“Your head?” she asked politely.

She’d been waiting for him to acknowledge her, he realized. “Pounds like the devil.”

“Is there something you can take for that? Laudanum, perhaps?”

“God, no.” He almost passed out at the thought. “It’d do me in completely.”

“Tea? Coffee?”

“No, what I need is—”

A Gladdish Baddish.

Why hadn’t he thought of it earlier?

It was a ridiculous name, but as it was only needed when one had behaved in a ridiculous manner, he supposed it was fitting. Harry Gladdish had perfected it the summer they were eighteen.

Thomas’s father had elected to spend the season in London, leaving him to his own devices at Belgrave. He and Harry had run wild. Nothing too debauched, although at the time they fancied themselves the worst sorts of profligates. After having seen how other young men chose to ruin themselves in London, Thomas now looked back at that summer with some amusement. By comparison, he and Harry had been innocent lambs. But even so, they had drunk far too much and far too often, and the Gladdish Baddish, administered in the morning (with a pinched nose and a shudder), saved them more than once.

Or at the very least, rendered them able to walk straight enough to make it back to their beds, where they could sleep off the last of their miseries.

He looked at Amelia. “Can you spare another half an hour?”

She motioned around her. “Apparently I can spare the entire day.”

It was a bit embarrassing, that. “Ah, yes”—he cleared his throat, trying to hold himself very steady as he did so—“sorry for that. I hope you were not forced to abandon important plans.”

“Just the milliner and the cobbler.” She pretended to pout, but anyone could see it was really a smile. “I shall be poorly hatted and shod for the winter, I’m afraid.”

He held up a finger. “Just one moment.” Then he reached across the carriage and gave the wall two pounds with his fist. Immediately, they rolled to a halt. Normally, he would have hopped down to redirect the driver, but surely this time he could be forgiven for trying to limit his movements. The last thing any of them wanted was for him to lose his stomach in a closed carriage.

Once the new arrangements had been made, and the driver had got them back on their way, he resettled himself in his seat, feeling decidedly more chipper just at the thought of the Baddish that awaited him. Harry would wonder why he’d been drinking and why he’d been drinking somewhere else, but he would never ask. At least not this afternoon.

“Where are we going?” Amelia asked.

“The Happy Hare.” It was a bit out of their way, but not drastically so.

“The posting inn?”

Indeed. “I shall be cured.”

“At the Happy Hare?” She sounded dubious.

“Trust me.”