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Rafe’s fingers went lax around the crate’s edges. “Beg pardon?”

“Your old lady.” The man showed what must have once been a toothy grin. It now sported a single tooth—more rippling purple gum than smile. “She must be a mite difficult for you to prefer my company to hers.”

Rafe gripped the crate and hefted it against his front. “I’ve got no woman.”

“I’m sorry then.”

In his periphery, he saw the gatekeeper mirror his motion. Their chests burdened with cargo, they began crossing the flat courtyard.

“Ev’n worse to ’ave trouble wi’ fellows,” said the gatekeeper. “Know why?”

Rafe’s throat tensed to hold down a sigh. “Why?” His voice was as flat as ironed paper.

“At least wi’ a woman, quarrels meet their end in the bed linens.” A wily laugh emerged from that mouth, and the gatekeeper’s smile grew broad and proud enough to show he did, in fact, have three teeth, and not just one.

The idiotic line whirled in Rafe’s mind as the cast iron lock on the hospital’s gates clanged behind him. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and started down Church Street. Someone was whooping and hollering in the dark wooded abyss of Greenwich Park, and more of the same merry-making cacophony awaited him ahead. He was as out of place here as he was in Mayfair. He’d be ill-suited anywhere. In Sussex, where Miss St. Quinton was from, too.

She, on the other hand, could find a place for herself anywhere. Completely self-possessed, an open book which asked to be read and promised to prove its worth. Even drunk as a wheelbarrow in the Bancrofts’ drawing room, her curls unraveling and patience spent, she claimed full ownership of self. She inhabited her identity to the fullest, with an honesty Rafe couldn’t help but admire. And … envy.

For honesty was becoming a scarce commodity in his own moral toolbox. He’d just cheated his father out of money, secreting those goods away and selling them to the hospital. And how did the fraudulent coin feel in his pocket? Like oxygen. A slight loosening of the metal brace that squeezed his lungs every time he had to pay someone.

He usually left the hospital feeling lighter. Not tonight.

At least wi’ a woman, quarrels meet their end in the bed linens.

Did they? Rafe wouldn’t know. He had scarcely even held conversation with a woman he found attractive, much less opened himself to the crazed vulnerability that was baring all in one’s bed. He thought he had grown quite immune to the impulse (for what base needs couldn’t be achieved with one’s own hand?), and yet some scurrilous, thoroughly male part of him wanted to examine the latest of his unsavory thoughts.

Would our quarrels end that way?

Quarrels with Miss St. Quinton, he could imagine all day. The way her skin would feel—all of it, no longer limited to the taste his roving fingers had acquired for the jaunty angle of her elbow, the velvet-and-powder plushness of her cheek—was also not beyond his imaginings. Yes, he thought their quarrels would end that way, if only he were another man, or she another woman.

Glass shattered nearby, but Rafe didn’t bother turning his head. He had reached the base of a steep, familiar staircase, and in keeping with tradition, bile threatened at the back of his throat. Three raps on the door—that lock was looking rather worn, probably just an invitation for theft, he ought to replace it, but how much would that cost?—and another two quick ones. It swung open to him.

“Good evening,” Rafe said.

Abigail, his mother’s nurse, scowled at him before turning her back and walking away.

He cast a glance over his shoulder before latching the door. The house’s interior was dim, with just one tallow candle sputtering on the table. A bowl of stew sat before it, reddish-brown and untouched, and a scratched chair was inched close to the fire. Abigail went to it, took up her seat, and lay a white, torn chemise over her lap. The rip was half mended.

“Is … she well?”

A scoff. “No, sir, I’d say as not.” Abigail punched the needle through the muslin, as if to indicate See? without having to raise her head from her work.

Rafe’s fingers, still in his pocket, thumped the glass bottles’ outline. “And you? Are you well?”

Her chin lifted. He knew better than to use drawing room manners with this woman—what was he thinking? He wasn’t. He was delaying, just as he’d done at the hospital. A shameful impulse. At least shame was still installed into his virtues.

“Would ye really like me t’ answer that?” The nursemaid’s voice was like a too-tight harp string being plucked. “We’ve a rat problem in the cellar, them candles you brung is worse than the last—”

“They’re from the same—”

“—your mam’s temper is better suited to an asylum—”

Rafe’s hand shot out from his pocket, and faced, warm palm out, toward the nurse and the hearth and the half mended chemise. “I understand.”

Her brows grew tall, keeping vigil over her haughty expression, and she returned her focus to her lap, where her hands had never ceased working. Abigail was mouthy and sour and, he was sure, would have openly confessed to hating him, were he ever stupid enough to ask. But she charged a fair rate. She knew his mother’s moods, and how to handle them. Any new sort of nurse might assume their head would follow by way of the ripped chemise.

“Thank you, missus, for your patience with her. I’ve brought the medications she requested. I’ve no doubt they will be of help.”