CHAPTER 1
The house in St. James’s Square had always seemed too large for the men who inhabited it. Even now—after years of campaigns, dispatches, and secrets traded in the dark—it still bore the air of some old bachelor establishment. Major Baines kept a brace of duelling pistols on the mantel purely for the amusement of polishing them; boots were always drying before the fire; and a faint smell of pipe smoke clung to the curtains in a manner entirely impervious to the finest laundress.
To Captain Edmund Cholmely, the place had once meant camaraderie, late-night triumphs, the warm silence of friendship unspoken.
Now he wondered what was left for him. Stuart and Fielding had recently married, and with his brother’s death, Edmund felt his footing slipping.
He stood at the window of the salon, watching the winter dusk gather in the square below. Lamps trembled to life one by one, and the fog wove its fine grey fingers through the hedges. It was a peaceful sight, and completely at odds with the unquiet heaviness in his chest.
A murmur of familiar voices drifted behind him: Colonel Renforth’s calm baritone; Major Stuart’s cheerful rumble; Fielding’s quick, incisive replies. There was the soft scrape of Manners’ chair as he rose to pour himself another brandy. They were the sounds of men who had lives and a future.
Edmund inhaled slowly, willing the air to settle the unease within him. It did not. Nothing had settled him since his brother’s death.
A traitor’s brother. That was how he saw himself now.
A traitor’s brother he was—and, what was worse, a man who had failed to foresee it.
“Chum,” Renforth called from behind him. “Stop brooding at the window and sit down. Manners is threatening to give us all a lecture on cavalry manoeuvres if you do not occupy that chair instead.”
“That is slander,” Manners said comfortably. “I was merely observing that infantrymen walk everywhere and therefore grow melancholy. Put Cholmely on a horse and his spirits will revive.”
“If my spirits depend upon a horse,” Edmund replied, turning at last, “then I fear they are doomed.”
This earned a chorus of amused snorts, though Stuart regarded him with that particular look—half pity, half fellow-feeling—that Edmund loathed. All of them looked at him with pity at one time or another nowadays.
He took the empty chair by the fire because Renforth expected it, and because standing apart when the others were seated would draw more attention than he desired.
The Colonel, seated at the centre of their circle like some feudal lord, regarded them all with the contained composure that made even generals defer to him. He was a tall man, his sandy hair now showing respectable streaks of silver, and he held his glass of brandy as if it were an extension of his authority.
Baines and Manners occupied the sofa—Manners elegant even in repose, Baines polishing a pistol whilst sprawling like a great guard dog.
Stuart and Fielding sat in leather armchairs opposite.
“Very well,” Renforth said. “We are all here. Let us come to the matter at last.”
“Which matter?” Manners asked. “The dismal state of Fielding’s cravat? Stuart’s lamentable absence from White’s? Cholmely’s?—”
“The one I summoned you all for,” Renforth interrupted, “and if you stain the leather, Baines, I shall make you run drills in the garden.”
Baines grinned and set the pistol down as if it might leap to his defence.
Renforth turned his attention to Edmund, and the room quieted. “Edmund,” he said, and the use of his given name stole Edmund’s breath for a moment. “You may not thank me for what I am about to say, but you will hear it. You have been idle too long.”
Edmund swallowed the tart reply that rose instinctively.
Idle—yes, if one called drifting between melancholy and silence, between nightmares and despair, idleness.
“You needed time after your brother’s death,” Renforth continued.
Silence fell like a dropped curtain. They had never openly discussed what had happened.
Edmund stared into the fire, his jaw tight. He would not let them see the way the word struck him, hollowing his ribs. Even hearing it now felt like a blow.
The Colonel’s tone softened. “The world has not paused with you, Cholmely, and we have work that requires you.”
Manners leaned forward. “Work? At last. I feared you meant to turn us into pensioners.”
“Not all of us are idle,” Stuart murmured.
