“Tobias Pratt—your name is familiar to me; why is that?” Father and our visitor are seated at the table. I have already made the tea. Quickly and silently I put some biscuits on a dish, and stand aside to listen.

“I am the founder and proprietor of Pratt’s Convalescent Home,” Pratt says proudly as he shoves two biscuits at once into his mouth. “I imagine you’ve heard of it. It is a respected establishment here in the north.”

“Indeed I have.” Father waves away my offer of tea, so I pour a cup for Pratt and take my seat in the shadows. “You run a madhouse in the countryside, a few miles west of Haydon Bridge, do you not?”

Pratt shrugs. “Call it a madhouse if you will. I prefer to think of it as a safe and comfortable refuge for the mentally unhinged. Pratt’s Home has always been a well-run institution and, if I may say, a profitable business, too. We take all comers, as long as their families can pay: lunatics, melancholics, would-be poets who’ve addled their brains with laudanum. We see quite a lot of that type lately, in fact.”

Pratt forces a smile that looks more like a grimace. One of his two front teeth is missing; the other is rotten and black, and the stink of his breath reaches even to where I sit, on my small stool near the fire. He pushes back his chair and stretches out his spindly legs. “So you see, you and I are both medical men, after a fashion, Luxton.”

The disgust on Father’s face is impossible to miss. “I consider myself a plantsman, first and foremost. And you sound more like a banker than a healer, frankly. But now I know who you are, and how you earn your keep. So I ask you again: What brings you to my door, Mr. Pratt?”

“I have a story to tell you.” Pratt drains his tea and puts the cup down with so much force it rattles the dishes. “And a gift for you as well—although you may not want it, after you hear what I have to say.”

A thin blue vein throbs in a crooked line down the center of Father’s forehead. “A gift I may not want?” he says coldly. “You are trying to intrigue me, Pratt. That alone is enough to make me show you the door, for I dislike being played with. If you have something to say, say it, and make sure it’s the plain truth while you’re at it. I have no patience for elaboration.”