‘What do you mean, Colonel?’ Isabel hid her embarrassment with her fan.
‘He is wed to a ghost, my dear Lady Somerton.’
Isabel took a steadying breath. ‘Inez?’
‘He told you? Do you know how she died?’
‘Just that she was murdered by the French. Some of it I can guess.’
Harry’s lips tightened. ‘It took some persuasion, but they had just wed with the Colonel’s consent, and Inez was on her way to join him when her coach was ambushed by a patrol of French soldiers. I will spare you the details, Lady Somerton, but it was a bad business, and the tragedy is that it was Alder who had the misfortune to find her. Would have destroyed a lesser man. It shook me to the core.’
She turned to look at him, seeing the grim line of his mouth. ‘You were there?’
He nodded.
Isabel had read newspaper reports of terrible atrocities in Spain. A young, beautiful woman, such as Inez, would have met a fearful end. And for Sebastian to have found her? She gave an involuntary shudder.
‘What was she like?’
‘Inez Aradeiras was a truly lovely girl. She nursed the wounded, and I never heard a bad word about her. Alder was besotted with her. And she with him.’
Isabel felt a stab of pain. She would much rather have heard about a harridan. Little wonder the memory of this paragon of Portuguese virtue made it hard for any living woman.
‘He tracked the murdering swine down and killed him, you know,’ Harry continued. ‘Didn’t bring Inez back, and he took to the bottle. Then came Talavera. Wouldn’t be the first soldier who sought a way out in battle.’
It took Isabel a moment to pick up the implication of his words. ‘Are you saying he deliberately put himself in danger at Talavera?’
‘Led a suicidal charge that should have killed him, but the good Lord had other plans.’
Isabel shot a glance across the room to Sebastian as all the pieces of Sebastian’s past fell into place. Matt had joined him and they were engaged in conversation with another of theirneighbours, Sebastian’s handsome head bent towards an elderly woman as if she were the most interesting person in the room. She tried to imagine what he had been through and wondered how he could appear so… normal. For that, she concluded, the credit had to go to the Reverend Alder.
The conversation in the churchyard at Little Benning came back to her. He had found the solace and forgiveness he sought from his stepfather’s gentle counsel, but was Harry right? Would he always be wed to a ghost?
She turned to excuse herself, but Harry had already left her side and was leading Fanny out onto the dance floor.
Chapter Forty-Three
Sebastian excused himself from the gossipy woman and waylaid a passing servant for a glass of champagne. Across the dancers, Isabel still stood where he had left her, Harry Dempster at her shoulder, engaged in conversation.
He began to make his way around the floor, pausing for the most cursory of greetings, only to find his way barred by Freddy.
‘Our Isabel and your old chum seem to be getting on well, don’t they?’ Freddy leaned forward and said in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘I have heard that the good Colonel is a little stretched for cash. Perhaps a widow’s jointure would be useful?’
Sebastian scowled. ‘That is insulting to both of them, Lynch.’
Freddy held up a hand in protest. ‘I merely meant they make a handsome couple.’
They did. Even Sebastian had to concede that there was something about both of them that seemed matched.
‘I think Isabel is entitled to some happiness in her life,’ Sebastian replied stiffly.
‘Watch yourself, Somerton, Lady Kendall is heading this way and she has her eye on you,’ Freddie said.
The crowd parted to let Lady Kendall pass. She approached him in a miasma of perfume that threatened to choke him.
‘My dear Lord Somerton.’ She held out her hand and he bowed low over it.
‘Lady Kendall, may I say you look enchanting tonight.’
