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last look on the ride back to Brixleigh. He didn’t even have to look at the powerfully built, auburn-haired man beside him to know his friend’s smile was smug. “It’s perfect.”
    And it was. Situated in the gentle slope of a shallow valley not quite five miles from Brixleigh, Rosewood Manor was like a pale jewel placed on rich green velvet. Built in the early years of the previous century, Rosewood was made of smooth, rose-colored stone. Its front was unadorned save for the large, ornately paned windows and double oak doors. It looked like a house that had been well cared for and well lived in—not by some aristocrat who stayed there only when he wanted to shoot animals or have large parties, but by afamily who had loved every nook and stone—including the multitudes of flowers, shrubberies, and trees that made up the garden behind it.
    The house was large—certainly not anything like Brixleigh, but big enough that he would need either a capable housekeeper or a wife to make sure everything ran smoothly.
    A wife. He had never really given much thought to marriage in the past, always assuming that he would marry one day but having no attributes in mind. But now that his mind turned to thoughts of impending matrimony, no one but the right woman would do.
    A woman who would not judge him. A woman he could share his darkest secret with, and she would not turn away. A woman who could teach him how to love and give her love in return. Just once in his life he wanted to know what it was like to love and be loved—unconditionally and uncontrollably.
    Was it too much for him to ask that he find such a perfect life? Yes, he knew it was. He didn’t deserve such happiness. He’d made sure of that the day he’d joined Wellington’s army. There was too much blood on his hands to deserve anything but the nightmares that plagued him and the guilt that refused to let him go.
    “Is the inside sound?” No more thoughts of the past. It was time to think of the future.
    “Very,” Miles replied. “There is little furniture but the interior is simple—none of that fussy Frog rubbish.”
    Nodding, Devlin kept his gaze centered on his future home. “Who do I talk to?”
    Miles chuckled. “I knew you would want it. Jamieson owns it.”
    Now Devlin turned to face his friend. “Lord Dartmouth?”
    “The same.” Miles’s teeth gleamed white against the tan of his skin. “Was it not his brother Thomas whose life you saved at Talavera?”
    Devlin’s gaze skipped back to Rosewood, a sense of unease washing over him. Flynn shifted as he sensed it, and Devlin calmed himself as he soothed the horse. He didn’t like it when people made him sound like some kind of hero. Heroes saved. Heroes didn’t kill.
    “You make it sound like I pulled him from the very jaws of death.”
    “Didn’t you?”
    Devlin shrugged one shoulder. “I pulled a ball from his leg. That is all.” He hadn’t been the first man to perform such surgery on a battlefield without medical training. He probably would not be the last.
    “When there was no one else to do it and infection was already taking hold. If it hadn’t been for you, he would have died.”
    Devlin didn’t bother to explain. How could he? Miles hadn’t been a career soldier. He’d been an officer who paid for the chance to fight the French for the sake of crown and country. He’d ridden a horse, always had a clean uniform, had always been held separate from the men below him despite his equal treatment of everyone he met. He had no conception of what it was to march into battle, to lie in cold, wet mud for hours waiting for the enemy to walk into your sights. Not that Miles hadn’t seen battle—he had, and he had been wounded as well. He’d been tended by Wellington’s own surgeon while other more seriously wounded men lay dying in the dirt, their blood flowing like wine from the holes in their bodies. Devlin didn’t hold him in lower esteem because of that—it was just the way