Colonel Devlin St. Just was black Irish on a robust, charming scale—or he had been. The man I beheld in the Morelands formal parlor was gaunt, dull of eye, and devoid of charm. In an odd way, he put me in mind of the elderly Miss Cleary. St. Just was polite, too, of course, though even good manners came across as an effort made for the sake of his step-mother’s sensibilities.
“Moreland is still in Town,” the duchess said, “but we expect the duke home any day. His Grace’s parliamentary intrigues will ever fascinate him, and then too, Westhaven seems determined to bide in London this summer.”
The Earl of Westhaven was heir to the Moreland dukedom, and a perennial bachelor, much to his parents’ despair and the matchmakers’ frustration.
Esther, Duchess of Moreland, was of an age with Lady Ophelia, but cut from more majestic cloth. Whereas Ophelia was willowy and languid, Her Grace, was dignified, statuesque, and gracious. Her duke was legendarily devoted to her—even at their ages, as Ophelia put it—and Her Grace had raised eight legitimate children as well as two ducal by-blows conceived before Moreland had spoken his vows.
One did not trifle with the Duchess of Moreland, and attempting to toady to her was a worse choice yet.
She stunned me by treating me to a brief, fierce hug. “You are recovering,” she said, running a maternal eye over me from boots to brow. “Not out of the woods, but on the mend. Don’t let anybody try to hasten you back to the whirl, young man. Healing takes time.”
That last was clearly intended for St. Just, who stood a little straighter at her words and gazed a little more intently at the ormolu clock on the mantel. He’d greeted me in the foyer with a polite bow, then offered his hand, a touching gesture of true welcome.
He swiveled his gaze to me like the horse artillery maneuvered its light guns into place, and his eyes held a silent, desperate plea.
“While you ladies catch up over the teapot,” I said, “perhaps St. Just will reacquaint me with His Grace’s magnificent stable? An hour in the coach has left me restless, and I have many fond memories of the Morelands hayloft.”
Her Grace, a notably self-possessed woman, smiled at me as if I’d offered to pay off the national debt.
“Devlin, you will accompany Lord Julian. He’ll be particularly interested in that chestnut filly His Grace wants to name Sunshine.”
“Mama, I implore you, spare the poor horse such a curse. Come along, my lord. We have equines to admire.”
St. Just and I managed to make our exit without breaking into a sprint, though the ladies were probably as relieved to get rid of us as we were to gain the fresh air.
“You’re at the Longacre do?” St. Just asked. Even his voice had changed, becoming darker, as if the distance between normal discourse and laughter had increased twelvefold.
“Ophelia tricked me into attending. First, I was merely an escort, free to drop her at the gateposts, now I am to make up the numbers because Healy West failed to show, and some other fellow was called to his ailing mother’s side.”
Morelands was a country home in the grand style, and summer showed it to excellent advantage. Like most such estates, it strove to be self-supporting, and that meant the grounds included everything from a spice garden to a vast conservatory to a sprawling home farm.
St. Just had directed me through the back gardens, an interesting arrangement of formal parterres that gave way to more exuberant beds, a rose garden His Grace had planted specifically for his duchess, a maze trimmed to waist height, and various scent and color gardens.
“His Grace will miss the roses if he remains in London much longer,” I said as we passed fragrant beds beginning to fade.
“He’s intent on harassing my brother home from London. Westhaven is intent on having London to himself this summer. My money’s on Westhaven, and I’m sure I will be dispatched to look in on him.”
A hint of testiness underlay that recitation. “While you simply want to hide?”
“Hide? Is that what you call it?”
We followed a path out of the garden proper and into the park. “I call it not burdening my family or Society with my presence. The stink of my military failings has followed me home with a vengeance.”
“I will never forget the stench of the battlefield at Waterloo.”
“Nor will I.” Worse than the scent of a mere rotting carcass or two, the scent of a hellscape that had to be experienced to be believed. The accompaniment had been the steady drone of flies and the moans of the wounded left out in the elements for days. Those who could still speak had begged for water, water, always water. “I expect the nightmares will haunt us to our graves.”
We came within sight of the majestic barns and lush paddocks in which the Duke of Moreland took such pride.
“I sometimes worry that this is the dream,” St. Just said, “and I will wake up to hear the bugler blasting “Boots and Saddles” and feel that combination of eagerness and dread that meant another battle was upon us.”
