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sent, accomplishing the tasks he had been set.
    At Waterloo there must have been innumerable cases of heroism to equal Walter’s. It had simply been a case of his being in the right place at the right time—if one considered fame of primary importance. Or in the wrong place at the wrong time if one considered survival of some significance. Walter had died. The Four Horsemen had survived.
    Sarah had been delighted to meet them and severely disappointed to be told that two of them were married and that the other two were perhaps a little old for her.
    “Oh pooh,” she had said. “Older gentlemen are so much more handsome, Aunt Sophie, and so much more attractive. Young gentlemen invariably have spots.”
    Sophia had chuckled. But none of the Four Horsemen would do for Sarah. She might have felt sorry that she had been forced into presenting her niece to them if she had not been convinced that they would be uninterested in so young a girl. They had all had a great deal of experience with life itself and with sexual matters in particular. There had been an endless stream of Spanish and Portuguese beauties all clamoring to share their beds.
    Sophia had refused to stay for a second breakfast at Portland Place. She had been eager to get home, to be alone, to digest the morning’s unexpected encounter.
    She rested her head against the back of her chair and closed her eyes. Coming so closely as it had after the events of yesterday ... it seemed that the past was never to be put behind her. All the time she had spoken with them, genuinely—oh yes, genuinely glad to see them again, she had been thinking to herself, How would they look at me if they knew? With disgust, contempt, pity? And she had known that the answer mattered to her. Even though she had not seen them for three years and perhaps would never see them again after two evenings hence.
    It mattered.
    She might try to convince herself that she had accepted those debts— why did she persist in calling them that?—for the sake of others: for the sake of Edwin and his family, for the sake of her own brother and his family. And it was true. But she had done it for her sake too. She would not be able to bear ...
    The feeling of safety at seeing them and talking and laughing with them had been almost overwhelming. Here was safety in solid human form, multiplied fourfold. It had been almost a conscious thought as well as a feeling. But they could offer her no safety, no help. Quite the opposite.
    She merely had one more secret to withhold from them. There had always been secrets. Always had, always would. It had become the story of her life. The burden must be carried alone. No one could help.
    But there was the illusion of safety when she was with them. She knew that from experience, and it had not always been just illusion. Walter had not been a neglectful husband, but even so, there had been times when danger had threatened and she had had to move quickly from their billet when he was away at his duties—often in adverse weather conditions. She had never done so alone or even with just servants to help. One or more of the Horsemen had always turned up when they were most needed to help and escort her, to point out to her the funny side of the most unfunny situations.
    Nathaniel had laughed at her once when they were escaping at reckless speed through a sea of mud and she had fallen from her horse’s back when it had slipped. She had been caked with wet, foul-smelling mud, but Nathaniel had hauled her up in front of him, ruining his scarlet jacket, and held her bracketed in the circle of his arms.
    “You know, Sophie,” he had said, “ladies in London and Paris use mud packs to improve their complexions. They would kill to look as you do now.”
    She had laughed heartily and tried to mop the mud from her face with an equally muddy glove. “I should be beautiful all over by this day’s end, then,” she had said. “Walter will not recognize me. He will disown