I tried, oh, I tried to remain in the land of the friendly nymphs, but I knew that voice and knew the hurt lurking behind the temper. I opened my eyes and sat up carefully. When I’d managed that much without incident, I rose, as a gentleman must.
“Hyperia, greetings. I wasn’t aware that you’d be here. I am not a guest. In fact, I am planning to leave within the hour. I won’t trouble you in the least, and my apologies on Ophelia’s behalf for failing to warn you that I’d escort her to Makepeace.”
Miss Hyperia West had lost weight. She’d always been a lovely armful, and she doubtless was still, but her face was thinner, her green eyes sharper. She’d known humiliation and loss, and I was to blame for most of it. Like any self-respecting woman, she’d been enraged at my perfidy.
Though she seemed rather too enthusiastically attached to her temper. It’s not as if she’d been in love with me. Her mama had been in love with the notion of having a daughter leg-shackled to a ducal spare, and Hyperia was loyal to her family.
“You are still gaunt, my lord.”
Was she pleased or dismayed that my clothing was a bit loose? A year ago, I could have read her expression. Now, her composure defeated my attempt at analysis.
“I am tired and dusty as well,” I said, offering a belated bow. “If you trot back the way you’ve come, nobody need know you were burdened with the sight of me. I’ll be gone at sunset, Hyperia, I promise.”
She began to pace, and the tattoo of her heeled slippers on the stone floor reminded me that I had a grand headache.
“This is Ophelia’s doing,” she said. “She dragooned you into escorting her, didn’t she?”
“She also assisted with the guest list, so she well knew you’d be here. Given that your family seat is less than ten miles distant, she probably knew you’d be among the early arrivals too.”
Hyperia was dark-haired, shortish, and restless. She was the opposite of the cool, pale beauty Society favored, and I liked that about her. She was real. She was smart, and she deserved a better partner in life than I would have made.
“You came in the front door,” she said, scowling at my cravat. “Greeted by host, hostess, butler, and so forth. Society knows you’re here, even if I did not. I came in the front door as well.”
“One hopes the guests at Makepeace are not consigned to climbing in windows.”
She tossed herself onto the sofa. “We must think, Julian. This looks like a bad joke, but it could be an opportunity. Stop looming over me.”
I was, to the horror of my older brother, the tallest of the siblings. I had Arthur by half an inch, six foot two to his six foot one and a half. He styled his hair a la Brutus to gain that extra half inch back, because duke or not, he was still my only surviving brother.
I took a seat on the sofa about a foot from Hyperia—a proper distance, thank you very much. “What possible opportunity could this house party present? I don’t want to be here, you don’t want me here, and what we both especially do not want is to inspire gossip.”
“You did that handily enough when you threw me over last autumn, my lord.”
We’d had an understanding, not an engagement. I’d explained to Hyperia that soldiers did not become engaged in a time of war, lest a young lady find herself yoked to a missing person or invalid when a better opportunity came along.
Hyperia, ever sensible and ever stubborn, had conceded the point and remained steadfastly loyal for the whole of my military years. I had wasted her best Seasons, while the thought of her waiting patiently for my return had saved my sanity, or what remained of it.
Jilting her was the least consideration I owed her.
“If we caused gossip during the Little Season,” I said, “our parting was a nine days’ wonder. Nobody questioned the decision for long once they got a look at my hair.”
She glanced at my white locks. “People used to spend a small fortune on rice powder to get hair that color.”
“My altered appearance was not purchased with pounds and pence, Hyperia.” Rather than expound on that detail, I stated the obvious. “We are better off apart.”
I’d wanted to preserve my bachelorhood as long as possible in any case, and after the war, the thing I’d wanted and the right thing to do had converged like a planetary conjunction. I’d seized the moment, had the difficult discussion with Hyperia, and had not laid eyes on her since.
“You never talk of your captivity,” she said, slanting a look at me. “Was it awful?”
Damn my sisters for their endless concern. “To be taken captive is to fail as a soldier and an officer. That alone is mortifying.”
“Mortification doesn’t turn a man’s hair white, my lord. I refuse to be mortified by Ophelia’s nonsense.”
The pounding in my temples had resumed and now took on the ominous reverberation of war drums.