“After the first time,” I said, “it was all dread for me. Thank the benevolent powers I was relegated to staff duty after Harry died.”
St. Just brushed a glance over me. Harry’s death was a polite way to refer to that time I got myself captured by the French, failed to rescue my brother, probably spilled my guts to the ever-so-polite commandant, and then was more or less tossed from the chateau like a spent salmon to die peacefully of exposure in the mountains.
The commandant hadn’t counted on the skills I’d gained as a reconnaissance officer. I could make fire out of dry wood and friction, and I could set willow snares in pitch darkness. I knew how to use the prevailing wind to improve the range of my hearing and could orient myself to the compass points by sun, moon, and stars. Trailing game had been second nature to me from boyhood on.
I had made it out of the mountains, eventually.
“There’s something you should know,” St. Just said, heading not for the stable, but for the paddocks. “Girard is alive, and he’s in England.”
I walked along for another few paces before I could find words—proper words, not mere profanity—with which to fashion a reply.
“I try not to think of him by name. He’s the French commandant, the Frenchman, that damned fiend… Never a name if I can help it.”
“But you think of him all the same.”
“Less and less.” I was not quite lying. Of late, I’d been haunted by, rather than obsessed with, whatever had happened at the ugly monstrosity of a castle on the border of France and Spain. The gaps in my memory plagued me, and my inability to save Harry would color every waking and sleeping moment no matter what else might befall me.
St. Just turned us down a grassy bridle path along the hedgerow. “Girard is actually half English. He was trapped in France as a youth during the Peace of Amiens. The French gave him a choice of starvation in a prison town or serving the army. He has inherited an English barony, and if you hear mention of Sebastian St. Clair, blow full retreat.”
“He was so damnably civil to me,” I murmured. “That explains the perfect English. I’ve never seen a colder pair of eyes.” Lucifer would have eyes like that. Always measuring, always subtly probing whatever and whoever he beheld.
“We’re not to kill him,” St. Just said. “Wellington’s orders. The war is over, and when it comes to St. Clair, the military is playing some deep game with the diplomatic ranks, or so we’re told.” That last was said with a ragged ghost of humor. “Time to get back to the waltzing and wagering, and toasting His Majesty, too, of course.”
“It could be worse, St. Just. You could have been labeled a traitor and then dragooned into an inane house party where nobody talks to you, though you can hear them whispering behind your back before you’ve even left the room.
“When you want to slink back to the safety of your London lair,” I went on, “you instead find your former almost-fiancée is among the guests, and some fellow thought it amusing to try to accost her by moonlight. She heel-stomped the blighter, and he slunk off before I could pummel him. Then you win a horse in a fair, albeit toweringly stupid, wager, but the damned creature goes missing, and on the same day—this very day, as it happens—you find the belle of the assembly inebriated and singing lewd songs in the belvedere.”
And then find another belle, albeit from bygone days, at sea in a very different sort of wilderness.
I nearly did not recognize the sound that issued from St. Just—a laugh, harsh, percussive, more of a bark than a sound of merriment, but I had amused him.
“Then,” he said, “you are dragged across the countryside by your very own god-harpy to visit the infirm in the person of myself. You poor, put-upon dear.”
I hit him on the arm, and he grinned—truly smiled at me with a bit of the old rascally charm—and the chronic ache in my heart—guilt, sorrow, regret, loneliness, what did the label matter?—shifted to something equally sad but a touch less bitter.
“Lady Ophelia isn’t a harpy, but she’s not to be trusted. Can you sleep?” I asked when we’d traveled half the length of the mare’s paddock. Several foals grazed among the mamas, and I easily picked out the flame-red filly Moreland sought to afflict with the name Sunshine. Most young horses gamboled and cavorted and generally enjoyed high spirits between napping, cropping grass, and spending time with Mama.
This little creature galloped around the paddock at a blazing run. She had the knack of gathering her quarters under her so each stride launched an equine rocket across the grass.
“I can sleep,” St. Just said, taking up a perch along the fence, elbows on the top rail, one boot resting on the bottom. But for the immense sadness in his blue eyes, he would have made a handsome picture. “I don’t sleep well. Laudanum terrifies me, but it works, more or less. If I’m tired enough, I can get in a few good hours. Thunderstorms make me bilious.”
“They unnerve me. I want to hide in the wardrobe like a small boy who has overheard his parents in a bitter row.” Which I had, and frequently about me.
