His lodgings were one pair-of-stairs up from the main floor in the front of the house. Once a substantial mansion, Lady Maude Matthews had turned it into sets of rooms to let. For a very decent fifty guineas a year, about half what Lewrie suspected it was really worth, he got a sitting room with fireplace and mantel, and two whole windows-the Window Tax be damned-that overlooked Panton Street, a fashionable address for foreigners, secretaries and under-ministers to overseas embassies, well-heeled younger blades such as himself; home, too, to a regiment of mistresses. The set of rooms bent in an L, with a bed-chamber to the rear along the outer wall, and from a tiny window, in that room, he could look down upon Oxenden Street, and farther down to the Haymarket and St. James' Market. It was inclined to be a trifle noisy in the mornings, but he'd learned by then to sleep through almost any din, as long as he wasn't at sea. Civilian noises and alarums meant nothing to a weary sailor who'd developed the habit of trotting (or crawling) up his own stairs at "first sparrow-fart" every morning and caulking like a sodden log until noon.

He stepped into the sitting room, where a small sea-coal fire burned in the grate, and the embers and flames were reflected into the room by a brass back-plate. It was the only light in the room until his manservant Cony woke up at his entrance and used a paper spill to light him a candle or two.

"Mistress Fenton still here, Cony?" Alan asked as he shrugged off his watchcoat and went to thaw out before the fire.

"No, she ain't, sir," Cony was forced to admit. "She did come, but when the church bells went ten o' the clock, she went on 'ome, sir."