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“Same as usual.” Seeing his sudden hollow-eyed expression, June asked, “Do you want a snack?”

His face lit up, and he nodded.

Having been a foundling raised in an orphanage, Mad Dog was unfamiliar with the word “snack,” as it applied to food. There was no need for a word meaning “extra food” at a place where there had never been enough to eat in the first place. In his world, “snack” had always referred to a noise, such as the snack of a whip. Or thieves “going snacks,” which meant sharing something they’d stolen.

The first time June had offered him a snack, Mad Dog had thought it was either a joke or a threat. But then she’d explained that it was a tiny meal between other meals. A bit of fried sausage with some pickled walnuts, for example, or a cup of custard topped with a ring of pineapple. A snack could happen at any time of day, she’d told him, and you didn’t even have to be hungry for it.

From that moment on, “snack” was Mad Dog’s favorite word.

He went to wash his hands at the sink and returned to sit at the table. June brought him a crusty sphere of bread that had been scored with a knife before baking, giving it a distinctive knobby top. She set a crock of butter and a pot of plum jam in front of him.

“That’s the biggest bread roll I ever seen,” he said, regarding it with anticipation.

“It’s a cob loaf. I made a tray of them for dinner. I’m going to cut off the tops and fill them with the braised beef.”

“A bowl made o’ bread? How did you think of that?” He tore a chunk of the warm bread, buttered it, and bit into the crust. One of Mad Dog’s more unexpected features was a set of strong, animal-white teeth from an almost complete absence of sugar in his diet.

“An Irishman came up with the idea,” she told him, “three hundred years ago. He served it to an English duke.”

“I feel like a duke, sitting here in your kitchen.”

From any other man, that would have sounded flirtatious. But Mad Dog said it with a sincerity that took June by surprise. Trying to hide how much the compliment had pleased her, she took a kettle from the stove and made him some tea.

Alan devoured every speck of his beef mash and collapsed on his side, limp and content, in a warm space near the stove.

June separated a dozen eggs then whipped the whites into foam.

“Who’d of thought I’d end up living in clover,” she heard Mad Dog remark. “I’d never have complained about being kicked out of Millbank, if I knew I was comin’ here.”

June glanced at him with surprise. “Kicked out? But you asked to leave, didn’t you?”

He shook his head, seeming to recall a grave injustice. “They never gave me no choice.”

She stared at him, perplexed, while her arm continued to whisk with machinelike regularity. “You didn’t meet with the prison leave committee and act all sorrylike, and promise you weren’t never breaking the law again?”

“No.” Mad Dog lifted the mug of tea and took a reflective sip. “Didn’t mind prison, tell the truth. Food not bad. Beds were aired reg’lar. Got on with everyone, even the guards and turnkeys. We was all friendlylike. I was always making jokes like ‘One day I’ll rip your head off and use it for me piss pot’—just having a few laughs, as blokes do.” He paused, turning grim. “But then the guards hatched up a report full of filthy lies, saying as how I’d changed my ways and was always readin’ the Bible and such. Me, who can’t read a bloody word! They all signed the report, every last one of ’em, and gave it to the committee with the ticket-of-leave papers, and then I was tossed out on me arse. Guard told me they reckoned they was safer with me on the outside. Hurt my fuckin’ feelings, it did.”

June’s whisking had stopped. “You’re so dangerous they wouldn’t even have you in prison?”

“I ain’t no danger to you or Miss Martin,” he hastened to reassure her. “Why, if you asked me to murder someone for you, I’d do it, no questions asked.”

“I can kill my own people,” she said, her eyes narrowing.

“Not meaning to say you couldn’t. Meant it as a courtesy, like.” Mad Dog looked hopefully at the bowl held in the crook of her arm. “Can I have some of that white fluff to put on me bread?”

“No, you walking slop bin, this is raw eggs.” June went to collect his empty plate. “Listen to me, Mad—I don’t want you murderin’ no one, never again.”

It wasn’t that she wanted to take any kind of responsibility for him. But someone had to manage him, and there wasn’t exactly a queue forming.

His brows had rushed down. “Why?”

“Because it’s wrong, you divvy.”

“What if I got a good reason for doing it?”

“Such as what?” she asked.

“Such as someone had a bomb and was about to blow London Bridge all to smithers—I’d be a hero for knackerin’ that bloke.”