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sent up too, as she thinks she is genteel people and hates eating in the kitchen.”
    “Yes, ma‘am.” Samuel allowed himself an almost conspiratorial smirk.
    And so even after Sophia had arrived in her sitting room after taking her outdoor garments to her dressing room and patting her hair into something resembling order, she had to hold herself together until Pamela had arrived with the tray and had explained that the cup Mrs. Armitage usually used in the mornings had unfortunately slipped to the kitchen floor from Pamela’s own hands and been smashed into a thousand pieces.
    “For which Cook says as how you may dock my wages, ma‘am,” Pamela, the maid-of-all-work, said, sounding both aggrieved and anxious. “Though it were not my fault. If Samuel had not yelled out ’Oi!‘ quite so loud when the coalman come and tried to pull one over on him, ma’am, I would not have dropped the cup. I am very sorry, ma‘am.”
    “We will blame the coalman,” Sophia said cheerfully. “I am sure he has broad enough shoulders, Pamela. Though I do not suppose we can dock his wages, can we? This is a pretty enough cup. Prettier than the broken one, in fact.”
    “Yes, ma‘am.” Pamela curtsied. “But I am right sorry about the other one.”
    “Think no more of it.” Sophia was desperate to be alone.
    She reached for the teapot as soon as the door had closed behind the maid and she had set down the dog’s dish. She poured tea into the ugly green-and-gold cup that had replaced her dainty pink rosebud one, then sat back and closed her eyes. Alone at last!
    Sarah had been thrilled to meet the Horsemen. She always was, of course, when she met new gentlemen, something she had only recently begun to do, as she had been in the schoolroom until her eighteenth birthday just after Christmas. She looked upon every gentleman as a prospective suitor. But she had been excited by her meeting with these four, as what lady would not be? They were all, without exception, extraordinarily handsome men. The women in the Peninsula—women of all ages and social rank and marital status—had often amused themselves with trying to decide which one was the most handsome. Kenneth was the tallest—though they were all above the average in height—and he had the distinction of his very blond hair and aquiline features. Rex had been blessed with very dark hair and dark, compelling eyes and had, in addition to these assets, a devastating charm. Eden had the distinct advantage of very blue eyes, which he knew well how to use to effect, and he had a devil-may-care attitude to life that women always found attractive. Nathaniel Gascoigne had his slumberous gray eyes and his wonderful smile. As one of the women—a colonel’s wife—had once remarked, one could not look at him without imagining his head on a pillow—next to one’s own.
    The women had all had their favorite, as had Sophia.
    Though they had all been quite unashamedly in love with all four.
    They had been so full of energy and humor and dare deviltry. They had always been in the thick of battle with their men, never sending enlisted men into dangers they were not willing to face themselves—and always leading the way. If there was danger in a part of the field that was none of their concern, they rode there anyway. They had been in their commander’s ill favor as often as they were being congratulated by him. They should be thankful that they were officers rather than enlisted men, he had been fond of telling them—and they had been equally fond of reporting to their friends. They would have been almost constantly at the whipping triangles otherwise for failing to follow orders.
    It was Walter who had first called them the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It was ironic that Walter was the one to have so distinguished himself at Waterloo. Not that there had ever been anything of the coward about him. But he had been an unimaginative man, who had fought by the rules, going where he was