They moved toward their table as one, bringing with them the scent of lily of the valley, until the most courageous of them stepped forward after her curtsy, her hands behind her back.

“We saw your lordship enter the bookshop . . .”

“Did you now.”

Their sparkling eyes did not match their bashful tone. On her side of the table, Lucie’s gaze had narrowed.

“We were hoping you would sign this for us,” one of the girls said, a redhead. Her little nose was enticingly freckled. Lovely. Since Lucie was glowering a mere arm’s length away, he was briefly tempted to provoke her and flirt, but then the redhead thrust something at him. A card. It was of the size of a Valentine card, he knew; he had seen a shipload’s worth of them in his lifetime thanks to tireless legions of admirers. Except that the motif of this particular card was—himself. Someone had cut out his picture—the one in uniform, where he was staring valiantly into the middle distance—from a newspaper article about his Victoria Cross. Someone had glued it onto a card. And had added a lace frame. They had colored his eyes blue. And there was an illustration of a dog, a small, fluffy one that looked as though it would yap and bite ankles.

“It’s . . .” He squinted. “It’s—”

“It’s a Ballentine card,” said the girl who had addressed him first, setting off more giggling.

“I see,” he said blandly. “How neat.”

“Aren’t they lovely?” one of them cooed.

“If only you could sign them, milord—it should make them even more precious than the others.”

“There are . . . more?” he dared to ask.

Three heads nodded vigorously.

“They’re all the rage,” the redhead said. “There are a few other heroes the girls like to put on a card, but your lordship is by far the most popular. It costs two or more other heroes to trade, more if they have no lace frame.”

“We wouldn’t ever trade ours,” the leader added hastily. “They’re our good-luck charms.”

He supposed it wasn’t necessary to comprehend any of this.

His hand slipped inside his jacket and pulled a pen from the inner breast pocket.

He signed the card with the dog as the girls stood with bated breath, and two more equally absurd ones.

They disappeared in a chorus of sighs, leaving a delightful trail of spring flower fragrances behind.

He turned back to Lucie slowly.

An evil gleam was dancing in her eyes.

“Well,” she said mildly.

“Well,” he said darkly.

The corners of her mouth were twitching. “This should sufficiently answer your question. You see, I would have recommended you pursue the idea of the war diaries, but romantic poetry under your name might work very well indeed. You could, however, just set up a shop . . .” She lost the struggle. She burst out laughing, her small white teeth flashing.

“Here now—” he began.

“. . . a shop,” she wheezed, “and sell . . . Ballentine cards. Most lucrative. One for two!”

He should say something stern, but she was bewitchingly ill-mannered, laughing out loud in public. Unfortunately, the object of her glee was—him.

“Do not forget the lace frame, for highest value,” she told him, and took her leave after a glance at her pocket watch, abandoning him to the company of her empty cup.

He finished his coffee seemingly unmoved, a wry smile on his lips, but her absence, compounded by the emptiness of the place, was palpable. The world quickened its pace again; the noise of the street below swelled, and he noted the room’s décor. His mind, usually sprawling and contemplating several different things at once, became calm the more his surroundings exploded; it was the reason he was a good soldier when it counted, and why he felt a remarkable sense of focus and quiet in Lucie’s presence, antagonistic force of nature that she was. An underrated feeling, quietness. If he had a conscience, he would probably regret having to wipe the laughter off her face so soon.

Chapter 7

The Great Western train from Oxford to Ashdown crept through the Cotswolds with remarkable slowness. Gently rolling hills were drifting past the window, so very civilized and English with their low peaks and quaint valleys and a lone gnarled oak tree here and there. How they paled in comparison to the emerald mountains of Afghanistan. England’s colors appeared to have faded since his return, and everything outside London was slow: the service, people’s minds, life. But renting his St. James apartment including seven staff had become too expensive the moment Rochester demanded he marry, and the family town house was out of the question. The walls there had eyes. The rooms he now rented off an old fellow student in Oxford’s Logic Lane were cheap as well as located much closer to Ashdown. Of course, it meant his valet was grumbling over a multitude of new duties, and he was stuck in Oxford, where the tailor was mediocre, the food stodgy, and the debauchery tepid. Unacceptably dull, having to keep an eye on the accounts.