“I’ll sidle out the garden door,” I said, “and nobody need know you’ve clapped eyes on me. I’ll saddle Atlas myself or slip out the damned postern gate. The last thing I want is to inconvenience you.”
“To inconvenience me again? How good of you.” Hyperia flopped back against the cushions. “Ophelia will merely retreat and regroup for another ambush. She will push us together, all but compromise us, and then smile sweetly and protest her innocence. The invitations went out weeks ago, Julian. This is deliberate.”
No point in arguing the obvious. “What brought you to the conservatory?”
“I ran into Ophelia in the library, where she was ostensibly searching for a book. I allowed as how I craved solitude and quiet, and she suggested… Who knew you were here?”
“A footman, though if Ophelia lurked at her parlor door, she would have heard him direct me here. You are right. She has schemed, and our encounter is her doing. I’d best leave now, before we are compromised when she swans through that door with three of her closest, most gossipy friends. She mentioned some old crony who’d be among the guests, though Godmama enjoys a wealth of old cronies.”
I rose, prepared to exit stage left in quick time, but Hyperia was on her feet in the next instant and blocking my path.
She did not attempt to touch me, curiously enough. “Don’t go.”
“I beg your pardon? You loathe the sight of me, and well you should, and I want only to return to Town.” I did not, in fact, want to return to Town, but I did want to return to dark rooms, quiet, and safety, which Town represented.
“Stay one night,” she said. “Walk with me in the garden before supper, fix me a plate at breakfast. Show the whole dratted world that we are cordial and that Ophelia’s machinations are of no moment. Plead a tired horse or a tired arse, Julian, but face down the jackals with me for the space of a few hours.”
So much of war was strategy. Show the enemy your massed guns, and he learned your strength at the same time that his infantry gained a reason to fear you on the battlefield. Direct your mortar at his powder wagons—as Napoleon had learned to do in Italy—and cinder his resources and his confidence with one hellish explosion.
Hyperia’s suggestion had tactical merit. Ophelia would continue to scheme, manipulate, and interfere, all the while claiming the best of intentions. I was already at the blasted house party, and my presence had doubtless been remarked.
“Very well,” I said, doing my best to glower down at her. “One night. A tired horse. I can manage informal attire for the evening buffet, but I’m leaving after breakfast.”
She patted my cravat. “I will be the first to wish you a safe journey in the morning, my lord. See you at supper.”
Then she was gone, and I was wondering what the hell I’d got myself into. I resumed my supine posture on the sofa and tried to mentally summon Morpheus’s nymphs.
My efforts were in vain. My mind was fixed on two thoughts.
First, Ophelia had betrayed me. She’d deceived me and treated me like a small boy who had no idea where his own best interests lay. She thus moved from the short column of people whom I liked but did not trust to the longer list of people in whom I could repose neither confidence nor liking.
A loss, but in matters of human nature, one always profited from an honest assessment of the realities.
The second thought was equally unsettling in a different way: Hyperia, who had reason to dislike me intensely, had patted my cravat, and I hadn’t minded her presumption much at all.
Life on campaign taught an officer many lessons, not the least of which was to be prepared for the unexpected. As a consequence, I’d brought with me a few personal necessities and stashed a small valise among Lady Ophelia’s luggage. The valise had gone astray, apparently, but when the first bell sounded, I was presentable for an informal gathering.
I’d notified the stable that Atlas was to have a night of rest, but other than that… I had no need to send an express back to my London household informing them of my change of plans. My family knew I’d taken escort duty for Ophelia, and I had no senior officer expecting a report of my whereabouts.
As I ran a brush through my hair, it occurred to me that nobody much cared whether I tarried indefinitely in Kent, hared back to Town, or jumped into the sea.
“And that is precisely how I want it,” I muttered. I’d spent my childhood in the shadow of handsome, witty, accomplished, older brothers, and then had been overshadowed by more enthusiastic scholars at university and more seasoned officers at war.
To be free of scrutiny was my heart’s fondest desire. White hair rather foiled my ambitions. I peered at my reflection in the vain hope that I’d find a few russet hairs among the snowy locks. A French physician who’d seen much of war and read widely in medical literature had given me hope that my hair might one day regain its youthful color, “with rest and quiet.”
