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had arrived at Craybourne and asked to speak with the earl privately.
    She had known that one of them was dead. She had not hoped it was David—never that—as she had waited, sick at heart and sick to the stomach, pacing the tiled hall outside the library, refusing Louisa's company. But she had hoped and hoped that it was not Julian. She had drawn a shaky hope from the fact that the soldier had not asked to speak with her. But hope—if there had been hope—had fled when the library door opened and the earl, looking grave and drawn, had asked her to step inside.
    She had known then that it was Julian, not David. The earl had not needed to tell her. But she wished with the last pitiful shred of hope that after all he was calling her in to break the news of the death of his son. She had wished that after all it was David.
    But it had been Julian. Dead in the Crimea in a battle they called Inkerman. Dead several weeks before word reached her.
    No, when she thought about it rationally, she did not wish that David was dead. But she did hate him. If it were not for him, Julian would never have been in the Crimea. He would still be alive. Instead of which he was dead and buried in a place where she could not even lay flowers on his grave. She leaned forward to rest her forehead against the cool glass of the window. But she straightened up again at a knock on the door. It opened before she could answer.
    "Rebecca?" The Countess of Hartington peered around the door, smiled, and stepped inside the room. “I thought you must be up here.
    You really should have come walking with us. It is a beautiful day."
    "I know you and Father value your time alone together," Rebecca said.
    The countess clucked her tongue. "William and I have been married for almost a year," she said. "We are no
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    longer on honeymoon. Why will you persist in feeling that you do not quite belong here with us, Rebecca?" She seated herself on a chaise longue and motioned Rebecca to take a seat too.
    Rebecca had always felt that she did not quite belong even though she had never for one moment been made to feel unwelcome. She had come to Craybourne because Julian had told her that was where she must go. And she had stayed there after his death because there was nowhere else to go. She had been unable to go to Julian's estate because he had never lived there—and after his death it had passed to a cousin of his. She had been unable to go back home because her own father had died shortly after her wedding and her mother had gone to live with a younger sister in the north of England. Rebecca's brother, Lord Meercham, had leased the house in which they had grown up—eight miles from Craybourne—and taken his family to live in London, though more often than not they were traveling about the country, moving from one house party to another. The settlement Julian had left her would have made it difficult for her to set up alone anywhere.
    "I have never said so. Father is kind to me," she said, sitting in an armchair beside the fireplace. "Extremely kind."
    "But you feel all the awkwardness of living in a house which you ran for well over a year," the countess said, smiling ruefully, "but where you now feel you have no function. And you feel the awkwardness of the reversal of our roles, though I have never pressed the point, Rebecca, and never would. And I did ask you if you minded. I am not sure I could have brought myself to marry William if you had been dreadfully opposed to the idea."
    Rebecca looked down at the hands in her lap. "I was happy for you, Louisa," she said. "And for Father. He had been alone for so many years. He must have been lonely, I think. And I would not have dreamed of trying to prevent what the two of you had mutually agreed upon. It is just that when I married I dreamed of a home and family of my own and now—oh, now there is nothing. But I would rather not talk about it. Self-pitying people are tedious to be with. I am well