“I am ever cautious, thank you. If you want the best soporific known to man, may I recommend ecclesiastical law? I defy any sentient creature to remain awake for more than one page of the bishops’ maunderings. Thanks to the arcane proceedings of the church courts, I have become a sleepwalker of no little skill, but you must not tell that to my superiors. Adieu, Tremont, and pleasant dreams.”

He saluted with his walking stick and strolled off into the night.

Tremont paused outside his home, watching Delancey disappear into the gloom. He doesn’t feel the cold. Saints were that detached from bodily concerns, but so was a particularly miserable class of sinner. Tremont had been among their number when he’d first returned to London.

Melancholia was too simple a label for such a complicated problem. As Tremont made his way up to his apartment, he offered a prayer for Delancey’s eventual waking. Sleepwalking took a toll, though as to that, waking could be nearly as painful.

Memories took a toll as well, and because Tremont did not want to toss and turn in the very bed where he and Matilda had become lovers, he opened a volume of Shakespeare and found himself staring at Romeo and Juliet, act 2, scene 2.

Two lovers caterwauling into the night, about family feuds, birthrights, and names, and Romeo offering to cast his name aside for Juliet’s love. A rose by any other name…

Utter tripe.

He turned some pages and let his mind wander over the entire situation with Matilda. She was married to Harry Merridew. No getting ’round that. She’d married of her own free will to ensure her child had legitimacy, and her vicar father had been present and unobjecting at the ceremony. No hint of coercion, nobody committing bigamy, nobody operating under a mental deficit such that consent was in question.

Logic, reason, and common sense all united to dash hope, not for the first time. The sonnets were no greater comfort. This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well which thou must leave ere long…

Only the thought that Matilda would chide him for disrespecting great literature stopped Tremont from tossing the book onto the flames. Rather than yield to that impulse, he stretched out on the sofa and woke several hours later, cold and stiff. His mind was cobwebbed with images of Matilda on the balcony of the coaching inn, her arms full of roses.

Not until he’d shaved and dressed did Tremont realize what Shakespeare’s doomed lovers had been trying to tell him.

“Send the coach around,” he said to his first footman. “I’m off to Southwark, and time is of the essence.”

“Mama, you said we weren’t getting on the boat until this afternoon.” Tommie eyed the river with distaste beyond his years. Even Copenhagen, peeking out of Tommie’s coat beneath his chin, seemed to regard the water with contempt.