He ran his palm down the slippery-smooth silk of his waistcoat. He had thought of costly, well-made things often during his time abroad. Amid heat and weevils and gore, he had envisioned sleek fabrics that wouldn’t make his whole body itch. The smell of fresh, clean bedding. Wine as rich and soft as velvet.

He would give it all up again before he bent to Rochester’s will.

He could not, however, give up his mother quite so easily, could he. It was, in fact, a lamentable habit of his to think of his mother whenever an opportunity to break his bonds with Ashdown presented itself. The first time he had chosen not to leave, he had been sixteen and in possession of a handsome sum from selling erotic short stories to the other boys at Eton and to an illegal shop in Whitechapel, enough to pay for a steamer ticket to America and keep him in comfortable lodgings until he’d found employment. Neither taking employment nor living among raucous Americans had held any appeal, but Rochester and his whip had increasingly appealed less. But there was Mother. If he left, how would she fare? Marcus had never been cruel, but he had been Rochester’s pet and had taken after him in disposition—he had no patience for eccentricity and moods. Neither did Tristan, in fairness, unless they were his own, but out of the three Ballentine men he was the one who felt protective rather than provoked when the countess did something silly. Such as locking herself away for a whole spring season to paint two mediocre Impressionist paintings a day, only to never touch a brush again after she had reemerged. The truth was, if one could not escape in a straightforward manner, because a man like Rochester had rules and all the money, one had to do it inwardly. By way of painting. Or writing. Or drinking and fucking, when one wasn’t crawling through dust in the East.

He sprawled back into the plush train seat. He should be writing now, because Lucie was, of course, correct; his war diaries would sell well indeed. His notebook lay already spread open on the coach table, the blank page demanding he jot down a structure for the narrative, and possibly some thoughts on which events to include and which ones to erase from history. However, the trouble with words was that putting them onto paper was a bloody slog even at the height of inspiration. Presently, he wasn’t inspired in the slightest. The war had not been his war, and he had no desire to tie himself to it more closely, now it was over. Granted, he had been made to fit the military boots by way of Rochester’s diligent training and a few generations’ worth of Ballentine vigor and valor rolling in his veins. And where chaos reigned, his impulsive decisions were superior to lengthy contemplations. Thus, he was occasionally compelled to do things the public loved. Covering his wounded captain with his own body rather than duck and run, for example. To make coin from it now left a cynical taste in his mouth, but damned if he wasn’t going to be pragmatic and edit these diaries. Tomorrow.

* * *

The sandstone quadrangle of Ashdown Castle glowed golden like a honeycomb in the afternoon sun. Any unsuspecting visitor would be fooled by the inviting façade; it was a sinister place.

Rochester was in London today, some business or such in the House of Lords, but Jarvis, his father’s thin-lipped butler-cum-spy, would try and sniff around his heels. And to reach the west wing, he had to walk past Marcus’s life-sized portrait in the Great Hall, and it did funny things to him. Under his brother’s fixed brown gaze, the signet ring grew heavy on his little finger, like a ball and chain, and his insides turned cold. He quickened his pace and felt Marcus’s stare between his shoulder blades until he reached the grand staircase.

He entered his mother’s bedchamber after a quick rap on the door. For a moment, he stood disoriented. The chamber was steeped in nightlike darkness. There was no sound. Had he not known better, he’d have thought the bed empty, but the air was thick with sadness.

He closed the door gently. “Mother?”

Silence.

He moved carefully in the shadows, in case something had been added to her room: a chair or a side table not yet on his mental map.

He halted by the nearest window.

“Mother, I’m going to open the curtains.”

He pulled at the heavy brocade fabric, and light blinded him for a moment. Then Ashdown Park unfolded before him in all the tender green shades of early summer.

Bedsheets rustled softly behind him. “Marcus?”