“Naturally. It would be noticeable if you did not.” He took the chair beside her and lifted his hand to attract the attention of the man behind the counter; a portly gentleman of some forty years with a thick mustache and an affable air about him.
“Back again, I see,” the man said as he reached for a pair of glasses. “This yer missus?” he inquired, with a nod towardMercy.
“She is.” Thomas said, slinging his arm over her shoulders.
The barkeep chortled to himself. “Can’t keep yer ‘usband at home, then? Three nights a week at least ‘e’s at my tavern.” To Thomas he inquired, “Did she burn the roast this evening?”
Thomas chuckled. “No; she’s yet to burn a roast, bless her. But we’ve two little ones at home, and now that we’ve hired on help, it seemed only fair to offer my wife a bit of a respite from them herself.”
“Oh? And how are the little ones, then?” the barkeep asked, inclining his head toward Mercy.
“Delightful,” she said promptly, and hoped it was the answer he had been expecting of her. “Most days. Evenings…less so.”
The barkeep threw back his head and laughed. “Aye, I suppose I recall those days well enough. Dare say ye’ll be wantin’ something a bit stronger than ale. Whisky, then?”
“Please. For the both of us,” Thomas said, and his fingers squeezed her shoulder as if in praise as the barkeep turned to retrieve a bottle. He passed over a few coins and placed Mercy’s glass before her. “Sip it slowly,” he cautioned as the barkeep turned his attention toward other patrons. “It’s not half as fine as your father’s brandy.”
Even half as fine would have been a vast overstatement, Mercy thought as she sipped the liquor and resisted the sudden urge to grimace. It could have stripped the varnish from furniture. But Thomas had had no apparent trouble masking his distaste, and so she did her best to school her features into something bland and pretend as though this was an ordinary occurrence, or at least an unremarkable one.
The creaking of the door hinges became a constant refrain, the tavern growing only more crowded by the minute. It had offered relative anonymity when last she had been here, when she had been tucked away at a table near the rear of the tavern,well out of sight of the windows. She’d experienced only a few untoward comments from a few drunkards, but it had been a simple thing to brush them off. They hadn’t truly been interested inher, besides.
“Don’t do that,” Thomas chided in a low voice.
“Don’t do what?”
“You keep turning whenever someone comes in,” he said near her ear. “You wouldn’t recognize him even if you saw him, but if you continue to watch the door, you’ll give the impression that we are waiting on someone.”
“Wearewaiting upon someone.”
“We don’t want him to know that,” Thomas said. “Should he make an appearance, we don’t want to send him fleeing the instant he walks in the door. Let him come in, make himself comfortable, settle in for a pint.”
Oh. She supposed that made a certain amount of sense. “And then…apprehend him?”
“No,” he said, brusquely. “I might have taken on the risk myself, but not with you present.”
“But if he should get away—”
“Mercy. He’s been effectively invisible for weeks already.Ifhe should put in an appearance, we’ll quietly take our leave, I will send you home in a hack, and then I will follow him on my own. I don’t need to apprehend him personally. I only need to discover where he is hiding.” He glanced down at the glass in her hand, from which she had taken only the tiniest of sips. “Can’t manage it?”
“I’m afraid not,” she said weakly. “It is truly foul.”
“It’s rotgut,” he said, exchanging his empty glass for hers. “We’ll not insult the proprietor with the suggestion that his spirits are substandard. I’d offer you an ale, but you won’t find it any more palatable.” He cast back half the whisky remaining. “No need to be quite so anxious. You’re meant to be a harriedwife out for a rare evening of leisure, you know,” he said, and his fingers trailed down her arm in a soothing stroke.
“A mother of two,” she murmured mildly. “Have our invented progeny got ages? Names?”
“Uncertain. They’ve only just been invented. Should anyone ask, you’ve my leave to call them whatever you like.”
Perhaps a quarter of her nerves vanished with the sudden urge to laugh. “Very well,” she said. “Florentia, I think. She’s just two.”
“Florentia,” he uttered beneath his breath, producing a grimace that even the rotgut liquor hadn’t managed to win from him. “Good God. I’m having regrets already.”
“And Sherborne,” she said, biting back a smile as he coughed with his next sip. “The apple of his father’s eye, naturally.”
“I take it back. Florentia is somewhat less appalling than Sherborne. I’ll confirm it, if asked, but do not ask me to be happy for it. I don’t know that I’d trust you to be responsible for naming anything of more import than a cat.”
Mercy chuckled to herself, smothering the sound with her fingertips as the barkeep wandered back in their direction to reclaim their now-empty glasses.
“Another?” he asked.
