“With Sebastian?” Aunt Anna asked.
Harry nodded. “Someone’s got to make sure he doesn’t get himself killed.”
Sebastian gave him a dry look at the insult, but he was clearly too pleased by the turn of events to make a retort. He’d always been ambivalent about a future in the military; Harry knew that, for all his bravado, he’d be relieved to have his cousin along with him.
“You can’t go to war,” Sir Lionel said. “You are my heir.”
Everyone in the room-all four of them his relations-turned to the baronet with varying degrees of surprise. It was, quite possibly, the only sensible thing he’d said in years.
“You have Edward,” Harry said bluntly.
Sir Lionel drank, blinked, and shrugged. “Well, that’s true.”
It was more or less what Harry would have expected him to say, and yet deep in his belly he felt a nagging pit of disappointment. And resentment.
And hurt.
“A toast to Harry!” Sir Lionel said jovially, lifting his glass. He did not seem to notice that no one else was joining him. “Godspeed, m’son.” He tipped back his glass, only then realizing that he had not recently refilled. “Well, damn it,” he muttered. “That’s awkward.”
Harry felt himself slumping in his chair. And at the same time, his feet began to feel itchy, as if they were ready move forward. To run.
“When do you leave?” Sir Lionel asked, happily replenished.
Harry looked at Sebastian, who immediately spoke up. “I must report next week.”
“Then it shall be the same for me,” Harry said to his father. “I shall need the funds for the commission, of course.”
“Of course,” Sir Lionel said, responding instinctively to the tone of command in Harry’s voice. “Well.” He looked down at his feet, then over at his wife.
She was staring out the window.
“Jolly fine to see you all,” Sir Lionel said. He plunked down his glass and ambled over to the door, losing his footing only once.
Harry watched him depart, feeling strangely detached from the scene. He’d imagined this before, of course. Not the going into the army, but the leaving. He’d always supposed that he’d head off to university in the usual fashion, packing his things into the family carriage and rolling away. But his imagination had indulged in all sorts of dramatic exits-everything from wild gesticulations to ice-cold stares. His favorites involved flinging bottles against the wall. The expensive ones. The ones smuggled in from France. Would his father still support the Frogs with his illegal purchases, now that his son was facing them down on the battlefield?
Harry stared at the empty doorway. It didn’t matter, did it? He was done here.
He was done. With this place, with this family, with all those nights steering his father into bed, placing him carefully on his side so that if he did vomit again, at least he wouldn’t choke on it.
He was done.
Done.
But it felt so hollow, so quiet. His departure was marked by…nothing.
And it would take him years to realize that he’d been cheated.
Chapter One
T hey say he killed his first wife.”
It was enough to make Lady Olivia Bevelstoke cease stirring her tea. “Who?” she asked, since the truth was, she hadn’t been listening.
“Sir Harry Valentine. Your new neighbor.”
Olivia took a hard look at Anne Buxton, and then at Mary Cadogan, who was nodding her head in agreement. “You must be joking,” she said, although she knew quite well that Anne would never joke about something like that. Gossip was her lifeblood.
“No, he really is your new neighbor,” put in Philomena Waincliff.
Olivia took a sip of her tea, mostly so that she would have time to keep her face free of its desired expression, which was a cross between unabashed exasperation and disbelief. “I meant that she must be joking that he killed someone,” she said, with more patience than she was generally given credit for.
“Oh.” Philomena picked up a biscuit. “Sorry.”
“I know I heard that he killed his fiancée,” Anne insisted.
“If he killed someone, he’d be in gaol,” Olivia pointed out.
“Not if they couldn’t prove it.”
Olivia glanced slightly toward her left, where, through a thick stone wall, ten feet of fresh springtime air, and another thick wall, this one of brick, Sir Harry Valentine’s newly leased home sat directly to the south of hers.
The other three girls followed her direction, which made Olivia feel quite foolish, as now they were all staring at a perfectly blank spot on the drawing-room wall. “He didn’t kill anyone,” she said firmly.
“How do you know?” Anne responded.
Mary nodded.
“Because he didn’t,” Olivia said. “He wouldn’t be living one house away from me in Mayfair if he’d killed someone.”
“Not if they couldn’t prove it,” Anne said again.
Mary nodded.
Philomena ate another biscuit.
Olivia managed an ever-so-slight turn of her lips. Upward, she hoped. It wouldn’t do to frown. It was four in the afternoon. The other girls had been visiting for an hour, chatting about this and that, gossiping (of course), and discussing their wardrobe selections for the next three social events. They met like this frequently, about once per week, and Olivia enjoyed their company, even if the conversation lacked the heft she enjoyed with her closest friend, Miranda née Cheever now Bevelstoke.
Yes, Miranda had gone and married Olivia’s brother. Which was a good thing. A marvelous thing. They had been friends since birth, and now they would be sisters until death. But it also meant that Miranda was no longer an unmarried lady, required to do unmarried lady sorts of things.