"Just as well," Alan decided. "Come to think on it, I was getting a trifle bored with her."

"Yew say somethin', sir?" Cony asked from the other room.

"Just maundering, Cony; pay me no mind," Alan called back;

"Aye, sir."

Dolly had been so grateful for his assistance, and his money which kept her during the war. She'd made a real shore home for him, an activity he strongly suspected she'd want to do again, if he had enough money to support her as he once had. Dolly Fenton was at the upper end of marriageable age, and her magistrate wasn't doing her much good in that regard. Only the most fascinating widows ever got a second man to take them on, he knew. The best Dolly could hope for was someone incredibly rich to keep her on the side, as her magistrate did. Someone titled, who could keep a mistress openly, care for her all his life and leave her well provided for when he turned up his toes.

Damn hard lot for most women, Alan thought, folding the letter up with a sense of finality. Wonder what Caroline Chiswick's lot's to be? American Loyalist, not a hundred pounds for her "dot" if she did marry. Country girl, even lovely as she is. Service with some family around Guildford? Married to some pinchbeck "Country-Harry" and up to her ankles in dirty children and sheep the rest of her life? God, what a thought, he shivered with more than cold.

"That be all, sir?" Cony asked.

"Aye, Cony. You go caulk."

"Tomorrow's me day off, sir," Cony reminded him. "If there's anythin' you'd be a'wantin' afore I go in the mornin', sir?"

"Hmm," Alan pondered, tossing Dolly Fenton, and her letter, on the coals. "I'll have a couple of letters for you to run about the town. One to St. Clements Street, to the Chis-wicks."

"The Chiswick brothers 'ere in London, sir?" Cony brightened.

"And the mother and Mistress Caroline, too. You tell 'em I sent you, and I expect you'd want to visit them as well after all we went through during the siege."