Page 33

First trick was a loss.

By late morning, the rain had thinned to a fine mizzle. Ophelia withdrew to the drawing room with the ladies, a piece of embroidery she had pretended to sew for a month, and a revised plan of attack.

The direct assault had failed. Not just failed, it had been a monumental disaster. Very well. The horse gambit could wait until he returned from the farms. For now, she did not need a conversation.

She needed information.

At half past eleven, a gig came up the drive through the wet. A small, damp man climbed down, looking as though determination had got him this far and would have to carry him the rest. Mr. Pole, the family’s man of business, had returned from London at last.

Ophelia gave him a quarter of an hour. Then a book from the library became urgently necessary. The need carried her out of the drawing room, across the hall, and to within a yard of the library door. The door stood ajar.

The need died there.

A well-bred young woman did not listen at doors. Ophelia took up a position at the hall table instead. Someone had left the post salver there, along with a bowl of roses dropping petals onto the polished wood. She bent over both and gave them her entire attention.

“… felicitations on the wedding, my lord.” Mr. Fletcher’s voice was busy and rubbed smooth, the voice of someone who enjoyed bringing good news. “The archbishop’s office was most obliging but the weather was something terrible getting there and back. I apologize for the delay in returning with the license.”

Paper whispered.

“Thank you.”

Her license, too late because her betrothed had died. The piece of paper she and Edward had prayed for, arranged, delivered, and put away in fewer words than her mother spent on toast.

“Will there be anything further, my lord?”

“One matter.”

The pause that followed was longer. Different. Ophelia could not have said how she knew it, with only a yard of air and an oak door between them, but the room beyond had gone colder.

“My commission.”

“Ah. Of course. You will be wanting to sell out, I imagine, now that … that is. Now.”

Poor Mr. Fletcher.

“I want to know what the status of it is.” His lordship’s voice was terse. “Write to the agents. Ask them what state my commission is in.”

“What state … forgive me, my lord?”

“I do not know how I was brought back after the action.” A pause. “The army has me among the dead.”

Ophelia frowned, realizing this was true. A fact lost in the shuffle of recent events. How had his superiors gotten something so important so wrong? Damian Archer was not some lowly infantry foot soldier. He had been a highly decorated captain, the younger brother of a baron. Surely someone such as he should not be listed among the dead in error?

“Among the …” Mr. Fletcher stumbled over the words. “But surely your colonel, your brother officers, someone would have⁠—”

“I was carried off the field. I woke in Belgium some weeks later, on a farm, a long way from anyone who knew my name. By the time I could stand, the lists had been made and the regiment had gone home.” He laid each fact down in a terse growl. “So write to the agents. If I have been listed as dead, I imagine there is a procedure for contradicting it.”

Weeks. The word had caught on something in her mind and hung there, swinging.

“There is … that is to say, there must be. It cannot often be wanted.” Fletcher rallied into professional bustle. Back pay. The muddle of the rolls. Papers to be got. “Though you understand, my lord, they may ask for proof. It is an unusual office, proving a live man alive.”

“Then prove it. You have him before you. You can make it clear I am not seeking back pay to expedite the matter.”

She was still turning it over when Fletcher, emboldened, ventured, “And your journey home, my lord, you will forgive the question, it bears on the accounts, had you funds? Your effects, your …”

“I walked.”

The silence that followed sat wrong. Too complete. As if even the rain had stopped to listen.