One thing’s for sure. If Lord Spencer was trying to find me, I would be hiding too. There is something crazed about his endless ream of questions, something forced about his constant smile. The third day he came to the village, the butcher slaughtered a pig in his honour. Lord Spencer went to watch. We have all of us done it, every child in the village, from curiosity, or on a dare, or because the screams drew us there: climbed the fence and taken a peek. And we all of us smoked; got good and filthy and went home to a hiding, for ruining our clothes. There is something about blood and offal freshly raised that sets it off. It takes many months to get used to it, till you can put down a sow with the same calm you tuck in a babe. That’s what Mr. Dillon told me, who is the village butcher and once had his eye on me, though he is fifty years old and I was fourteen then and still given to blushes. It’s why Mother sent me off into service. To protect my innocence. Well, the manor house took care of my innocence soon enough.

Lord Spencer, in any case, held to village custom; showed up at the slaughterhouse in his shirtsleeves and was hastily ushered to a stool; sat, pale and sweating, a quiver in his cheek; and was seen to swallow deep when the blood poured out into the bucket. But he did not smoke, his shirtsleeves stiff with starch and lily-white.

There are other oddities, other reports. Little Beth, the Kendricks’ daughter, says she saw him crying, walking hatless down the bridle path. And old Todd swears blind he saw him out riding after dusk, wearing a devil’s face made of rubber and steel. I myself watched him whip his dog with its leather leash for straying after a squirrel or rat: his mouth moving as though in admonition, but not a sound passing his lips. He did not smoke even then.

Lord Spencer has not always been like this. I first saw him a month or two after I had been taken into service. The Naylors’ cook came from our village. She was a childhood friend of my mother’s and recommended me. I arrived in May, a six-mile walk, my good clothes folded in a basket that got sodden with rain. Milord came in his summer vacation. They made a big fuss before he arrived: the servants, I mean, not his kin. Baron Naylor was already “unwell.” I didn’t know what they meant by that word just then. When the coach pulled up, we all assembled outside, with much giggling.