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Wilde grinned at him. “And your fine polished boots, white linen, and tailored coat.”

Charles grinned back at the youth. They both turned to Goldsworthy. The frown had not cleared from his brow, but his eyes darted rapidly back and forth, a sign that he was thinking furiously. He reached out absently, one of his huge hands swallowing the coffee cup in front of him. Charles waited.

“I’ve no doubt Kirby can turn you into a pauper, Wynford, but you’ll give yourself away the minute you open your mouth.”

“Then he’ll have to be a mute, sir,” suggested Wilde. “I’ll be his keeper.”

* * * *

In the end it was hard for Charles to decide what he missed most about his old self, or which of the petty discomforts of his disguise irked him more. The afternoon was raw, and his ragged coat was no defense against the cold of a keen wind off the river. He and Wilde traveled on foot at a quick pace, and the worn boots chafed his feet and admitted the damp of every ice-crusted puddle. He reeked with what Wilde explained was a mixture of stains Kirby had concocted from garments borrowed from butchers’ stalls and gin houses. Charles had thought the brilliant waistcoats a disguise, but he had not experienced the full meaning of disguise until he caught the looks of his fellow Londoners when they caught a whiff of him. Most people gave him a wide berth, but some offered insult as well. He had never questioned his right to walk the streets of London. To accept the sneers and slurs of ordinary citizens with no power of repaying them grated on his pride.

Fanshaw and his friend spent the morning sparring, not with Gentleman Jackson, but with a bruiser who ran a similar, if less polite, establishment in Covent Garden. The neighborhood bustled with rude life. But even the Waits, the rustic minstrels offering raucous Christmas carols, refused to go near Charles. By the time he and Wilde had followed Fanshaw and his friend to a posting house in the northwest corner of the city, Charles’s jaw ached from clenching it to keep from returning some measure of the insults he’d received.

In the taproom of the posting house, the tapster took immediate objection to Charles’s person, but Wilde produced coin and a story about taking his mute friend to a place that had work for him. Whether the story worked, or sufficient coin persuaded him, the tapster let them take a corner table away from other patrons, one of whom was the captain’s friend.

A fire warmed the room. Charles wrapped his hands around the pint pot Wilde shoved his way and lowered his head, hoping notice would soon shift away from them. He composed himself to listen. The posting house seemed a curious spot for the captain to visit.

Travelers came and went, grabbing a quick bite at a long common table before a waiter returning from serving one of the upstairs rooms drew Charles’s notice as he addressed the captain’s friend.

“High and mighty ways your friend’s lady has,” the waiter observed. Apparently Fanshaw occupied one of the private dining rooms with a lady.

“No doubt,” the friend replied, “but no concern of yours, fellow.”

The waiter muttered to himself as he turned away. “Foreigners.”

Charles and Wilde exchanged a look. In following Fanshaw, Charles had not expected to meet the marchioness, but suddenly it seemed possible that she was the arrogant foreigner to whom the waiter objected.

The afternoon dragged on with the tapster sending suspicious glances their way and Wilde buying more pints. The captain’s friend drank steadily and turned over a pack of cards until Fanshaw came whistling down the stairs with a handful of letters.

“Took you long enough,” his friend said.

“Letters to post,” said Fanshaw, slapping them on the table.

“She had to write them, I suppose. Are you now the marchioness’s French lapdog?”

Again Charles and Wilde exchanged a glance. The woman was upstairs. There was little chance they would encounter her, but Charles kept his head down just the same.

“Nothing of the sort.” Fanshaw called for a pint from the tapster and seated himself. “Your trouble, Digby, is that you have no gallantry. You could be the one helping a defenseless woman alone in a strange country.”

“You trust her?”

Fanshaw grinned and shook his head. “Of course not. Merely doing a small favor in exchange for meeting some heiress or other.”

“Have a care what you’re about.”

“Meeting an heiress? No harm in it. The marchioness simply wants me to do what I do best—woo a woman.” Fanshaw raised his glass in a toast to his surly friend.

Charles found it impossible not to stare at the two men, fixing their faces in his mind. But the men didn’t matter. The letters did. The marchioness had gone to great trouble to conceal her correspondence. In the ordinary course of a visit to a reputable London hotel, a visitor would simply leave letters with the host, who would see them posted. Charles should try to see those letters and not let the ugly suspicion that Octavia was the target of Fanshaw’s intended wooing cloud his judgment. But the prospect troubled him. Fanshaw had the careless, golden good looks and easy manner that women found attractive. He doubted Octavia would recognize the falseness in the man’s charm.

He rose slowly, his battered feet protesting contact with the stiff, wet leather of his boots, and shuffled forward. Feigning unsteadiness, he leaned a hand on the edge of Fanshaw’s table. The letters lay facedown. Charles jerked his hand up, intending to sweep them from the table.

Fanshaw slammed his drink down, sloshing ale and pinning the letters in place. “You reeking pile of rags, what are you about?”

Wilde leapt to his feet and tugged Charles’s arm. “Never ye mind ’im, sir. He’s a poor mute. Doesn’t know what he’s doing half the time.”

“You’d best keep him from interfering with his betters, then, hadn’t you, boy?” Fanshaw raised his drink again and drained it.

The tapster hustled out from behind his bar. “I’ll toss ’em for yer, sir. Not our sort of customer.” He signaled to the waiter to join him.