“Of course not. Where do they think you are?”
“I have no idea. Missing. Presumed dead. No idea.”
“But how? Why?”
This time she was certain he would not answer. Obviously, his life did not concern her. The carriage turned onto one of London’s most fashionable squares. With the house still ostensibly closed, the carriage went around to the mews, where the groom opened the door and handed her down. Ethan aided her maid, earning some sympathy from Flo.
She looked up at the coachman. “Return Lord Ethan to the Albany,” she said, daring him to object.
He stood his ground for a moment. Finally, he spoke. “I woke up on a troop ship among the wounded. Enlisted men. No one knew who I was; it seemed simpler to leave it that way.”
She had no answer for that. He bounded back into the carriage and was gone.
* * *
Drinking late into the night, as gentlemen do, Ethan sat with the earl in an awkward sort of companionship. Grateful as he was for food and shelter, he still fought the instinct to run and hide. Will’s prodding didn’t help.
“Your brother is a good man; I’ve worked with him as your father’s representative on legislation. Why not approach him first? I could invite him here.”
He knows Edmund?The thought made him uneasy. The earl meant well, but he didn’t understand, and Ethan didn’t have the energy to make him do so. Even well fed and clean, he felt dead inside, as if he died at Badajoz. Will Chadbourn spoke to a dead man; why would he wish that on his father or brother?
Will sat back with a sigh and reached for the bottle. “Stubborn man,” he muttered, pouring them each another glass.
“When did you come home?” Ethan asked in attempt to turn the subject.
“After Cuidad Rodrigo.”
“You were there?” Ethan gasped, perhaps not so dead after all.
Will nodded sadly. “We’ve both seen ugly things, Ethan. Those at home don’t want to know; they want to hear we survived.” Something in Ethan’s face must have warned him not to continue down that track because he changed the subject. “Swift told me you were with the Light Division.”
“Your staff has an unusual interest in war.”
“Most of them fought or cared for those who did. The Light Division at Cuidad—bad business that.”
Ordered to storm the breach in the city’s defenses, the Light Division was decimated, suffered staggering losses, including that of their brilliant commander, Robert Craufurd.
Ethan attempted a shrug. “We made it into the cathedral square.” What was left of us.”
“You took the French surrender,” Will said.
Both men stared into the fire, and Ethan found comfort in knowing Will shared the images of bodies piled high in ditches, and men climbing over them to storm the walls. Even Wellington had been sickened—and then Badajoz.
“Did you tell your father? What we saw; what really happened?” Ethan asked.
“No,” Will replied. After a pause he went on, “I was called home because he had become ill. There seemed little point.” He turned and looked at Ethan directly. “They don’t really need to hear it if they weren’t there, but that’s no excuse not to speak with your father—or at least your brother. They deserve to know you’re alive.”
Ethan refused to address his family situation. “How is it they let you serve? You were the heir.”
“Did your brother ask to serve?” Will sounded genuinely interested.
“When I left, he professed envy. I don’t know what passed between him and Father. There was never a question, but that he was being prepared to be Marquess. I could be spared. You were an only son, though.”
“It took some effort, but my father had a perfectly able nephew as spare. Still, once he fell ill, I was needed.”
“You weren’t at Badajoz.” Silenced deepened between them. It had been worse than Cuidad Rodrigo in ways Ethan wouldn’t discuss, in ways he could never tell his family. “You should have left me as I was,” Ethan said after a while.
CHAPTER4