I’d been resting quietly, pacing quietly, cursing quietly, and having nightmares as quietly as I could for months, and still, my hair would have been the envy of Father Christmas.
My hostess greeted me graciously when I joined the other guests at the buffet laid out in the orangery. The space was warm, and the glass walls turned the chatter of greetings and gossip into ricocheting volleys of noise. My objective was to locate Hyperia and exhibit conspicuous geniality when walking with her in the garden. I would exude gracious indifference toward all who stared, whispered, and goggled like spectators at a carriage accident.
Hyperia was not yet among those gathered, so I accepted a glass of champagne from a footman—Canny Canning, as it happened—and out of long habit distracted myself with surveillance of the environs.
In the corner by the overwatered ferns, Godmama flirted with Lord Longacre, who had to be a dozen years her junior. His lordship was giving as good as he got, which spoke well for his gallantry, if not for his judgment. By a pair of camellias potted in half barrels, William Ormstead, with whom I’d served for a few months in winter quarters, was in earnest conversation with Miss Longacre, on whose behalf this gathering had been organized.
Though, of course, one did not say that.
A bevy of other young ladies who’d also had a less than stellar Season wandered about on the arms of younger sons, wealthy gentry scions, and a few former officers. I watched the company as I’d watch an amateur stage play, with a blend of boredom and polite tolerance. Nobody was tipsy yet. Nobody’s heels were unfashionably worn. Nobody was showing too much cleavage.
For this, I’d risked my life? For this, I’d watched countless comrades die agonizing deaths? Old anger began to well and, with it, a resurgence of my headache. I suffered merely a headache—no nausea, no vertigo, no strange distortions of sounds, vision, or scents, yet—so I remained at my post by the potted lemon trees.
Was Hyperia deliberately making me pay for my many transgressions against her?
William Ormstead chose that bleak moment to catch my eye, nod, lift his glass in my direction, and then resume his conversation with Miss Longacre. He need not have acknowledged me, but his small courtesy fortified me, and I resolved to wait for Hyperia until Domesday if she required it of me.
“You are lurking,” she said, appearing at my elbow two interminable minutes later and helping herself to my drink. “This is a social gathering, not an opportunity for espionage.”
“Reconnaissance, please, not espionage. As an intelligence officer, I gathered information. Spies disseminate falsehoods, and I am not temperamentally suited to subterfuge.” Alas, for me. If I’d succeeded in lying to the French, men dear to me might well still be walking the earth.
“You are actually very good at ruses,” Hyperia retorted. “Right now, you’d rather be anywhere but here, and yet, you’re doing a credible impersonation of a genial bachelor. Let’s circulate, shall we?”
“I agreed to a walk in the garden, Hyperia, not a parade inspection.” She shouldn’t have used the word espionage, and neither should I. Some words—treason, betrayal, dishonor—tainted a conversation no matter how innocuously they’d been meant.
“The garden,” Hyperia said with exaggerated patience, “is out there, while we are in here. To get from here to there, we must pass at least twelve other guests. We will greet them cordially lest somebody think I’m about to heave my champagne into the lavender border.”
Hyperia would have made an excellent cavalry officer, which was about the highest praise I had to offer anybody. “Nobody would think that of you.”
“Shall we spat for a few more rounds to put the roses in your cheeks, or shall we get some air?” Her smile was subdued gaiety incarnate, and I entertained the possibility that Hyperia was enjoying herself.
“I am as pale as a recovering invalid is expected to be. That’s a pretty frock.” The same mossy green as her eyes, gracefully draped and modest, but hinting at curves and wonders a gentleman pretended not to notice.
“Such flattery, my lord, will gain you nothing. Come along.” She did not take my arm—a mercy, that—and did keep hold of my champagne. This prevented me from courteously offering to fetch her a drink and consigned me to tagging along as she dragged me through a gauntlet of feigned cordiality and hastily averted stares.
Ormstead alone seemed genuinely pleased to see me. “Glad to find an ally among the bachelors,” he said. “And glad to see you’ve left Town, my lord. London in summer leaves much to be desired, and the company Lady Longacre has assembled is not to be missed.”
