“Like a horse hates a snake, m’am—only each of them thinks he’s the horse, and the other’s the snake. Mr. Malvern’s daddy hated Mr. Pentyre’s uncle, that was the merchant in the family and he left Mr. Pentyre all his ships and money; they undersell each other’s cargoes, they slander each other’s goods. You know how Mr. Malvern won’t let a matter rest, if he thinks he’s been wronged, and Mr. Pentyre, for all he looks like he doesn’t have the red blood in him to do up his shoe buckles, is the same. Only, bein’ related to the Governor, he’ll use that to make trouble for those that make trouble for him.”

Halfway down the silent hallway he opened a door. The darkness beyond it was warmer, and breathed of sandalwood and dried rose petals. The candles’ light briefly caressed sat inwood bedposts, the Venetian glass of an expensive toilet-mirror.

“Back in August, it was Mr. Pentyre who had his agents buy up all Mr. Jeffrey’s gaming debts, and call them in, close to a thousand pounds’ worth. Then Mr. Malvern put the rumor about that Pentyre was smuggling, and got one of his cargoes seized, and Miss Tamar tried to bribe one of the kitchen staff at Pentyre’s to poison Mrs. Pentyre’s little dog, in revenge.”

“What a charming picture you servants must have of the lives of your masters,” Abigail murmured, and a ghost of a smile tugged the slender man’s mouth.

“All this is nothing, m’am. Not to what you see if you’re a slave in Barbados, where I was born.”

Abigail, gathering her skirts aside to draw out the trundle bed from beneath the great bed, looked aside from him, ashamed. Scipio set the candelabra on the little se cretaire by the window, and came to help her. The trundle was made up with fresh linen. Either Tamar didn’t like to be alone for one minute of the day or night, or her father didn’t want her to be. A night rail was laid out ready on the pink silk counterpane of the main bed, the linen as light as silk.

“Does she get love letters?”

“Dozens,” affirmed the butler resignedly. “Some she keeps in the desk, but the ones she doesn’t want her father to see—or know about—she has delivered to the lady who runs the hat shop at the end of her father’s wharf, and sends Miss Oonaugh—that’s her maid—down to get them for her. You think they’re under the bed?” At Abigail’s gestures, the two of them had maneuvered the low bed away from the large one, and Abigail now knelt near the main bed’s head.