Another sidelong glance. “Their Graces always took marital differences behind closed doors, and Her Grace got the old man sorted out fairly early in their dealings. The duke still drops out of formation from time to time, but never for very long. There aren’t many like our duchess.”
That St. Just loved and admired his step-mother boded well for his future. Whom did I love and admire in the same fashion? I could not recall the last time my own mother had hugged me, though she expected her cheek to be kissed on appropriate occasions. Lady Ophelia’s affection was of the presuming sort, and my sisters…
I loved them, but they had lives that did not include me, a reality many a soldier returning from the war had to face. For twenty years, the Corsican had provided Britain with an excuse to swell her military resources, but all that prowess came at a tremendous cost. The country was now buried in debt, drowning in economic chaos, and overburdened with excessively fit men whose singular skills were marching, drinking, and killing.
“The duchess is concerned for you,” I said, resuming our walk. “I am concerned for you, if that makes any difference. Lady Longacre’s house party is a penance wrapped up in a tribulation decorated with a misery, but I did sleep well last night. Perhaps it is time to look in on Westhaven in Town.”
“I hate Town.”
“What do you love?”
“My family.” St. Just’s answer was prompt and emphatic.
We approached another verdant, rolling paddock, this one populated with mature fellows doing enthusiastic justice to the grass. Moreland was a horseman in the old-fashioned, democratic sense. MPs might wait weeks for an appointment with him, but the stable lads likely had his ear simply for the asking.
“We all love our families,” I said, “even as they drive us to Bedlam. I sometimes think I hear Harry’s voice, but it’s just my mind taunting me. What makes you happy?”
One of the geldings, a leggy chestnut, lowered himself into the grass in the particular, knees-first manner of the equine, then commenced rolling and kicking into the air until he succeeded in flopping from one side to the other.
“That makes me happy,” St. Just said, watching the horse repeat the maneuver. “That healthy beast doing as he pleases, not a care in the world beyond hoping for a patch of clover to lend variety to his snacking.”
“Then spend time with the horses and avoid house parties at all costs.”
He walked along beside me as the chestnut stood and gave himself a good, hard shake. “I was invited to the Longacre do. Sent regrets. I’ve sent a lot of regrets in the past year. Their Graces worked so hard to ensure that Maggie and I were accepted everywhere, and now…”
Maggie—Lady Maggie—was the other ducal by-blow, and another female with whom one did not trifle. She was all that was correct and lovely and witty, but illegitimacy or the duchess’s example had also given her an impregnable sense of reserve. If and when she married, it would be after a long and determined siege on the part of a truly devoted swain.
“Now,” I said, “all that acceptance you enjoy as a result of your ducal patrimony feels like shackles. Commit a little treason, St. Just, and you’ll be free of those constraints.”
He studied the horses in the paddock. The chestnut was going through a get-acquainted ritual with a bay that involved blowing into each other’s nostrils, a little pretend-nipping, and then a friendly sniffing about the tail.
“Did you commit treason?” he asked in the same tone he might have inquired after my mother’s relentlessly robust health.
“I honestly don’t know. The sequence of events, as best I can recall, is as follows: Harry slipped out of camp on some mission nobody will say much about. I followed out of fraternal concern, because it wasn’t like Harry to keep secrets from me. I’d got him out of more than one scrape, and he’d done the same for me. He was picked up by the French and did not put up a fight.”
“Because,” St. Just said, “by then he knew you were on his tail, and he sought to spare you captivity and its attendant woes.”
Officers captured out of uniform were fair game for torture, and nobody’s reputation for extracting information from the unwilling rivaled Girard’s. He had been a dark legend among British forces, though no price had been put on his head. Perhaps somebody with a jaundiced sense of justice
had known of the English title to be slung about his neck if he survived the war.
“Harry might well have grasped that I’d followed him, but I’m good at tracking discreetly. I did put up a fight when they spotted me—standards must be maintained, despite Harry’s more sensible example. He and I were held separately, and I was eventually told that he’d died honorably.”
I hated saying those words, because Harry should not have died at all. Not like that. “I cannot recall the entirety of my captivity,” I went on. “I’m not even sure how long I was in French hands and how long I wandered around trying to find my way back to British forces. My sense of time was distorted. Girard kept me where I had no window and could not see the sky. Candlelight or darkness were all I knew, and patterns of sleeping and waking were purposely rendered unpredictable. A little bit of that, and a man loses all sense of time and not a little of his wits.”