He winked at Hyperia, who rolled her eyes when another woman would have simpered. “The company here is given to inanities,” she said. “Come, my lord, we have roses to admire—or something.”
I wanted to tarry with Ormstead, though what did I have to say to him? He was the quintessential charming officer—tall, blond, slightly weathered. Even his swept-back hair conveyed a dashing air.
He had acknowledged me, gently scolded me, and been nearly friendly. Hyperia swanned off, so I followed in her wake when I wanted to resume my post by the lemon trees and contemplate Ormstead’s kindness.
The journey through the crowd to the door might have been twenty feet, though it felt as if navigating that distance required twenty years. Sir Pericles Renner, a crony of my late father’s, did not seem to recognize me even when Hyperia marched us through the introductions.
Mrs. Pickton-Thyme used her lorgnette to peer at my hair. She was prevented from attempting to touch it by Hyperia batting at a presuming—and imaginary—fly.
Mr. Mendel Cleary—landed gentry with bloodlines back to the Conqueror, nephew to Lady Ophelia’s erstwhile bosom bow—fell prey to a pressing need to decamp for the punchbowl when I came within six feet of him.
And so it went until we gained the garden, a ruthlessly patterned work of horticultural domination that nonetheless strived to exude nature’s early summer exuberance. I had occasion to know that true nature was glorious, impartial, and dangerous. The rectangular pattern of walks comforted me, while the thorny roses reaching, always reaching, to snag a sleeve or a child’s finger told the real story.
“That went well,” Hyperia said, bending to snap off a stalk of lavender and bring it to her nose. “If you’d once bothered to smile, it would have gone better.”
“Rome wasn’t built in a century, Hyperia. I could use a sip of that champagne.” She passed over the glass, and I resisted the urge to bolt what was left of my libation. I knew better than to succumb to the lure of spirits, the poppy, or the patent remedies that blended the two.
I did not deserve oblivion, and my family did not deserve one more reason to fret over me.
“Many soldiers came home from war the worse for their service.” Hyperia plucked more lavender, making herself a little nosegay. “Healy said I was to leave you in peace, not that I invited fraternal advice. I wanted to call, but…”
But what? “To regard you at a loss for words unnerves me, Hyperia. I would have received you.” I hoped I would have.
“One dreads to appear desperate after a jilting. We had an understanding, until you decided we would not suit. I respect your decision, but, Jules, if one is not changed by war, then one is not human. I wanted to say that to you, and now I have.”
Was she forgiving me for coming home in disgrace? For coming home at all? Or was she offering me a friend’s acceptance of what could not be ignored?
In any case, she meant well. “Thank you, Hyperia. I am changed, and I do not refer to my hair. I keep thinking I’ve reached the end of the list of adjustments—don’t care for thunder when I used to love a good storm, fife and drums give me the collywobbles, cannot abide rum, have nightmares in French—but then I round a corner and find another slippery mental ditch.”
She rearranged the sprigs in her bouquet. “Are we still friends, Jules?”
Jules. Hyperia alone used that familiar address. “I dread the prospect of becoming your enemy.” I tried for a smile and got a glower in response.
“Are we still friends?”
The evening light was sweetly oblique, no threat to my eyes, and the garden was all but deserted. I was assailed by a wave of melancholy, the certain knowledge that I would never have back the ebullient, trusting, confident manhood I’d taken with me to Spain. I could not be friends with Hyperia as she doubtless grasped the concept—congenial, considerate, humorous, affectionate, all the things I had been—but I could make some effort.
“We are friends,” I said, gesturing to a bench that faced the tiered fountain in the center of the garden, “if that’s what you want.”
She sat, and a few more couples wandered out of the orangery into the slanting evening light.
“You protected me,” she said. “From my first Season and my second. You were my escort of choice and conscientious in that role. You went off to war, but by then, the fortune hunters and widowers knew not to bother with me. I did not have to take, did not have to be witty or pretty, because Lord Julian had stood up with me enough times and waltzed the good-night waltzes with me. I was spoken for, and I wanted it that way.”
“If any of those loitering Lotharios have troubled you recently, please tell me.” Healy West was well equipped to deal with slights to his sister’s honor, but Healy was a hothead, and his family needed him whole and alive.
