’s appearance had recalled him to himself.

He had not remembered. Hardly surprising; he had done his best to forget those years after Hector’s death. He had sleepwalked through the year after Culloden, spent with Cumberland’s troops as they cleansed the Highlands of rebels, doing his soldier’s duty, but doing it as in a dream. Returning at last to London, though, he could no longer keep from waking to the reality of a world in which Hector was not.

He had come here in that bad time, looking for surcease at best, oblivion at worst. He had found the latter, both in liquor and in flesh, and realized his luck in surviving both experiences unscathed—though at the time, survival had been the least of his concerns.

What he had forgotten in the years since then, though, was the simple, unutterable comfort of existing—for however brief a time—without pretense. With Byrd’s appearance, he felt that he had hastily clapped on a mask, but wore it now somewhat awry.

“Me lord?”

“Yes?”

Byrd drew a deep and trembling breath, which made Grey turn to look at the boy. Dark as their surroundings were, his strong emotion was evident in the clenched fists.

“Me brother. Jack. D’ye think he—have ye come to find him here?” Byrd blurted.

“No.” Grey hesitated, then touched Byrd’s shoulder gently. “Have you any reason to suppose that he would be here—or in another such place?”

Byrd shook his head, not in negation, but in sheer helplessness.

“I dunno. I never—but I never thought . . . I dunno, sir, that’s the truth.”

“Has he a woman? A girl, perhaps, with whom he walks out?”

“No,” Byrd said miserably. “But he’s a cove to save his money, Jack. Always said as how he’d take a wife when he could afford one, and before then why tempt trouble?”

“Your brother sounds a wise man,” Grey said, letting the hint of a smile show in his voice. “And an honorable one.”

Byrd drew another deep breath, and swiped his knuckles furtively beneath his nose.

“Aye, sir, Jack’s that.”

“Well, then.” Grey turned away, but waited for a moment, until Byrd moved to follow.