"Indeed, sir?"

"Indeed. He is ever fascinated by who a man is and why he does what he does."

I ignored him. Gale had never forgiven me, a mere nobody, for saving his life.

"Who lives here?" I asked, gesturing at number 22.

The house was no different from the others in the square-fine, modern, elegant, large. Two large multi-paned windows, now broken, sat to the right of the door, and two more rows of windows marched across the first and top stories. Doric columns flanked the door, and arches above the windows relieved the plain facade. The number "22" hung on one of the columns. The door, painted black, sported a shining brass knocker, an indication that the family within was in residence. If they'd chosen to spend this spring elsewhere, the door would have been bare.

A curtain moved in the upper floor of the house next door, but number 22's windows remained tightly muffled.

"Damned if I know," Gale growled. "My commander told me he'd had a personal complaint about a disturbance in Hanover Square, and would I see to it? 'Yes, sir' was all I thought to say. I obey orders."

I hid my wince by straightening the dying man's coat, but old pain rose, fast and bitter. I wondered briefly if Gale were taunting me, but dismissed it. He could not know. We'd said nothing. That had been the agreement.

The gray-haired man began to shiver, and his eyes shifted back and forth beneath his waxen eyelids. "He'll die if we do not help him," I said.

"He'll die in Newgate then," Gale offered.

I looked at number 22. "We can take him in there."

"To the house he's been chucking bricks at? Find a cart and drag him out of here if you must."

My white-hot temper began to rise, and I briefly regretted not shoving Lieutenant Lord Arthur Gale back under that horse in Portugal. The dying man meant less to these fine gentlemen of the Twenty-Fourth than a trampled insect.