“They would not dare, Jules. I am no longer fresh from the schoolroom, wet behind the ears, and eager to waltz. I wanted you to know that I missed you and that I do not regret our understanding.”
Inside the orangery, with polite acknowledgments and friendly smiles, Hyperia had confirmed to any with eyes to see that she and I remained cordial. Disappointing the gossips was always a worthy objective.
As laughter drifted out over the garden, and crickets began to sing, I wondered if this conversation hadn’t been her real objective. To tell me she’d missed me, that I’d had value in her eyes without even knowing it, that my goodwill still meant something to her, as hers did to me.
“You are being beyond decent, Hyperia. How much has Healy told you of my situation in France?”
“That you survived every officer’s nightmare, and none of your former comrades know how to face you now. I am not some decorated war hero to be troubled by niceties of protocol. I’m the girl who beat you on her pony most every time we raced. You didn’t let me win, Jules. You lost to me fair and square. You can’t know what that means to a female forbidden to so much as blow out a candle because it’s unladylike.”
Most times, Hyperia had defeated me fair and square, but when a girl enjoyed winning that much, a fellow defined victory as that term best suited the occasion.
Hyperia was not proposing that we become engaged, of course. Always sensible, that was Hyperia, but she was marching headlong through a bog of memories and regrets to seize me by the figurative ears.
I might have lost my soul in France, but Hyperia was still Hyperia.
If we could not be married, she seemed to be saying, we could be cordial. Truly cordial. The strangest impulse came over me—to take her hand. We had eschewed gloves because a buffet was in the offing, and I had not clasped hands with another living soul for several eternities.
The impulse was there in my heart, benign and perhaps even normal. “We should go in,” I said, rising.
Hyperia stood as well, her bouquet of lavender in her hand. “I wish you could stay, Jules. I’ll wave you off with great good cheer tomorrow after breakfast, but I wish you could stay.”
What she wished was that I had stayed—in England, rather than buying my colors and jaunting off to Spain. That particular wish was not among my regrets. An officer’s commission was one of few alternatives for a ducal spare, and I’d been happy to do my duty.
My duty now was to appreciate Hyperia’s overture for the undeserved boon it was. “I am glad you came upon me in the conservatory. We are not granting Ophelia the result she doubtless wishes for, but I am very pleased to see you.”
I stopped short of the next step: Shall I call on you when you’re in Town for the Little Season? If the past year had taught me anything, it was that the state of my health was unpredictable. I’d been taken captive in the autumn—or let myself be taken prisoner—and last autumn had not gone well at all.
Before Hyperia turned onto the walkway that led back to the orangery, she laid her bouquet on the edge of the fountain so the stems trailed in the water. I tarried to steal a few sprigs from her posey and slipped them into my pocket. I would have caught up to her easily, except that a fellow was striding toward me from the direction of the stables.
Red hair, broad shoulders, confident walk. Before my mind could label him with a name, my gut was churning uneasily.
“Hyperia.”
She returned to my side. “Shall I make your excuses? I’d rather not.”
“Who is that man?” Even as I asked the question, my memory delivered an answer: Lieutenant Colonel Sir Thomas Pearlman had joined the gathering, and that was just bad news all around.
I managed to avoid Sir Thomas for the duration of the meal. As luck would have it, Miss Maybelle Longacre chose me for her supper companion, while Hyperia favored William Ormstead with her company. We dined à quatre beneath the lemon trees. After the meal, our hostess, with all the hospitality of a drill sergeant exhorting his recruits to form squares, invited the company to enjoy the garden.
A gentleman and a lady perambulated on such occasions arm in arm. I was capable of offering Miss Longacre that courtesy, but I did not want to. We were all but strangers, though I’d seen her riding in the park amid a bevy of fashionable sprigs. She was an heiress of sorts, quietly attractive in a pocket Venus sort of way, and had debated the merits of Shakespeare’s tragedies with Ormstead.
Not a featherbrain and thus something of a puzzle: Why had nobody offered for her? Why had she chosen me, eligible only in theory, for her companion? Why not Ormstead or even Sir Thomas, an exponent of old-and-respected bloodlines?
