Leaving home forever was not possible, of course, when one happened to be the heir to an earldom and everything that went with it. In the case of Devlin Ware, forever lasted for six years and one month. At the end of that time he was on his way back home. Or, more accurately, on his way back to Ravenswood, which was not quite the same thing. Notnearlythe same thing, in fact. Ben Ellis was with him.
Devlin had indeed purchased a commission in the 95th Regiment of Foot (the Rifles). He had not purchased any of his later promotions. He had earned them on the battlefield. It had not been impossibly difficult. The mortality rate of British officers during the Peninsular War had been shockingly high, and vacancies had to be filled, if not by purchase, then by merit and seniority.
He had arrived on the Peninsula in time to be part of the brutal winter retreat of the British forces under the command of Sir John Moore from Spain to Corunna in Portugal. He had been there for the Battle of Corunna. After that he had fought in so manyengagements, ranging from minor skirmishes to sieges to massive all-out battles, that they tended to blur together in his mind so that he could not always remember whether a particular incident had happened at the Battle of Talavera or at Bussaco or Almeida. Or perhaps Vitória or Roncesvalles. He had been there for all of them and more.
He did remember the Battle of Toulouse, however, fought in the South of France on April 10 of 1814, because it was the final battle of the war. Over several years, British regiments had gradually trudged and fought their way out of Portugal and across Spain and over the Pyrenees into France, where they fought again, and finally it was all over. Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated as emperor, Marshal Soult agreed to an armistice with the Duke of Wellington, and Bonaparte was sent into exile on the island of Elba. Captain Devlin Ware—the only name by which he would allow anyone to address him—had had enough. The war was all over for him too. He returned to England, sold his commission, dealt with other necessary business in London, and was now on his way to Ravenswood.
It was two years since he had been summoned to return there. But he had ignored the summons at the time and remained with his regiment to lead his men to the bitter end of the fighting.
Two years ago his father had dropped to the floor of the taproom at the village inn. He had been dead before he reached it.
Devlin Ware, seventh Earl of Stratton, peer of the realm, owner of Ravenswood Hall and a number of other properties and a vast fortune besides, had been summoned home by his father’s solicitor, now his own. He had been summoned too by a brief, formal note from the countess, his mother. He neither answered nor responded to either one. Ben had done so, he suspected, but they had not talked about it. They did not talk of what had once been their homeor about any of the other people who had lived there and presumably still did. He believed Ben had kept up some sort of correspondence with some of them, but Devlin never asked and Ben almost never volunteered information or comment. Devlin had not corresponded with any of them, even the total innocents. The children. He had always thought it would be best if they considered him dead. Sometimes he almost wished he were.
He had not been killed in six years of relentless, ferocious warfare, however. He had arrived back in England relatively intact. He had all his limbs and both eyes, and surprisingly few scars. The worst of those he did have was unfortunately visible. It slashed across his forehead and through his eyebrow, and across the top half of his cheek, but the saber that had done the damage had missed his eye by some miracle that defied understanding. It had also failed to separate the top half of his head from the rest of his body. If there were other, inner scars, he did not know of them or care about them. He was a battle-hardened warrior with a battle-hardened mind, and that suited him fine.
He had been known in his regiment as a hard and ruthless officer, demanding a great deal of his men, but never more than he demanded of himself. He had held them to a high standard of conduct and achievement, but he had had one quirk of nature that had prevented many of his men from outright hating him and had even inspired a few to devotion and the determination to protect him from hostile fire. A number of enemy skirmishers died from rifle fire as they tried to pick off Captain Ware, conspicuous with his red officer’s sash and sword. Unlike almost every other officer of any rank, he gave second chances except when they were impossible to give, as in a deliberate murder, for example. If one of his men ran in panic from battle, his recapture meant instant execution—except with Captain Ware, who stood the offender up in shirt and breechesand nothing else before a punishment parade of his peers, all standing rigidly to attention, and gave the man the choice between an ignominious death by hanging and a position at the very center of the front line in the next battle. All, without exception, had chosen the front line, and some had died an honorable death there in the next battle. A few had distinguished themselves with extraordinary bravery. Captain Ware gave a second chance but never a third. Most men did not need a third.
