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better. “The town’s almost exactly as I recall,” Mark said. “But surely you can tell me. What is the latest news?”
    As Mark had suspected, Lewis needed little encouragement to begin talking. In minutes, he’d produced a stream of words that Mark needed only half his mind to monitor. After all, they both knew that the only thing that changed in Shepton Mallet was the degree to which the abandoned mills deteriorated every year.
    “But times are looking up,” Lewis was saying, capping off a monologue on those selfsame mills. “There’s a new shoe factory beginning to make its mark. And the crepe manufacturers have been seeing redoubled orders. After Her Majesty purchased the silk for her wedding gown from Shepton mills, we’ve seen more patronage.”
    This was what small-town life meant. This last was not news—at least, not in the sense that it was new. It was a measure of how slowly time passed in sleepy Shepton Mallet, that the primary topic of conversation was the Queen’s marriage, an event that had taken place more than a year in the past.
    Mark had been right to come here. Here, they might have heard of his book and his knighthood. But in this little town, he could escape the inexplicable swarms that had gathered in London. He would be left in peace.
    People might even believe that he was human here—the sort of person who had faults and who committed sins—instead of some sort of saint.
    “Why,” the rector continued, “I assure you, everyone here feels a debt of gratitude to you on that score.”
    The first discordant note sounded in Mark’s bucolic dream. “Gratitude?” he asked in befuddlement. “To me? Why on earth would anyone be grateful to me?”
    “Such humility!” Lewis beamed at him. “Everyone knows it was your favor that brought Her Majesty’s eye upon us!” As he spoke, Lewis leaned forward and tapped Mark’s lapels lightly.
    A deep dread welled up inside of him. This was not a forward, grasping sort of fumble. Instead, it was a reverent little touch—the way one might dip a forefinger into a font of holy water.
    “Oh, no,” Mark protested. “No, no. Really, you mustn’t put that complexion on it. I—”
    “We here in Shepton Mallet are truly grateful, you know. If the silk manufacturers had failed…” Lewis spread his arms wide, and Mark looked around. The few people dispersed around the square were all staring at him in avid curiosity.
    Not again. Please. He’d come here to escape the adulation, not to be feted once more.
    “This town owes you much. Everyone’s been waiting for me to make your acquaintance, so I might show you around. Let me start with this introduction.”
    Lewis motioned with one hand, and a figure slouching against one side of the Market Cross straightened. The man—no, however tall the figure, it was a boy—came dashing over, nearly tripping over ungainly feet.
    Whoever this young man was—and he could not have been a day older than seventeen—he was well-dressed. He was wearing a top hat. He raised his hand to adjust it every few seconds, as if the article of apparel were new to him after years of the quartered caps that boys favored.
    “Sir Mark Turner,” Lewis was saying, with all the pomp of a high-church official, “may I present to you Mr. James Tolliver.”
    James Tolliver wore a blue ribbon cockade, artfully formed into the shape of a rose, on the brim of his hat. Mark’s hopes, which had so recently soared as high as the church’s tower, fell eight stories to dash on the cobblestones underfoot. Please. Not a blue rose cockade. Anything but a blue rose cockade. Maybe the ornament was just an accident. Maybe some peddler had brought through a batch, without explaining their significance. Because the alternative—that he was not escaping the hubbub of London, that he had not left behind the hangers-on and the constant reports in the gossip columns—was too appalling to contemplate. He’d come to Shepton Mallet to relax into