“Lady Longacre has given us our orders,” Ormstead said when we’d done justice to the tray of strawberries and cheeses that Canning had brought to our table.
He’d tossed me a wink, the blighter. “A constitutional beneath the moon sounds appealing,” I said. “Ladies, shall you join us directly, or do we await you on the terrace?”
“You await us,” Hyperia replied before Miss Longacre could opine on the matter. “I’m sure half a dozen of my hairpins are about to abandon their posts. Come, Maybelle, and we will effect what repairs we can.”
“We need go only as far as the summer cottage,” Miss Longacre replied, getting to her feet without my assistance. “The ladies’ retiring room has been kitted out there. We won’t be but a quarter hour at the most.”
The distaff decamped arm in arm, while I stifled the urge to call after Hyperia, Don’t leave me!
Foolishness. A traitor I might be, but a coward, I was not.
“He’s coming this way,” Ormstead muttered, taking a slice of cheese from the tray. “I’ll happily serve as your second.”
I barely had time to register the significance of Ormstead’s offer before Lieutenant Colonel Sir Thomas Pearlman, with murder in his eyes, marched up to our table.
“Put one foot wrong, my lord,” he hissed, “one word amiss, and I will have satisfaction of you.”
Another day, another ambush. I ought not to have been surprised, and yet, my supper was threatening to reappear all over Sir Thomas’s large and spotless boots.
Lord Julian Collywobbles, at your service. “If and when you demand satisfaction,” I replied, “you must agree that we settle our difference in semidarkness. Otherwise, the contest would be unfair.”
Sir Thomas was of a height with Ormstead and me, and his complement of muscle exceeded my own. He had enjoyed bullying the enlisted soldiers, who, being from the lesser ranks of society, had seldom matched him for brawn.
Though his horse had likely matched him for brains. Still, he’d lost a brother, as I had, and his rage at me was justified.
“One doesn’t fence in the dark, you idiot,” Sir Thomas sneered.
“I no longer see well in bright sunshine,” I countered. “If you’d like to commit murder, feel free. The Continent is quite cheap these days, and regardless of the circumstances of my passing, His Grace would doubtless prefer discretion to scandal.” Invoking Arthur’s consequence was badly done of me, but Sir Thomas really did not deserve to have my demise on his soul.
Then too, I didn’t know Arthur all that well. My oldest brother had been raised in expectation of the title, and that burden had set him apart. He’d welcomed me home with ducal politesse after Waterloo and allowed as how I was to be permitted some time to recover before Mama found me a bride.
Arthur acknowledged me, in other words, but little more than that. He’d consider my death regrettable, but he was still quite young enough to marry and be fruitful, so the succession would hardly be imperiled by my passing.
“You won’t fight?” Sir Thomas treated me to the sort of look a lady aimed at a smear of dog shit on her favorite pair of slippers.
“I am happy to fight,” I said, “provided the battle conditions will not reflect poorly on my opponent’s honor, honor being rather the point of such violence.”
“You want a fair fight, when my brother and half his unit never stood a chance thanks to you.”
Sir Thomas was merely voicing a version of what many others thought. I was a traitor, though nobody could prove that. I couldn’t even prove it myself, and yet, it had to be true.
“I lost a brother too,” I said quietly. “That was war, and this is a house party, Sir Thomas.”
Lady Ophelia chose that moment to go off into whoops over something her swain of the moment had said. She smacked his arm, then opened her fan with an expert flick of the wrist and fluttered the air.
She was providing a distraction, and probably on purpose, bless her.
“I’m leaving in the morning,” I said, keeping my voice down. “I had not expected to do more than escort my godmother to Makepeace’s door. I truly do not want to trouble you, Sir Thomas, and if I could apologize adequately for the sorrow you’ve suffered, I would.”
I meant those words. Nothing I could do, say, wish, or pray could change what had happened in France. Arthur had coolly informed me that any act of self-harm on my part would reflect poorly on the family, else I might have spared Sir Thomas his righteous display.
“I’ll be watching you. Put one foot wrong, and I will make certain you regret it.” Sir Thomas executed an about-face that went a little unsteady toward the end and stalked off.
