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worth investigating.
    With the Liars' current manpower shortage—Simon suppressed the pain and loss—every man had to serve more than one purpose as it was. He could kill his two birds with one stone…
    Carefully Simon focused his attention on the problem at hand, squelching his odd distraction. Yes, agreeing to her plan might yield a great deal of information.
    But he wondered… what
precisely
had he agreed to?

----
Chapter Three

     
    It was a most agreeable dream.
    Warm breath caressed Agatha's neck and she sighed. Turning into the heat, she stretched her body in luxurious delight. Reaching out, she stroked her hand over—
    —the chill hard wood of the bedpost.
    Snapped from her sensual half-dream, Agatha jerked upright. Her nighttime braid had slipped its knot and her hair spilled in front of her eyes. She pushed it hurriedly aside and sat very still, listening.
    The chamber was the same unimpressive room as always, its squat furnishings not improved by the shadows. Unlike Jamie's chamber, she had made little effort to improve her own.
    Yes, her window was still shut against the last chill of spring and the coals still glowed from her bedtime fire. So why were her nerves trembling? Why was her breath coming short and sharp, and her neck aquiver with sensation?
    Why did the room smell ever so very faintly of cinnamon?
    Simon.
    Mr. Rain to you, my girl,
she scolded herself,
and don't you forget it.
Moreover, Mr. Rain was safely all the way down the hall, ensconced in Jamie's big bedchamber for the week.
    He hadn't liked the idea of staying in the house, and it had been all that Agatha could do to persuade him that there would be no irate person of the male persuasion coming to defend her honor. Truly, it was the only practical solution.
    And it was lovely having a man around the house again. A deep voice, a heavier tread, a solid presence to fill the emptiness. Agatha bit her lip for a moment. She missed Jamie and Papa terribly.
    As much as she loved Appleby, the estate had become more lonely burden than loving home in the last few years. Jamie had not been living there for quite some time, even before he went to war.
    And poor Papa, gone just two years, had been so devastated by his wife's death fifteen years before that he had retreated into his books and his mathematics. Even when he was with his son and daughter, he was scarcely there at all.
    The care of the sheep herds and the orchards had been hers for so long, it felt distinctly odd not to forever be thinking of lambs and apples. Odd, and something of a guilty relief.
    But she would gladly tend both for the rest of her life if only she could bring back her family. The way they used to be. Agatha rubbed at her eyes, for they burned just the tiniest bit.
    She pulled her determination about her like a shield against the pain. Papa was gone forever, but Jamie was out there, somewhere, and it was left to Agatha to find him.
    Mr. Rain was not a replacement but a tool placed in her path to aid her mission.
    She was close, she knew it. She could envision the moment when she found her brother, perhaps when the ambulance wagons brought the men into the hospital by the dozens.
    She would offer a dipper of water to another wounded man, one who was not too terribly wounded, then raise her eyes to see the gleam of Jamie's wicked grin and hear his teasing voice.
    "Got your nose in my business again, don't you, Aggravation? Can't leave you alone for a minute!"
    And she would help him from his pallet and he would walk out of the hospital—because he wasn't too terribly wounded—and they would go back to Appleby, where things would be just as they had always been before.
    Before Napoleon had struck and Jamie had gone soldiering. Before Papa had died.
    Before Lord Fistingham had come to tell her that he was the executor of her inheritance now that her brother was likely dead as well. Hence, she should be honored to join her wealth and her lands to Fistingham by becoming the