“Oh, I do beg your pardon, ma’am, young sir.” Harry crouched down, handed Tommie his package, patted the boy on the head, and gave Matilda the barest instant to take in the features of the husband she’d thought dead.

He touched the brim of his hat with a single finger, winked at his wife, and sauntered on his way.

“Come along, Tommie,” she said, sounding admirably calm. “Charlie is waiting to share those buns with you, and the breeze is picking up.”

Well done, Tilly. She marched off, no glance over her shoulder, no hastening away in fright. She’d never been easily intimidated, much to her old pater’s frustration. Harry had admired Tilly’s spirit—Miss Dauntless, indeed—even as he’d dreaded the fights she’d picked. She was a gifted verbal brawler, was Tilly, and didn’t believe in kissing and making up.

That was all behind them now. Tilly was apparently well set up these days, and with some judicious horse trading and a little common sense, Harry could land on his feet right beside her. She’d eventually learned to see reason, and Harry had nothing but sweet reason to offer her now.

Well, reason and a Banbury tale or two.

“Mama, who was that man?” Tommie asked. “He wasn’t watching where he was going.”

Matilda wanted to snatch Tommie up and run, but that would only alarm her son. Besides, Harry—who was alive and in the very pink of health—might well be watching from some shadowed doorway.

“He was a fellow who needs to be more careful.” Harry’s life in a nutshell, but ye gods, what of the woman who had married him—and was still married to him?

Though, of course, Harry would say he was always careful. He’d been carefully watching Matilda’s comings and goings, he’d carefully plotted how to confront her, and he’d carefully chosen somewhere she could not make a scene and he could make an easy escape.

“He smiled at you,” Tommie said. “I think he liked you and was trying to make friends. MacIvey likes Mrs. Winklebleck, so he plays his fiddle for her. He should ask her, ‘Do you want to be friends?’ But Tuck says MacIvey’s shy. Mrs. Winklebleck isn’t shy. She could ask him first.”

Matilda wanted to clap her hand over Tommie’s mouth and silence his chattering.

I must think. All the moments of her marriage when she’d spoken without thinking, acted without thinking, reacted without thinking kept her marching along the walkway. The only thought she could form was to get to safety and away from… him.

“We must leave them to sort that out for themselves, Tommie. Mrs. Winklebleck might be shy about making friends, even though she’s merry by nature.”

How admirably calm she sounded. A mother’s gift, to dissemble for the sake of her child.