Neville cast a look at his clothes. He had cut the tree himself, and his coat and trousers were all the worse for it. “I have to go wash.”

“As do we all.” Tom removed his spectacles and cleaned them with his handkerchief. During the felling of the tree, he’d somehow got sap on his lenses. “I’ll see you at tea?”

Neville nodded before turning toward the cliff road. He had rooms in the house but rarely used them except for sleeping and changing into dinner dress. The rest of the time he preferred his room over the stables. He had an iron bedstead there, a writing desk, and a humble wardrobe in which he kept most of his clothing. As an added enticement, there was a washstand that had been plumbed for hot and cold running water.

It was an improvement Justin had insisted on for the horses in the stable below. Routing some of it to the rooms above had been no trouble at all.

“Just don’t use it as an excuse to never come up to the house,” Justin had said at the time. “You’re not a groom, however much you may like playing at one.”

Neville didn’t care what his title was, as long as he could do what he wanted. At the convent he’d been under the head groom, and had often wished he could take the top position for himself. But the Reverend Mother would never have permitted it. It would have violated her stricture that Neville be seen and not heard.

He climbed the stairs to his room and shut the door behind him. It took no time at all to wash and change into a clean pair of trousers, a white linen shirt, and dark cloth waistcoat. He looked at himself in the mirror above the washstand as he tied his cravat.

Miss Hartwright had compared him to Sir Galahad. Neville supposed it was a compliment. A roundabout way of calling him handsome. And perhaps she thought he was.

The idea filled him with an uneasy warmth.

As a boy, he’d frequently been praised for his good looks. Though, after the accident, such sentiments had often been tinged with regret. Such a shame, people would say. Such a waste.

He’d be lying to himself if he said it hadn’t hurt.

What man wished to be thought of in such terms? It wasn’t how he thought of himself. His world might have been limited, but his life after leaving the orphanage hadn’t been so terrible.

Not as bleak as the years he’d spent within that grim institution.

Delivered to the place as an infant, he’d lived eleven years inside its walls. Eleven long years being subjected to ice-cold dormitories, spoiled food, and beatings for infractions both real and imagined.

But such hardships hadn’t mattered overmuch. Not when he’d had Justin, Alex, and Tom to rely on. They’d been his friends. His family.

After Neville’s accident, they’d all gone their separate ways. Justin had been apprenticed to a blacksmith, and then later joined the army. Tom had moved to London to begin his legal training. And Alex had vanished, seemingly into thin air.