The study was a wonderfully wide room built at the house’s western extremity. It had creeper-framed windows on three of its four walls and a deep fireplace on the fourth. The heavy ceiling beams were hung with ancient flintlocks, bayonets and muskets, the walls with battle prints, and the mantel stacked with brass-hilted pistols and swords with snake-skin handles. A black labrador thumped its tail in welcome as Faulconer entered, but was evidently too old and infirm to climb to its feet. Faulconer stooped and ruffled the dog’s ears. “Good boy. This is Joshua, Nate. Used to be the best gun dog this side of the Atlantic. Ethan’s father bred him. Poor old fellow.” Starbuck was not sure whether it was the dog or Ethan’s father who had earned the comment, but the Colonel’s next words suggested it was not Joshua being pitied. “Bad thing, drink,” the Colonel said as he pulled open a bureau’s wide drawer that proved to be filled with handguns. “Ethan’s father drank away the family land. His mother died of the milksick when he was born, and there’s a half-brother who scooped up all the mother’s money. He’s a lawyer in Richmond now.”

“I met him,” Starbuck said.

Washington Faulconer turned and frowned at Starbuck. “You met Delaney?”

“Mister Bird introduced me to him in Shaffer’s.” Starbuck had no intention of revealing how the introduction had led to ten hours of the Spotswood House Hotel’s finest food and drink, all of it placed on the Faulconer account, or how he had woken on Saturday morning with a searing headache, a dry mouth, a churning belly and a dim memory of swearing eternal friendship with the entertaining and mischievous Belvedere Delaney.

“A bad fellow, Delaney.” The Colonel seemed disappointed in Starbuck. “Too clever for his own good.”

“It was a very brief meeting, sir.”

“Much too clever. I know lawyers who’d like to have a rope, a tall tree and Mister Delaney all attached to each other. He got all the mother’s money and poor Ethan didn’t get a thin dime out of the estate. Not fair, Nate, not fair at all. If Delaney had an ounce of decency he’d look after Ethan.”

“He mentioned that Ethan is a very fine artist?” Starbuck said, hoping the compliment about his future son-in-law might restore the Colonel’s good humor.