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made him happy.
    Staring at the church door, Rutledge found himself thinking that he was, after all, a lucky man. He hadn’t married Jean in that golden haze of 1914, when war was gloriously linked to romance and adventure, not to suffering. She had tried to persuade him to agree to a hasty wedding then: uniforms, crossed swords, and a hero off to fight the Hun. And he had reminded her that she was far too young and lovely to find herself a widow. . . .
    He wondered what kind of life they might have shared these past seven months, after he’d finally been released from the clinic, still a prisoner of his own terrors. And how deeply they would have come to hate each other, finally. Or if she might have found herself wishing that the bullet he’d taken in Scotland in September had put an end to their pretenses.
    Hamish said, “She’d ha’ been bonny in black.”
    Certainly she would have carried herself with great courage, impressing all his friends, trailing behind her the whisper of great passion and love lost, where neither had ever existed.
    Still, he was swept by a sense of loss as he watched her pass through the door of the church, oblivious. She hadn’t felt his eyes or his thoughts. She hadn’t sensed his presence and turned to look for him. There was a loneliness in that.
    By the end of that week, Rutledge told himself that he’d made rather remarkable strides from the crippled man struggling to shave one-handed while his sister watched. The throbbing in his shoulder and chest muscles had begun to subside into a dull ache that he could put out of his mind. He could do without the sling now for hours at a time, al hough the arm was still tightly bound.
    Another week, he told himself, and I’ll be fit again.
    The dinners with his sister were beginning to wear thin. Much as he loved her, enjoyed the variety of her cooking, and appreciated the fact that she did not fuss, Frances worried about him, and he found it difficult to smile and ignore that. On the other hand, before the War, it had been Rutledge who had worried about her. And he knew too well the signs of unspoken concern. Of skirting around issues that ought not to be discussed—what had happened in Scotland, Jean’s approaching wedding, mutual friends who were in worse straits than he was. He had reached the point of wanting to blurt out, if only for the sake of clearing the air between them: “Look—I know David is worried that I haven’t written him—I just can’t face it yet. Don’t ask me why! And as for Jean, I wish her well, I’m not heartbroken. I’m lonely, that’s all, but I don’t want to meet a dozen of your suitable friends. For God’s sake, that’s not the answer!”
    Hamish reminded him, “Ye’re no’ fit company for yourself, much less a lassie. Get drunk and get it o’er with!” As advice, it wasn’t bad.
    But that Friday there were more pressing matters to consider. Chief Superintendent Bowles, after a consultation with the police surgeon, considered his options, then went to see Rutledge.
    “It’s a matter of setting the Bishop’s mind at rest. He’s worried about the death of one of his people. Catholic priest, murdered in some backwater of Norfolk called Osterley.”
    “A priest?” Rutledge repeated, surprised. In the eyes of the law, killing a clergyman was no more heinous a crime than killing a shop girl or a fishmonger. The penalty was the same—hanging by the neck until dead. But in the eyes of society, a man of the Cloth was protected by his calling, set apart. Inviolate.
    Hamish reminded him that priests had once been burned at the stake. But that was another day and time. With no bearing on 1919.
    Bowles was shaking his head. “We lost our way in the War, you know.” It was one of his favorite themes. “No good ever comes of change. Women doing men’s work—it isn’t natural! The lower classes getting above themselves. I shouldn’t wonder if we’ll see worse before we’re done. Society