“As if he’d have held up under torture,” Ormstead muttered. “Let’s find the ladies, shall we?”
I wanted nothing so much as to saddle Atlas and ride off into the gathering darkness. “They’ll be another ten minutes at least. If you want to part company with me and enjoy a smoke, I will idle about on my own.”
“You don’t care for the occasional cheroot?”
I started for the nearest exit rather than wend my way around tables, smirks, and curious stares. “The smoke bothers my eyes. London in winter nearly sent me to Rome, but salt-sea air isn’t any improvement. Provided the day isn’t sunny, I do best in the countryside.”
Ormstead joined me on a side terrace to the orangery. “And yet, you wintered in London. Were you trying to wreck your sight?”
“I was trying to stay out of my family’s way, and I own the town house.”
“I called on you.”
Ormstead was brave, and he had all but run Sir Thomas off simply by staying at my side through the exchange.
“Ormstead, while I appreciate your… your decency, I do not want, deserve, or seek your pity. I erred badly in France, men died, my brother died, and I am apparently to blame. Sir Thomas, whatever his other failings, is in the right on those points.”
“Is he?”
A glow on the eastern horizon promised imminent moonrise. Moonlight was my friend. Gentle, silvery illumination that yet allowed a man plenty of comforting shadows. Ormstead was not my friend, but neither was he my enemy.
“I honestly cannot remember much of what happened in France,” I said. “Whatever I told my captors, I yielded unwillingly, and I fell into their hands because I was trying to keep Harry safe. In that regard, I failed both my brother and my command badly. That is as much as I can recall.”
“What was Lord Harry doing outside of camp on his own?”
I wanted to swat the question away as Hyperia had swatted at the imaginary fly. “We were reconnaissance officers. Ergo, we left camp.”
“In the middle of the night? With the French less than ten miles off?”
“Of course in the middle of the night, and often out of uniform, and sometimes on mules or behind donkey carts. I am too tall to pass for a woman, but impersonating a French officer was within my abilities. One could hardly slip through the countryside discreetly in scarlet regimentals, could one?”
I had mentally scouted every culvert and ditch encompassed by this arid mental terrain—Harry’s mission, about which he’d been uncharacteristically tight-lipped with me; my violation of protocol when I’d followed him; the perfidious French who had well known when they’d got hold of an officer and who had yet treated him as a common spy; the nightmares and the nightmares and the nightmares…
“I’m sorry,” Ormstead said, looking damnably noble and contrite by the light of flickering torches. “One doesn’t want to kick old ghosts, and the ghosts don’t leave me in peace either. We all whispered drunken regrets to the whores. Some of us put too many details in our letters home. Others failed to notice the enemy skulking around our very mess tent. The damned war haunts us all.”
I was reminded of Hyperia’s words about war and change. “War is supposed to haunt us, lest we send our sons careering into a similar hellscape in the name of some king or despot.”
The moon was inching up over the horizon, a great golden orb illuminating the splendor of the Makepeace manor house and the Capability Brown landscaping intended to glorify it. The leaves of the lime trees twittered gently in the evening breeze, and from the direction of the home wood, a nightingale began its silvery song.
I wanted to be alone with the peace of the night, but knew that somehow, this outing Lady Ophelia had goaded me into making was good for me. To face Hyperia’s honesty, Sir Thomas’s rage, and even Ormstead’s kindness was all part of finding a life in England I could tolerate.
“Britain has been sending her sons careering into hellscapes for centuries, my lord,” Ormstead replied. “We seem incapable of doing otherwise.”
I could not read Ormstead’s expression because he’d moved to the shadows of the nearest torch, but the bitterness in his tone comforted me as even moonlight could not. I was not the only casualty, not the only one haunted. Hyperia was right about that.
“Well, cheer up,” I said. “The war is over, and the only ordeal you face now is escorting Miss Hyperia West around the garden. If you don’t regard that prospect as pleasing, there’s something wrong with you.”
“So why did you toss her over?” Ormstead asked quietly.
I never had to answer him, because at that moment, a shrill, feminine scream cut through the night air.
I took off down the steps and across the garden, Ormstead on my heels. The cry had come from the direction of the summer cottage, precisely where Hyperia and Miss Longacre had been bound.