His own courage could never be called into question. He volunteered a number of times to lead a forlorn hope, an advance force of elite volunteers who led the charge against a seemingly impregnable position and were almost certain to die so that the regular forces behind them could smash through to victory. On one of those occasions he had been chosen and led his fellow volunteers to what was a successful siege but at the terrible cost of the deaths of nine out of every ten of them. Lieutenant Ware was careless of death himself, but it did not find him on that day or any other. He was awarded his captaincy as a result of that forlorn hope.
His courage, his toughness, his tenacity, his cold adherence to duty made him feared, respected, and revered all at the same time—and by the same men.
During those years he made up for the celibacy of his youth and young manhood. He chose his women exclusively from among the camp followers—washerwomen, cooks, wives, and widows—though he never slept with any of the wives. There were widows enough. Many of them had come to the Peninsula with their husbands as winners of one of the lotteries that decided which women would be allowed to accompany their men and which would not. Those husbands often died in battle, but their widows rarely returned home. How would they have got there? What would they have done when they went back? They stayed and worked andremarried and as like as not were widowed again. It was a constant cycle. There were always men only too willing and eager to take over from dead husbands and have a woman all their own. Most of the women were clean, honest, hardworking, foulmouthed, tough, cheerful, and lusty.
Devlin liked them as a group. He rarely slept with the same woman twice, but few if any of them resented that fact. The women did not expect that an officer would ever marry them, after all, but it was definitely something of a coup to have been seen disappearing inside an officer’s billet during an evening. And if any of them were apprehensive about Captain Ware’s reputation as a cold, hard commanding officer, they were soon able to pass on the reassuring information to other women that he was lovely in bed—always clean and freshly shaved, considerate, respectful, almost gentle. And that he took his time about the main business, Lord love him, and let them have a good time too. Also that he was very generousafterbed, though, none of them being whores, there was never any demand or expectation of being paid. He gave gifts of money anyway, yet never made them feel like whores. Many of them would not have minded being invited back for more of the same, though they were far too sensible to expect it or to waste their energy sighing over him when there were plenty of other men to go with or even marry.
Ben remained with his brother throughout those years, except for the two-month period he spent with Nicholas, who was so severely wounded at the Battle of Talavera that it seemed certain he would lose a leg and very likely his life as well. Devlin spent a week with him too, but when duty called him back to his regiment, he went, leaving Ben behind. Ben in turn had proved himself to be a force to be reckoned with when he was confronted by surgeons—nothing butsawbonesto his mind—who thought they were goingto get away with sawing off his brother’s leg when it was notby Godnecessary and they would do it at peril of their lives. Nick kept his leg and, ultimately, his life.
Devlin did not see much of his brother apart from that one-week stretch, when Nicholas was so crazed with fever and pain that it was doubtful he even knew that two of his brothers were hovering over him like fierce, cursing angels the whole time. He was a major in a prestigious cavalry regiment. He was always resplendent in scarlet coat with copious amounts of gold lace and facings. His fellow officers were almost all sons of aristocratic fathers. Devlin was one rank lower and attached to a regiment that had little prestige, except for the growing respect for the rifle as a superior weapon to the musket, which other foot regiments still used almost exclusively. He also looked less striking in his green uniform coat. His fellow officers were mostly sons of the gentry. Just as he liked it. He wished he were one of them. He wished he could exchange mothers with Ben. Or exchange ages with Nicholas.
Ben was not himself a military man, of course. He was not a servant either, despite his official designation as Devlin’s batman. If he did all those things a real batman would have done, but without the salary—which he had flatly refused—and without being told, then he did them for something to do, he had explained once when his brother had protested. He nursed Devlin through his various injuries except on those occasions when Devlin told him, usually through gritted teeth, tostop fussing, damn it, Ben—it’s a mere scratch.Occasionally, and probably against every military rule that had ever been written, Ben fought in defense of his brother when he had found himself close to the battlefront, and then in defense of his brother’s men, and ultimately in defense of himself. He bore a charmed life, however. The closest he came to being wounded in all of the six years was a slight burn on the outside of one arm as amusket ball whistled by him, too close for comfort, when he was in his shirtsleeves. He grumbled about his damaged shirt and made no mention of the burn.
