Since I was clearly not going to go, she stepped back to allow us to enter. We followed her into a well-appointed foyer with a good rug underfoot and a narrow staircase that ascended to the next floor. I looked up to see a little boy and girl—both under ten years of age, with dark curls—watching us through the banisters. I smiled up at them, but they disappeared like startled deer. The doctor’s children? Probably, although he would most likely be in his fifties or more by now. Not that a man’s age had anything to do with his ability to procreate. Perhaps his wife was much younger than him, or she was a second spouse.

I glanced back at Evan. He had seen the children, too, his expression somewhat stricken. Odd.

“May I take your hat, sir?” the maid asked.

Evan relinquished his hat, which was placed carefully upon a sideboard.

“Is there a stable nearby for our horses?” he asked.

“We have a stable, sir,” she said with some justified pride. Not every country doctor could afford to keep a horse. “I’ll get our boy Sully to look after yer horses.”

She then opened a door and stood aside, ushering us into a good-sized drawing room. The walls were papered in fashionable eggshell, a good velvet sofa in rose pink was positioned before a brick hearth, and two silver candlesticks sat upon the mantel. The dagger up my sleeve seemed somewhat ludicrous in such surroundings.

With another curtsy, the maid withdrew, closing the door behind her.

I looked across at Evan. He was contemplating the spines of the books, or so it appeared; by the angle of his head, I knew he had, in fact, turned inward again. Not surprising, I supposed. How would it be to face the man who had stolen twenty years of your life and ruined your name? It would send even the best man into a dark place.

“A pleasant abode,” I said, hoping to draw him from his grim ruminations. “The doctor is doing well for himself.”

He did not answer, so I tried again. “It is a pleasant home.”

This time he turned to face me. “But is it the home of a murderer?”

Well, that was to the point. Since I had no answer to that question, I decided to address the next pertinent one. “Indeed. And what if he is the instigator of all you have endured? If I was face-to-face with the man who had sent me to prison unjustly, my thoughts might turn to revenge.”

He met the unsaid query with a shake of his head. “For twenty years I have thought that I killed Sanderson in that duel. My main emotion on discovering that I may not have killed a man is one of relief. Not revenge.”

“But you have lost so much. Suffered so much.”