“I picked up a bit in camp. You know how it was. Boredom upon boredom punctuated by the occasional attempt at mutual slaughter. If my sergeant took a bullet in the heat of battle, there I’d be, unable to tell the men to retreat or charge or form up… Another bullet to the bugler, and the day would have been lost. Bonaparte should have concentrated on neutralizing those two classes of soldier rather than on playing capture the flag. For our part, all field officers should have been made to learn all the commands in English, Gaelic, and German. To write them and speak them. That would have saved far more lives than stuffing our heads with Latin year after year at public school.”

MacKay gave Tremont the same look Dylan Powell occasionally aimed his way. As if some denizen of the hog wallow had become airborne.

“To answer your question,” MacKay said, gesturing to a wing chair before the blazing hearth, “Mrs. Merridew was already widowed by the time I set foot at St. Mildred’s. She was newly graduated from first mourning. I have the sense nobody raises the topic of her late husband out of consideration for her. He didn’t leave her much, I can tell you that.”

Tremont took the second chair. “One noticed the obvious, MacKay.”

“Obvious to you, perhaps. Dorcas had to speak very candidly to her father before he realized that Matilda Merridew was hanging on by her fingernails. The church began using her as a scribe. The bachelors and widowers send her their mending. She takes over in the nursery here one afternoon a week.”

“Thursdays,” Tremont said. “She insisted her half day be Thursday, and she plans to spend it watching your hooligan of a son.” Not MacKay’s son in a biological sense, though nobody could love a child more fiercely than the MacKays did that little boy.

“What else would you have us do, Tremont? Mrs. Merridew is proud, she’s proper, and she can’t exactly…” MacKay’s drink stopped halfway to his lips. “If you ruin her, Dorcas will geld you. She has a pathological loathing for those who take advantage of women. Mrs. Merridew is a lady, for all she’s not wealthy. And if Dorcas disdains to deal with you, I will do so instead. You proposition Matilda Merridew at your peril.”

“I am far from perfect, MacKay, but exploiting a lady fallen on hard times is not in my nature. I am simply curious, my besetting sin. The welfare of a dozen men and a half-dozen staff rests in her hands. I hired her without investigating her circumstances as thoroughly as I should have.”

A prevarication, that, so Tremont added the honest bit. “I am also impressed with her personally, but I would not bother her with expressions of my esteem if she’s still pining for her late husband.”

“You aren’t impressed, you are smitten, you poor devil.”

“Smitten?”