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said.
    “My son will not trouble you tonight,” she added as she dripped warm water on Sophie’s poor arms. “If he should wake up, sing to him.”
    “I can’t sing!” he replied.
    “Of course you can,” she said. “He likes ‘The British Grenadier.’ Good night.”
    He delivered her message to the landlord, who eyed him strangely for a moment. “You’re certain it’s not the plague, my lord?” the man inquired, standing well away.
    “I have seldom been more certain about anything,” Nez replied.
    Relief covered him like the contents of the calamine lotion bottle when he returned to his private parlor and collapsed on the sofa. “There are times when being an uncle is exhausting,” he told Luster, who sat quite still in a chair. He glanced at his butler, then stared at him. “Luster, have you looked in the mirror lately?”
    “No, Your Grace. Is there a need?”
    Oh, Lord, why me? Nez thought. “Luster, think a moment. Do you ever recall having been afflicted with chicken pox as a child?” The question was almost as hard to ask as it was to imagine that his butler had ever been anything but a butler.
    “I . . . I do not recall, Your Grace,” he said finally. “Your Grace, are you trying to tell me . . .”
    “Welcome to the pesthouse, Luster.”

Chapter Three
    Considering that he had never slept with a child before, Nez spent a surprisingly comfortable night. After he had assured Luster that he really could find a nightshirt all by himself, and then helped the man, who apologized with every step, to a cot in the dressing room, Nez took himself to bed. Juan did nothing more than sigh, and cuddle close, which turned out to be a blessing, because the night was cool. I should be worried about this dreadful situation, Nez thought as he relaxed. Churl that I am, I will let Liria worry about it in the morning.
    Sleep came closer. It should be a sad reflection on the state of my mind that I am so willing to turn my troubles over to someone else, he considered. The only place where I couldn’t do that was the Peninsula, and wasn’t that an uncomfortable state of affairs for a man of indolence? The idea made him smile in the dark, because he knew how little indolence had ever entered his mind through Portugal, Spain, France, and ultimately Belgium. Libby is right, he thought; I could be redeemed.
    Tentatively, Nez stretched out his arm and allowed Juan to settle into the hollow of his shoulder. He knew that women fit so well there; apparently children did, too. Little fellow, your mama must be missing you right now, was his last conscious thought of the evening.
    ***
    Liria did miss her son. She woke once or twice to check on Sophie, and then returned to an empty bed. The cot was soft in the right places, but it felt like a bed of rocks without Juan. Not that there would have been room for him on the cot, she reasoned. He was five now and tall for his age, tall despite poor food and a rackety life that she could never have imagined for a child of hers.
    I wonder if he takes after his father in height, she thought, then dismissed the matter. Best not to dwell on it. That’s what Sergeant Carr would have told me. She curled herself into a ball out of habit, then made a conscious effort to draw herself out to her full length and lie on her back, something she did seldom, even now when she could. She remembered those strange dreams after Juan’s birth, when she woke in a panic because she could not find his small body there on the camp bed beside her. I would sit up and pat the covers until the sergeant told me to lie down, that Juan was in the ammunition box, his first crib. “My ma used to do that, too,” he whispered to her from his cot on the other side of the tent. “Da told me she did that for each of us, and didn’t he laugh? Go to sleep, Liria. He’ll wake you up soon enough.”
    She wished she had not thought of the sergeant, because she felt tears prickle her eyes. You would like me to