“She’s Mrs. Winklebleck to you,” Tremont muttered, though his heart wasn’t in the scold. Somewhere in her words, in what Harry Merridew lacked, was a thread of gold.

“He doesn’t go home,” Tremont said, feeling again an unwanted kinship with Matilda’s husband, “but he has a home. The situation wants more information, and as it happens, I know how to come by it. Who here recalls a man named Spartacus Lykens?”

The discussion went on for another quarter hour before a quartet of former infantrymen was detailed to patrol—to harmlessly wander about, rather—a certain neighborhood in Knightsbridge. Five minutes later, Tremont was escorting MacKay to the door.

“Do you know what you’re about?” MacKay asked, whipping a green and white plaid scarf about his neck.

“Part of me knows what I’m about. I am securing for Matilda and Tommie the freedom to remain in England. If she leaves, that should be a choice rather than her only option.”

“And the rest of you?”

“I want to kill Harry Merridew, MacKay. I want to slowly strangle him and watch his eyes as he realizes that he cannot swindle, rig, lie, cheat, or bamboozle his way out of the fate he deserves. What that man has done to Matilda… Except that, for a time, I wanted my mother and sister to think I was dead, didn’t I? I hid in the slums and hoped the sins of my past would never reach the ears of my family. Having made egregious wrong turns myself, I can judge no man for his faults.”

MacKay, who had served under Dunacre, looked thunderous. “You had your reasons.”

“And Harry Merridew must have his. My job is to ferret them out and use them to Matilda’s advantage. She said he comes from good Quaker stock and had a falling-out with his father. If any people on the entire face of the earth go about their disputes with deliberation, it’s the Friends. Somebody somewhere will recall the details of this family scandal. Failing that, Lykens might impart some names and dates that I can use to persuade Merridew to stay more or less dead.”

MacKay settled a high-crowned beaver on his head at a jaunty angle. “So you can keep Matilda as your mistress?”

That question was a kindly attempt to turn despair into anger. “Of course not, but neither will I see her banished from her homeland with a child to support while it’s in my power to make her circumstances easier. I will not allow her to get on that ship bound for Philadelphia unless and until I’ve done all in my power to see her disentangled from her scapegrace husband.”