Particularly when food and water were also withheld for uncertain periods, then produced on a schedule that felt as if it had no rhyme or reason.
“Girard’s genius,” St. Just said, “was not in physical torture apparently, though he or his superiors would resort to that on occasion. He excelled at breaking men’s minds.”
“He certainly dealt a few blows to mine, though he was always polite, always correct. I cannot recall any physical torment, though I recall hunger, thirst, darkness, cold, and endless uncertainty. Then Girard took to having his guards wake me up whenever I began to drop off to sleep, and I came completely unraveled for a time.”
I had not spoken of these details to anyone, and I did not want to speak of them now, but still words took form.
“When I was at my worst, I saw Harry before me plain as day, then my mother, then fellows I’d known to have fallen in combat. Why not just kill me? They’d killed Harry. Later, it became clear that I’d tipped Girard off regarding planned British troop movements. I doubtless forget on purpose some exchange he and I had, some damning disclosure I made, but the recollection refuses to come into focus.”
St. Just was quiet for a time while the horses in the field went back to the important business of grazing.
“Perhaps you made no such disclosure.”
“General Huddington’s advance party was all but slaughtered, St. Just. They were on a glorified goat track I’d discovered a few weeks previous to my capture. Who else knew of that way to reach one of the higher, less traveled passes?”
“Every shepherd for fifty miles in any direction,” he said, studying the horses. “Every scout and reconnaissance officer sent to inspect the track after you. French reconnaissance officers, Spanish Bonapartists. Many an advance party was ambushed as we crossed Spain and into France, and very few of them attribute their losses to anything but bad luck.”
He was being kind, and also stating a real, if unlikely, possibility. “I don’t know what happened,” I said, “but I have been judged in the court of public opinion and found wanting. My family is loyal for form’s sake, not because they have faith in my innocence. As far as they’re concerned, I failed Harry. I should have gone back to camp and informed my superiors, who might have worked out one of those prisoner exchanges that were never supposed to happen.”
“And seldom did happen. Is this clouded past why you sprang Miss West?”
Yes, in part. “Her Grace knows all, I take it.”
“Between Papa and Her Grace, there are no secrets in polite society for long. You might consider paying a call on Christian, His Grace of Mercia. He was held at the chateau at the same time you and Harry passed through its doors.”
I’d had a nodding acquaintance with Mercia, who remained something of an enigma. He’d bought his colors despite having a lofty title, a lovely duchess, and no direct heir of the body.
Why do that? “Mercia will not enjoy revisiting his wartime experiences,” I said. By all accounts, the duke had been physically tortured and never once disclosed anything of value to the French. For his pains, he’d earned himself a useless hand and the undying admiration of the London crowds. Perhaps he regarded that adulation as useless too.
“Mercia is coping,” St. Just said with another slight smile. “As you are. We’ve probably hit the limit of our parole, and Her Grace will want to see us both stuffed with sandwiches. If I call on you in Town, will you be home?”
“To you, yes, but please don’t think to inflict any of your pretty sisters on me. If they come around, other ladies might take a notion to follow in their charitable footsteps, and I am not up to flirtation.” Loyalty to Hyperia forbade me that pleasure, even if I were interested in it.
“I will come as the lone scout,” St. Just said, “assuming Her Grace lets me out of her sight. Who else is at the house party?”
I recounted the list—Cleary, to be pitied for one brother on remittance and the other making a slow recovery from injury. Ormstead, doing his best to catch Hyperia’s eye. Brimstock, on the hunt for a well-heeled wife. Banter with troubles of his own. Westmere, decamped to see to a mother too fond of the poppy. Colonel Sir Thomas Pearlman, mad at the world by force of habit.
Various young ladies who’d had a more or less unsuccessful Season or Seasons.
“And your host and hostess?”
“Lady Ophelia says the Longacre heir is somewhat wanting for intelligence. Wedding Maybelle to a worthy fellow has thus become a matter of dynastic necessity. Maybelle accurately surmises that marriage, or the motherhood that marriage portends, is the death of many women. She is not at all enthusiastic to become one of the martyrs who secures the family’s survival at the expense of her own.”
