“If you must know, my father was a sanctimonious old Quaker whose own father made a fortune manufacturing guns. Papa refused to take over the business—the Friends have grown reluctant to openly dabble in war, though their banking tells a different story. In the grand tradition, I refused to wear my own father’s false piety. We had a falling out, and I decamped for Sodom on Thames, to the relief of all and sundry.”

“You did a bunk,” Matilda said, trying to keep the surprise from her voice. “Is this why you disdain violence, Harry? Because the ghosts of your ancestors would haunt you?”

“Those ancestors could be handy with a birch rod on a small boy’s backside, Till. Some of them at least. When can I have the house?”

“That is Tommie’s house. Why can you not see that a child lacking many of life’s advantages needs that asset more than you do?”

“Because he doesn’t.” The words were snarled without any pretensions to civility. “He’s had you to cosset and coddle him. He had me, for a time, to pay the rent and the coalman. He has a damned earl ready to send him to bloody public school, while all I have is a pressing need to quit the home shores. I will take the boy, Tilly. I don’t want to—he’s a good lad, and he loves you—but I will take him. All manner of rigs suggest themselves when I can be a grieving husband with my pale little son.”

Tommie was not pale, but he was little. Small enough to be snatched from the stable, despite the vigilance of the men and his mother. Besides, Harry could appeal to the authorities to return his son and his wayward wife to him, and the authorities would gladly render assistance.

While Matilda would look a fool, if not mad, claiming her husband had died on the Oxford Road at an inn that didn’t exist.

“I will take ship for Philadelphia,” Matilda said as they approached another intersection. “Tommie and I will, rather. Aunt Portia has some connections there, and it’s said to be a gracious and prosperous city. When I have left London with Tommie, you will have the deed to the house.”

Harry smiled at a veiled dowager mincing along on the arm of a footman. “You’ll leave your fancy toff just like that?”

I will do the right thing for the man I love. “Try as he might, Tremont cannot solve the problem that you’ve created for me and Tommie. That fresh start you mention is the only reasonable option if I still value my reputation, which I do. I have no connections of my own, so I am reduced to trading on Aunt’s girlhood friendships.”

“We’re good at landing on our feet, aren’t we, Tilly?”