Tremont had forgotten his outings in the boughs of the surveying oak. They had come to an abrupt end when Papa had died.

“I’m a Viking, too, sometimes.” Tommie closed the drawer he’d been rifling. “I’m quite tall when I’m a Viking, and I wear fur robes. Mama was wroth with me for the fur robes.”

“You used her best cloak.”

“Her night-robe. It’s warm and soft and smells like Mama.”

Another memory assailed Tremont, of being a small boy, newly saddled with a title, and hiding—from whom or what he could not recall—among his mother’s morning dresses. His older sister, Lydia, had found him and given him one of Mama’s shawls to sleep with. Not the first or last time Lydia had found him.

“Let’s return you to your mother’s side, my young friend.”

“I was a good vice chairman, wasn’t I?” Tommie marched down the corridor ahead of Tremont, but for all the confidence in the boy’s step, his question held uncertainty.

“The best I’ve ever had. You do a recognizable rendering of a toad, too, which is more than I could manage at your age.” Tremont’s road to a gentlemanly command of the arts had been long, wearying, and pointless in the end.

“Toads are easy. They’re toad-shaped with big toad eyes. Mr. Prebish looks like a toad when he’s yelling about the lilies of the field and giving glory to God. He means he wants the church to buy his flowers. Mama says we shouldn’t yell in church, but when I asked where should we yell, she said we should yell when small boys vex us past all bearing.”

“And you said, ‘What if that happens in church?’”

Tommie stopped at his mother’s elbow and looked abruptly bashful. “I ask Mama a lot of questions.”

Mrs. Merridew tousled the lad’s hair. “You make me think, Tommie. You make me use my brain, and that is a good thing. Let’s get you into your coat and be on our way.” She passed her son a coat that was a bit too short in the sleeves for his arms.

She was avoiding Tremont’s gaze, which might have been embarrassment about the boy or about the coin. Other congregants milling about had doubtless seen Tremont pass her that coin and seen her accept it.

“Allow me,” Tremont said, taking her cloak from her and holding it out. She submitted to the courtesy without comment and then bent to rebutton the buttons Tommie had done crookedly.

Probably on purpose, the little blighter. Tremont was abruptly tempted to button his own cloak crookedly. Instead, he draped that article about his shoulders and did something he rarely allowed himself to do—he yielded to an impulse.

“Might I walk you home, Mrs. Merridew?”

She straightened. “I beg your pardon, my lord?”