“I see you are very much still on reconnaissance, my lord.” St. Just ambled along the fence line more slowly than he’d struck out from the house. “Life should not be a matter of dodging mortal peril.”
“Particularly for a young lady of eighteen.” Or a young man of eighteen, seventeen, sixteen… The recruiting sergeants had been fixed on filling quotas, not on counting a lad’s teeth.
St. Just stopped at the corner of the paddock and looked back on the fit, happy creatures at their ease.
“I come this way often,” he said. “A walk around the paddocks means I don’t bother the lads tending to the stable, and I avoid the gardeners, and yet, I’m within sight of the house if Her Grace gets to fretting about me. I don’t recall seeing that chestnut in with this group previously.”
An odd sensation prickled over my nape. “The chestnut who was rolling so vigorously five minutes ago?”
“That fellow,” St. Just said. “Good-looking specimen. Rolling and offering his card to the other fellows at the club. If he’s a regular, why do that? I’d have remembered him. The grooms might have moved him from another paddock, but I patrol the perimeter… I walk the fences regularly, and I don’t recognize that horse.”
St. Just knew his horseflesh. He’d ridden dispatch with legendary success, and for those officers, their ability to remain attuned to their mounts was often the difference between life and death.
“St. Just,” I said, studying the now dusty chestnut, “I don’t suppose Morelands yet has any ponies on the premises?”
“Of course we do. Aging pensioners from Evie or Jenny’s girlhood.”
“Before we go into lunch, might you indulge me in a little experiment?”
“But what about the white stockings?” Lady Ophelia asked before the coach had even cleared the Moreland gateposts. “You said Cleary’s chestnut had four white stockings, one of them rice-powdered or painted or something to match the others. Did this horse wear makeup?”
“We could not tell. The beast has been in tall wet grass, splashed in mud puddles, and otherwise obscured the evidence. He has a white star and four white stockings, one slightly shorter than the others, but England is full of chestnut horses with slightly mismatched white markings.”
“Did he know his name? His name was… Copernicus? Ptolemy? What did you say his name was?”
Ophelia was like a hound on the scent, and it occurred to me that my godmother was an intelligent woman overly afflicted with boredom. The gossip and matchmaking and pointless socializing were expected of her, but Copernicus and Ptolemy were not familiar names to most Englishwomen of good breeding.
“His name is Trafalgar, if he’s Mendel Cleary’s horse, but he showed no particular interest in that name.” I doubted even Atlas responded to his name per se. He paid very close attention to the rattle of oats in a bucket or to my tone of voice when I greeted him, but what was a name to a horse?
“Not Cleary’s horse,” Ophelia retorted. “Your horse. This is another prank in poor taste, mark my words. You should have had that gelding saddled and ridden him right back to Makepeace.”
“I can’t know it’s the right horse, Godmama. Until St. Just can confer with his stable lads and inquire of his immediate neighbors regarding a missing gelding, we’ve come across a mere coincidence.”
The coach swung out of the winding Morelands drive and onto a bumpier track.
“Cleary cannot afford to wager away a good riding horse,” Ophelia said. “Or so Lady Longacre would have me believe. He’s land-poor and house-proud. He expected to have your spectacles from you, but ended up having to hide his horse. What did you and St. Just discuss?”
I did not want to belabor the situation with the chestnut gelding, but I was even more reluctant to bear tales regarding St. Just’s troubles.
Which left… my troubles. “St. Just warned me that a certain French officer of whom I have very disagreeable memories has washed up on English shores. Seems the misfortunes of war landed him in France during the Peace of Amiens, but he’s actually half English.” The paternal half, the one everybody seemed to think counted the most, though I was reminded of Miss Longacre’s cousins dying in childbed.
What of the parent who risked her life to produce every child?
“That would be Lord Sebastian St. Clair, I suppose,” Ophelia said on a little grimace. “The gentlemen’s clubs are full of wagers about how long he’ll be permitted to survive. He has a barony styled after the family name and no heir, so the fine fellows of St. James’s might give him time to procreate at least. You are not to challenge him, Julian. I won’t have it.”
I could not imagine the circumstances that would prompt me to risk my life or another man’s life on the field of honor. I was done with killing. Of that much, I was certain.
“If St. Clair is titled,” I said, “he’d be within his rights to refuse a challenge from a commoner such as myself, and he’d probably enjoy turning the Code Duello against a former prisoner.” Truth to tell, I did not want to blow out even his brains. The war was over, as St. Just had said.