Like his brother, Ben chose from among the camp followers for his personal comfort. Unlike his brother, though, he picked one woman and kept her—and only her. She was large and strong and plain faced and had red hands and arms from the large washtubs at which she labored every day. She was also true to her man, and Ben was content with her. When she showed signs of getting big bellied and he confronted her on it and she admitted that yes, she was with child but he need not bother his head over it, he went and found the regimental chaplain and married her.
“I am not going to have Marjorie called whore on my account,” he explained to Devlin, whom he had asked to be a witness at the wedding. “She is a good, decent woman, Dev, and she deserves better. And no son of mine is going to be called bastard.”
They called their daughter Joy Ellis, and Devlin did not think there was any irony in the naming. He believed that Ben, in his own quiet way, loved his wife and was happy. He buried her and mourned her with stonelike demeanor when she died somewhere in the Pyrenees of a chill they could not stop to treat properly as they slogged and fought their way into France. She had looked after the infant with uncomplaining devotion, and after her death Ben tucked the child inside his almost-warm-enough greatcoat, next to the heat of his body, and she spread her hands against his neck, nestled her curly head beneath his chin, and nuzzled the collar of his coat, cooing contentedly. She was almost one year old, fully weaned, and not yet quite able to walk. Ben trudged onward without complaint, holding his Joy close to his heart and the rest of his gear and hers on his back.
Now they were in England and on their way to Ravenswood,the three of them. Ben had not yet hired a nursemaid for his daughter, unwilling as he was to let her out of his sight. Devlin had had several appointments with his solicitor in London. After one of these, on the man’s advice, he had visited a tailor to turn himself into a proper English gentleman and had purchased a carriage grand enough for the Earl of Stratton to ride in and four horses worthy of pulling it and him. Ben had also purchased new clothes for himself and his daughter. So here they were, having run dry of excuses for delaying in London, and traveling in far greater pomp and luxury than they had six years and one month ago when they had been going in the opposite direction.
Devlin had written a brief note to his mother, advising her of their impending arrival.
He had not written to anyone else and had not asked news of them either from his solicitor or from Ben. Philippa would be twenty-one now. He did not even know if she was married. Owen would be eighteen. Finished with school. Perhaps about to go up to Oxford? With a career in the church as his objective? It had seemed unlikely when the boy was twelve, but that was a long time ago. Stephanie would be fifteen. Almost grown-up. So many missing years. He ought perhaps to have maintained contact with them. But his very survival—or the survival of his sanity, anyway—had seemed to depend upon his cutting all ties, all news, all knowledge of what he had left behind. And all memories too.
It was impossible to stop oneself from thinking, of course. Thought happened whether one wanted it to or not. But hehadstopped himself from thinking of what had once been home. He had done it with a ruthless effort of will, filling his mind with his new life. He had chosen a military career quite deliberately. There would be much upon which to focus his attention, he had thought. And he had been right. Fortunately he had always devoted himselfto duty. He had not found it hard to transfer that training to his duties as an officer during wartime.
When the news of his father’s death had been forced upon him, it had been like something coming from another lifetime. One in which he was no longer interested. He had treated it as mere information, to be dealt with later. Nowlaterhad come. Though he had still not dealt with that death emotionally. Just as he had not dealt with thousands of other deaths he had witnessed. He had killed emotion while he was driving his curricle away from Ravenswood and then Cartref all those years ago.
He had not thought of Cartref or any of the people living there since.
It was impossible to know what sort of welcome he would receive at Ravenswood. Or what he would have to offer in return. They were all strangers to him now, the people living there, as he would be to them. People he had once loved. But what was love? He no longer knew or wanted to know. He thought suddenly of Idris Rhys, his closest friend while they were both growing up and a little beyond their growing years too. If Idris had written to him after he left, it was Ben who would have opened the letter and perhaps replied to it. Though it was doubtful Idrishadwritten. He had not been happy during their final encounter. And his very words came back, as though they had been spoken yesterday.
Dev,he had said just before Devlin climbed to the seat of his curricle beside Ben on that final morning,you have broken her heart, and it will go hard with her. Don’t do it, man. Find some other course of action. There is bound to be something. Dad will help you. I will help you. Just don’t be an idiot. It always has to be all or nothing with you, though, doesn’t it?
Her.
You have broken her heart.
And just like that, his thoughts landed where they had always least wanted to go.
