Caswell had brought a taper; he touched it to a candlestick near the door, and the light caught and grew, shedding a wavering light over a large room with a canopied bed. The room was clean and empty; Grey breathed in, but smelled nothing other than wax and floor polish, with a faint whiff of long-dead fires. The hearth was freshly swept, and a fire laid, but the room was cold; clearly no one had been here recently.

Grey prowled the room, but there was no evidence of its occupants.

“Does he entertain the same companion each time?” he asked. The keeping of a suite argued some long-term affair.

“Yes, I believe he does.” There was an odd tone in Caswell’s voice that made him glance sharply at the man.

“You believe? You have not seen his companion?”

“No—he is very particular, our Mr. Trevelyan.” Caswell’s voice was ironic. “He always arrives first, changes his clothes, and then goes down to wait near the door. He brings his companion in and up the stairs at once; all the servants have instructions to be elsewhere.”

That was a disappointment. He had hoped for a name. Still, a tendency to thoroughness made him turn back to Caswell, probing for further information.

“I am sure your servants are meticulous in observing your instructions,” he said. “But you, Dickie? Surely you don’t expect me to believe that anyone comes into your house without your finding out everything there is to know about them. You’ve only heard my Christian name before, to my knowledge—and yet, if you know about Trevelyan’s engagement to my cousin, plainly you know who I am.”

“Oh, yes—my lord.” Caswell smiled, lips drawn into a puckish point. The bargain struck, he was enjoying his revelations as much as he had his earlier reticence.

“You are right, to a degree. In fact, I do not know the name of Mr. Trevelyan’s inamorata; he is very careful. I do, however, know one rather important thing about her.”

“Which is?”

“That she is an inamorata—rather than an inamorato.”

Grey stared at him for an instant, deciphering this.

“What? Trevelyan is meeting a woman? A real woman? Here?”

Caswell inclined his head, hands folded gravely at his waist like a butler.

“How do you know?” Grey demanded. “Are you sure?”

The candlelight danced like laughter in Caswell’s small black eyes.

“Ever smelt a woman? Close to, I mean.” Caswell shook his head, the loose folds of skin on his neck quivering with the movement. “Let alone a room where someone’s been swiving one of the creatures for hours on end. Of course I’m sure.”

“Of course you are,” Grey murmured, repelled by the mental image of Caswell nosing ratlike through sheets and pillows in the vacated rooms of his house, pilfering crumbs of information from the rubble left by careless love.