“Rather than kill him, why don’t you get some answers from him? Interrogate him as he interrogated you? Ask him where Harry is buried so we can at least bring the boy home for proper planting in the family plot.”
The day was lovely, if a trifle warm, but I was tempted to take out one of the wool lap robes, wrap it around me, and pull it up over my head.
“The war is over, my lady. If Arthur is inclined to exert his influence to learn of the whereabouts of Harry’s remains, we will leave that to the family duke.”
“You will have to face St. Clair, Julian. He’ll pop out of the bushes in Hyde Park or bump into you at some horse auction.”
I considered telling Ophelia that I’d finish our journey up on the box, listening to John Coachman’s tales of his days as a prizefighter.
“If St. Clair is foolish enough to show his face in polite society, he won’t be gracing the mortal sphere much longer. Too many good men suffered too much at his hands. I might be a traitor, but he surely is.”
“I know his auntie,” Ophelia said, gaze on the peaceful English countryside so many had died to defend. “She claims he was orphaned in France, made to choose between death and dishonor at a young age. She’s quite fond of him. She’s the only family he has left.”
Was this a backhanded attempt to comfort me, who had not been given a choice between death and dishonor?
Or perhaps I had. Perhaps Girard—I refused to think of him as some English baron strutting about his ancestral manor and having an auntie—had left the knife in my cell so that I might end my own existence. I had never been sure, but he’d taunted me with the very blade I’d carried in my boot when I’d been taken captive. That little weapon had saved my life once I’d begun scrabbling my way out of the mountains.
“Would you disown me if I abandoned Lady Longacre’s house party?” I asked.
“Yes. You cannot go running back to London just because St. Just passed along a little military gossip.”
“Why didn’t you pass along the gossip first, my lady?”
“Because I did not know if the Traitor Baron was also your personal French nightmare. More than one of the Corsican’s officers treated English captives ill, or do I mistake the matter?”
Did anybody else appreciate what a gifted thespian Lady Ophelia was? “You wanted to deny me one more reason to remain safely behind my curtained windows. I’m not a coward, Ophelia.”
She muttered something that sounded like would that you were.
I pulled down the shade on my side of the coach, tilted my hat over my eyes, and attempted to feign sleep on the washboard abominations that passed for the King’s highways. That Girard was circulating in London Society, moving under what amounted to safe passage from Wellington himself, troubled me.
Girard alone had answers that I both needed to have and dreaded to learn. Where were Harry’s remains? Had Girard allowed me to escape, or had even his citadel of suffering slipped into chaos as British forces had advanced into France?
What had I told him—if anything?
The afternoon was barely half gone, and yet, the day had been challenging and not… not boring. Not tedious at all. From the missing horse to Miss Longacre’s early morning aria, to St. Just’s surprising disclosures, the day had not been boring at all.
I still had some of my reconnaissance skills—I could follow tracks, navigate unknown terrain, and think on my feet—but my ability to put together information from disparate sources was rusty. I wanted to gallop off to London and tie Girard to a chair until he’d given me the answers I deserved. Somebody was bound to put period to the man’s existence, despite all of Wellington’s orders to the contrary. Wellington might be the greatest of national heroes, but he was not a god.
With enough bitterness and brandy, some half-lame, half-sane former lieutenant would take a notion to end Girard’s existence. If I was to question the Traitor Baron, time was of the essence.
And yet, I wasn’t ready to have that conversation, assuming Girard was willing to be confronted. One could refuse callers, go to ground, and pull the curtains closed, as I well knew. A week ago, I’d been content to immerse myself in bawdy ancient poems, and here I was paying social calls in broad daylight, albeit wearing spectacles and wrestling with an intermittently pounding head.
Another skill one learned as a reconnaissance officer was caution at all times. Why was Girard still alive? What had earned him a virtual pardon from Wellington himself?
As we pulled up before Makepeace’s stately façade, I realized I would rather remain at the house party, a pariah without portfolio, than deal with the larger questions waiting for me in Town. This odd gathering of idle, unhappy people would soon be over, and there was time enough later to deal with the older demons haunting me.
“Something’s afoot,” Lady Ophelia said as I handed her down from the coach. “No footmen to meet us, nobody idling on the veranda. Who do you suppose is in trouble now?”
“As long as I’m not in the crosshairs…”
But I was… again.