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ladies.
     
    William tried to clench his right hand again, but of course could not manage it. The fingers would curl a little, but most of their dexterity was gone. He had not been obliged to dance with Elizabeth Barton or anyone else because he could not manipulate his right arm sufficiently to dance a quadrille.
     
    There was in any case no point in clenching anything, for George was right. George would inherit the estate and Thomas had the family living. The girls were all provided for. And a soldier unable to soldier...had best find an heiress to marry. All three of his sisters had offered to have him visit their establishments, that he might meet new young ladies at their local Assemblies. Mary had indeed spent the entirety of dinner insisting that he come along when she and Henry and the children departed Hartwich after their annual visit. William found himself unable to imagine an heiress willing to marry a third son without a profession, an easy jesting manner, or the ability to lead her onto a dance floor, but he also found himself lacking the energy to make much of an argument. He had made noncommittal replies instead, until Mary mercifully dropped the subject.
     
    He was now saved from answering George by their mother’s voice proposing a game of cards. The party commenced a debate concerning the merits of lanterloo versus speculation, and William excused himself.
     
     
     
    He ended up wandering through the orchard more because he had picked a direction at random than because he found within himself any great interest in apple trees. He ought to be interested, he thought. It was the finest sort of summer day; he ought therefore to be charmed by the cloudless sky and the scent of grass and earth. He tried to summon the appropriate feelings of appreciation, but they would not come. It was as though there were swaths of gauze bandage layered between himself and the rest of the world, making it impossible for anything of that world to actually touch him.
     
    After a while he stopped trying, and gave in to the images that never ceased to haunt his mind’s eye: dust and blinding sun and troops drawn into formation. British troops might be formed into ranks even now. They might be facing the French across a Belgian battlefield even now. The cannon might be booming even now...He was so far lost in thoughts of Spain and Belgium that the white streak at the corner of his vision startled him badly, and he jumped to face it.
     
    It proved to be nothing more alarming than Elizabeth Barton flying down the hillside, skirt held up above her knees with both hands, bonnet hanging by its strings down her back and curls streaming out behind her, reticule looped over her wrist and swinging from side to side. Well then, William thought, perhaps the ballroom elegance was indeed only skin-deep. He smiled at the sight—then stopped, surprised at the odd feel of that expression upon his lips. He couldn’t remember the last time he had smiled out of genuine amusement rather than politeness. The swaths of gauze seemed to shift slightly, allowing an instant’s gust of wind to touch his skin.  
     
    He watched Elizabeth skid to a stop, plump herself down on a fallen tree, jump up again, shake a shawl from her shoulders, and spread it out underneath her before resuming her seat. She loosened the strings of her reticule and pulled out a man’s pocket watch, and the swaths dropped back into place. A love token? Most likely. William sighed to himself and turned away.
     
    A branch snapped under his foot, and Elizabeth’s head came up like a deer’s. “William!” Then she colored. “I mean, Ensign Carrington.”
     
    He had been intending to lift his hat and walk on, but this greeting startled him so much that he answered without considering the demands of proper manners. “William, if you like. It was ‘William’ and ‘Elizabeth’ before I left.”
     
    Now why had he said that? It was true in one sense—they had indeed