She frowned. “Register?”

“Paddy never said what register nor how it mattered.” Seamus contemplated his beer, then looked at Pris. “I’ve heard tell your brother’s a great one with the horses, but I ain’t never heard him spoken of as one who’d tip a man the wink, nor be likely to nobble a horse, nor be involved in any other shady dealing. Lord knows Paddy weren’t no saint, but if there were something going on at Cromarty’s stables he couldn’t stomach, then seems likely your brother might have difficulties with it, too.”

Pris stared at him. “And now Paddy’s gone.”

“Aye. I’m thinking it might be wise to let your brother know.” Seamus hesitated, then more gently asked, “He’s your twin, ain’t he?”

Pris nodded. “Yes.” She had to work to strengthen her voice. “And thank you. I’ll tell him about Paddy.”

She started to rise, then paused and fished in her pocket. Standing, she slipped a silver sixpence onto the table. “Have another pint-for Paddy.”

Seamus looked at the sixpence, then grunted softly. “Thank ye. And you tell that brother o’ yours to watch himself.”

Pris turned and strode out of the tavern.

Two hours later, she swept into the back parlor of Dalloway Hall.

Her paternal aunt Eugenia, a widow who had come to live with the family on Pris’s mother’s death seven years before, sat on the chaise calmly tatting. Curled on the window seat, Adelaide, Eugenia’s orphaned goddaughter, now her ward, had been idly perusing a novel.

A pretty girl with glossy brown hair, two years younger than Pris’s twenty-four, Adelaide looked up and set aside her book. “Did you learn anything?”

Grimly stripping off her gloves, Pris headed for the ladies’ desk by the windows. “I have to write to Rus immediately.”

Eugenia lowered her needles. “From which I take it you discovered something disturbing. What?”

Pris dropped her gloves on the desk, swung the heavy skirts of her habit around, and sat in the chair angled before the desk. Both Eugenia and Adelaide knew where she’d gone, and why. “I’d expected to hear that Paddy had had a fight with the head stableman, or something of the sort. I’d hoped his reason for leaving Cromarty’s would be simple and innocuous. Unfortunately, it’s not.”