Tremont lasted exactly one week before he was back at the soldiers’ home, though seven days and nights of pondering and cogitating and wondering had brought him no closer to understanding how he ought to next approach Matilda.

So here he sat in the kitchen, without a plan or a clue, and without catching sight of his quarry either.

“Mrs. Merridew knows things, my lord,” Mrs. Winklebleck said, taking a loud slurp of her tea. “Magic potions to stop a stain from setting, boot polish that don’t stink of lard. She says I can learn all that from books, but I’ve already learned a power of tricks from her, and she’s been here only a fortnight.”

Tremont had come in the back hallway door, as was his wont when he’d cut through the garden. Mrs. Winklebleck and Cook were enjoying a cup of tea at the kitchen worktable—as seemed to be their wont at any given hour—and Mrs. Winklebleck had poured him a cup before Tremont had stomped the snow from his boots.

Mrs. Merridew did, indeed, know things, such as how to muddle a man for days on end with a simple gesture of affection.

“Missus can cook too,” Cook said in her thick burr. “Has ideas, about spices and sauces. Wants the table set just so, but she’s no’ fussy.”

“Puttin’ the manners on the lads, she is,” Mrs. Winklebleck said. “They’ll never be choirboys, but they are tryin’.”

“Choirboys in my experience are a rowdy lot.” While earls, with proper provocation, could apparently be a randy lot. Tremont had largely ignored his animal spirits in Spain, there having been a war on and few opportunities for frolicking—not that he was the frolicking sort. When he’d returned to England, keeping body and soul together had left nothing in reserve for masculine mischief, but now…

Matilda had kissed him, and his imagination had gone rampaging off in all manner of earthy directions.

Cook gave Tremont a sidewise appraisal. “You’d know more about being a choirboy than we would, milord.”

Her reproof was mostly for form’s sake. Earls did not take tea with the staff belowstairs, but Mrs. Winklebleck had poured him a cup, and the rudeness of a refusal was beyond him. He’d known her when she was Big Nan, a pillar of the streetwalking community.

And yes, much to his fascination, there was such a thing as the streetwalking community, and it did have impressive pillars. So, too, did the newsboy community, the housebreakers’ community, and the crossing sweepers’ community boast of pillars—real pillars, of moral and physical invincibility, not mere snobs claiming a fine ear for gossip while sparing the poor box mere pennies for show.