“We’re off to do that now.” Sam glanced over his shoulder into the shop at the tinkle of the bell above the door. But it was only Revere and Dr. Warren, elaborately casual as a couple of Roman Senators pretending they didn’t have daggers under their togas. “We needed to make sure what you knew, before we went stirring up any ponds and raising a stench. For all we knew, she’d come here to you—”

“Would to God she had!” Hazlitt looked desperately across at Abigail. “I would have thought she’d go to you, Mrs. Adams, if she couldn’t wake that half-drunk slut of a cook . . . whom Judgment Day wouldn’t wake, belike.”

“I would have thought so, too,” said Abigail quietly.

“It’s early days yet.” A trace of uneasiness stained Sam’s rich voice. “Listen, Hazlitt. While you were in Mrs. Malvern’s house, did you see a brown quarto-sized account book anywhere? It had ‘Household Expenses’ stamped on its front cover.”

The printer shook his head. He was, Abigail guessed, thirty, and took after his mother’s beauty. When Abigail had first met him back in ’68, she’d marveled that, poor as he was, he had no wife. Had he married then, she wondered, would his mother have been able to move in with him as she had? Or would she have done so—quoting the Fifth Commandment all the way—and driven the wife out, as she’d driven that poor housekeeper? Weariness and shock, instead of aging his face, seemed to make him appear younger, like a boy frightened and uncertain. She put out her hand, and touched his elbow, where his hand cradled his mother’s cheek. “Forget the book,” she said, and Sam opened his mouth in indignation. She went on, over his protest, “Did Rebecca ever speak to you of a woman friend—a wealthy woman—who might be sympathetic to the cause of our rights? Or, did she ever speak to you of someone who might wish her—Mrs. Malvern—ill herself?”

He lifted his head and his green eyes flashed sudden fire. “Other than that brute of a husband, you mean? The swine had the temerity to write to Tillet, threatening to bring him to law for ‘harboring a harlot,’ as he called her, and ‘operating a house of ill fame.’ If ever there was a case of God’s hand being needed in mortal affairs—” He broke off, and turned his face away, his breath coming fast and a stain of angry crimson flushing his cheekbone.

“Without the hand of the Lord, no mortal affair can prosper.” Mrs. Hazlitt raised her head, her fingers tightening around those of her son. “All our deeds are in vain, unless God guide us by his strong hand, and only through the hand of the Lord lies our salvation.”