Matilda scoured her memory for an answer, because there was one. In another of their many spats, Harry had taunted her with proof he could offer publicly that he had not fathered Tommie.

“Harry was in Bristol, looking in on an old chum. He had a lot of old chums whom he looked in on when it suited him to avail himself of their hospitality. I think Sparky Lykens was an old chum in truth, hailing from Harry’s birthplace. I met Sparky a time or two. Not an elderly man, but he had elderly mannerisms. He suffered an injury while taking the king’s… shilling.”

She extricated herself from Tremont’s embrace and faced him. “The limping man is probably Mr. Lykens. Harry turned to him when nobody else would put up with him.”

“When he needed an accomplice he could trust. The name is very helpful, Matilda. We’ll pass it along to the men, and if this Sparky character served in Spain, somebody will know him or know of him. The name is unusual, and that helps too.”

“Spartacus,” Matilda said. “That’s why I recalled it. Not a moniker the common folk are likely to foist upon a child.”

“Who is Tommie named for?”

“Doubting Thomas, the apostle my father approved of least.”

Tremont drew her into a hug. “The apostle gifted with the most rational nature. I do love you.”

Matilda hugged him back and then yielded to the temptation to cling. Marcus was handsome and fit and in every way an attractive specimen, but his physical appeal was an afterthought—literally.

The true measure of the man was in the intangibles. He had pondered whether he could commit murder on Matilda’s behalf and rejected the notion. A lesser person would not have faced that question seriously and thus would have preserved an excuse to commit the crime in the heat of the moment.

Tremont had used the excuse of the heat of the moment—the explanation—at Waterloo. He would not allow himself to use it again. His moral rigor, his sense of accountability, refreshed Matilda’s hopes as all of Harry’s ill-gotten coin never had.

“I love you too, Marcus. Please take me to bed.”

Tremont was barely acquainted with Matilda in the erotic sense, and yet, he knew precisely how the encounter she sought should go. He must give her intense pleasure, to be hoarded up against the possibility of equally intense and far more protracted pain.

He had considered refusing her request, but for what purpose? To quiet some cowardly nattering in his head about adultery and the letter of the law? The law said Harry Merriman was dead, so how could allegations of adultery be brought?