[The Bennet Wardrobe 02] • Henry Fitzwilliam's War

Time is once again bent in 1883 as Viscount Henry Fitzwilliam, the heir to the Earldom of Matlock, uses the remarkable Bennet Wardrobe to seek his manhood through combat as suggested by his great friend, Theodore Roosevelt. But, as Henry’s Great Grandmother, Lydia Bennet Wickham Fitzwilliam, noted, “The Wardrobe has a strange sense of humor.” The lessons the young aristocrat learns are not the ones he expected.

Henry travels over 30 years into the future to land in the middle of the most awful conflict in human history—World War I. His brief time at the Front teaches him that there is no longer any room on the battlefield for heroic combat. Rather he discovers the horrors of “modern” warfare—the machine gun, high explosive artillery and poison gas—and the incredible waste of young men’s lives.

But, it is his two weeks spent recuperating at the Beach House in Deauville, after being temporarily blinded by chlorine gas, that irrevocably changes his life forever. There he encounters an incredible woman, one who will define his near 10-year search for the love of his life after he returns to his own time.

This novella grew from the author’s efforts to sketch the events that shaped the life of one of the central characters prior to his introduction in the upcoming work “The Exile: Kitty Bennet and the Belle Époque,” Volume II of The Bennet Wardrobe Series.