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Rebecca?"
    "Yes," Rebecca said. She did not want to make a grand entrance either.
    They hurried down the stairway to join the Earl of
    38 Mary Balogh Hartington, who was just emerging from the library into the hall.

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    Major Lord Tavistock had been wounded again in 1855, a nasty bayonet gash that had opened up his neck and shoulder. It was a wound incurred in saving the life of a young private soldier, whom many men of his rank would have considered expendable. It was the act that had won him the Victoria Cross. He had lost copious amounts of blood, but he had survived. The scar was still livid. Both his leg and his arm ached on occasion and sometimes when he was tired or when he was not paying sufficient attention he limped. But if he compared his condition with that of many other men who came home with him after the peace had been signed, then he had to admit that he had nothing to complain about. At least he still had all four limbs and both eyes.
    And of course so many thousands did not come home at all. For a long time he had wanted to be one of them, had even tried to be one of them. But he had survived.
    He longed to be back in England. He had decided long before that if he survived the war, he would sell out and spend the rest of his life in the country on his own estate, looking to the well-being of those dependent upon him. It had been an indulgence to join the army and leave his responsibilities to a steward.
    He wanted to put it all behind him. He wanted to forget. He wanted to be healed. Not of his wounds—they had healed as much as they ever would, he supposed. Of other wounds that were not physical. His soul needed healing. Perhaps if he could just start a new life and make something worthwhile of it, he would be able to forget.
    He would be healed.
    Perhaps.
    He had to go to Craybourne first. He knew that. He must see his father. But he dreaded going there and spent four days longer in London than he needed to conduct the little business he had there.
    Craybourne would be different. His father had a new wife. He could not imagine his father with a woman. His own mother had died in childbed when he was only two years old.
    His father's wife was only thirty years old—and she
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    was the woman Julian had employed to be Rebecca's companion.
    David could not remember what she looked like though he must have met her once or twice. He dreaded meeting her now. He feared that she must be frivolous and mercenary. He feared that his father would be unhappy, would be realizing now after almost a year that he had made a mistake.
    Or perhaps he feared for himself. Perhaps he feared no longer belonging. No longer having his father to himself—as if he were still a small boy and needed that security.
    Or perhaps what he feared most, what delayed his homecoming for four days, was something else altogether. Rebecca was still living at Craybourne, as she had since Julian had sent her there when he sailed for Malta. She had nowhere else to go, of course, but even if she had, his father would have persuaded her to stay. He had always treated Julian like a son. He would think of her as a daughter-in-law.
    In the course of almost two years David had somehow managed to persuade himself that he had had no choice in what had happened during those dreadful seconds on the Kitspur during the Battle of Inkerman. The choice had been between Julian's life and Scherer's, and he could not in all conscience have watched a murder being committed in cold blood. He had, after all, been an officer in Her Majesty's service, dealing with two fellow officers. It had been immaterial that one of them was Julian. If it had been anyone but Julian he would have done the same thing without a qualm of conscience. He had assuaged his guilt with the obvious truth of that thought, even if he had not banished it. The thought had enabled him to go on