Tom inclined his head in understanding. “Of course. I’ll make your excuses.”

Neville ducked out without another word, Paul and Jonesy at his heels. The voices of his friends quieted to a dull murmur as he shut the door behind him. It was wet out and growing colder by the minute. But he preferred it to the stifling feeling of being trapped indoors.

He’d never liked being inside, not even as a boy. During lessons in the orphanage schoolroom, he’d often lost himself gazing out the window, falling into a pleasurable daydream—until the teacher had roused him with a vicious box to the ears.

“Will you never pay attention, Cross? Do you aspire to a permanent state of stupidity?”

The nuns at St. Crispin’s in Abbot’s Holcombe had been slightly kinder. After his accident, Mr. Boothroyd had arranged for them to take Neville in. They’d never expected much of him. Once he’d recovered from the fall—as much as he could recover—he’d been given simple work. Washing up in the convent’s kitchens, or mucking out soiled straw in the convent’s stables.

“Silent obedience, Cross,” the Reverend Mother had often said. “That’s what the Lord demands of us.”

It had been permission to refrain from speech. To cease the mortifying struggle of trying to form words. A blessing, really.

Not that he’d thought so at first.

In the days following his accident, he’d felt only frustration. The desire to speak—to be heard—and the anger incumbent in realizing that he couldn’t express his thoughts or feelings with any degree of eloquence. In the beginning, even short sentences had proven difficult. His fists had clenched, and perspiration had risen on his brow. The struggle had, at times, driven him to tears of rage and bitterness.

It would have been easier to have given up. To have refrained from speech altogether. But he was no mute. He’d frequently had things he wished to say. Questions to give voice to, and opinions he longed to express.

What he’d wanted—needed—was someone to be patient with him. To understand.

When Justin had returned from India and bought the Abbey, Neville had been glad to come and live with him. Now, it had seemed, his life could at last begin.

But life at Greyfriar’s Abbey hadn’t been so very different from his life at St. Crispin’s.

There was Justin and Mr. Boothroyd, and occasionally Tom. They were a family of sorts. The closest thing to one that Neville had ever known. But when it came to his own identity, separate and apart from them, nothing much had changed at all. Indeed, it felt that nothing ever would.

He ran a hand over his hair as he passed through the main hall. He’d gone no more than a few steps when he stopped short, his attention arrested by movement on the stairs.

Miss Hartwright was descending, garbed in her cloak and bonnet, with Bertie in her arms. When she saw him, her mouth curved into a smile. “Mr. Cross. Good afternoon.” She stepped down into the hall. “Are you going to the stables?”