The sun dropped behind the garden wall, the cat scrambled up over the gate, and still, Constance stayed in the arms of her beloved, sharing her dreams.

“Explain to me the nature of your illness,” Quinn said, closing the door to the Lynley Vale estate office. Because Althea ran the property, the office was not as imposing as Quinn preferred a business venue to be. A bouquet of fading tulips sat on the sideboard, the curtains were lace rather than somber, heavy velvet. Worse yet, the color scheme was a cheery pink, green, and cream rather than a more imposing burgundy and blue.

Quinn would have preferred to conduct this interview from behind an enormous mahogany desk of venerable pedigree. Instead he and Rothhaven shared a damned tufted pink sofa awash in green tasseled pillows, a delicate Sèvres tea service on the tray before them.

Rothhaven took a leisurely sip of plain gunpowder. “I am epileptic. I have shaking fits and staring spells. The first of those occurred when I was ten, some days after I fell off a horse and took a severe blow to the head, the second such injury in the space of a week. In the nigh twenty years since, the seizures have never abated for more than a few months.”

“And the most recent seizure?”

“The most recent shaking fit was over a fortnight ago. The staring spells are harder to judge. I sometimes don’t know one has occurred.”

A fat black cat emerged from beneath the sofa and sniffed at Rothhaven’s boots. His Grace had arrived at Lynley Vale in a carriage, all the shades drawn, though the distance between manor houses was only about a mile across the fields and the afternoon weather was gorgeous.

“How can you not know that you’ve been staring off into space? Schoolboys are caught daydreaming, and Headmaster ensures they have occasion to avoid a repetition of that behavior.”

Rothhaven set his tea aside and extended a hand to the cat. “Trust me, Walden, if corporal punishment could extinguish my staring spells, they would no longer afflict me. As it happens, a passing inability to attend a conversation bothers those around me more than it inconveniences me. I can often hear, see, smell, and otherwise perceive everything happening at the time. I’m simply incapable of reacting to it for a bit. What is his name?”

At first Quinn thought Rothhaven’s mind had stuttered. Whose perishing name? Then he realized his guest referred to the presuming cat.

“I have no idea. The beast does not belong to me.”

“He belongs to your sister and to this house. He has privileges abovestairs, and he’s certainly friendly.”

Though Rothhaven spoke mildly, Quinn sensed a reproach in the words, or perhaps teasing?

“One doesn’t want to be indelicate, Rothhaven, but can you function?”