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R ichard Sempill, viscount and general rake, sighed. “I’m bored.”

“My father once said that only boring people get bored,” said a far-too-smug voice from the other side of the room. “What does that say about you, eh?”

Richard attempted to throw a cushion at his friend. The trouble was, he did not bother to lift his head from where it was lolling on the back of his armchair, and he barely moved his arm at all.

The soft flumpf sound made it clear that the brocade cushion that had been a favorite of his mother’s had merely dropped to the carpet, rather than make its way across the study to whack his friend in the face.

“Pathetic.”

“I wasn’t really trying,” muttered Richard in a weak defense of his action.

Walden snorted. “That’s what I meant.”

Sighing again, Richard forced himself to sit up and glared over at his friend. “What precisely are you visiting me for, other than to insult me?”

“Oh, primarily that,” said Walden cheerfully as he turned a page of his book.

“You sounded so dour in your last letter, I thought I should hightail it to London as soon as possible and see if I could get you out of this slump you’ve found yourself in.

As it turns out, it is one entirely of your own making, and my sympathy ended almost immediately. ”

Despite himself, Richard found himself smiling.

Walden really was impossible—but then, that was how they had become friends in the first place. University was a lonely place for an only child who had never been sent away to school and so had never quite learned the easy habit that so many of the nobility had: that of making friends easily.

No, Richard had once been a quiet, studious, awkward young man, and it had been people like Walden who had truly made a point of drawing out the young viscount from his shell.

The trouble was, Richard was now saddled with a cheerful friend for the rest of his life. It was a sort of punishment.

The sound of Walden turning a page of his book seemed to echo around the small room.

“Could you be any louder?” snapped Richard.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Does the sound of me bettering myself offend you?” quipped Walden.

Richard’s lips twitched. “A tad.”

“Well, I will try to do all I can to prevent my superiority from being audible,” said his friend with a grin as he mimed turning a page without actually turning one.

“The thing is, I arrived here with three intriguing suggestions about what we could do today, and you were the one to turn them all down. So I’ve taken it upon myself not to waste the day, which has brought me to—”

“You don’t even know what you’re reading,” Richard pointed out amiably.

Walden gave him a look of mock horror, his oval face particularly suited to the dropped jaw and the dark, arched brows. “Not so! I am fully aware that I have been reading this most fascinating work called… erm…”

Richard snorted as his friend not very surreptitiously glanced at the front cover of the leatherbound book.

“… A Treatise on Practical and Chemical Agriculture, Compiled, Principally , From the Scientific Works of Sir H. Davy ,” said Walden firmly, as though he had memorized it upon entering Richard’s study. “And a most fascinating book it is, too.”

Snorting again, Richard allowed his head to fall against the back of his chair and sighed. “Oh, hell, man, when did life become so dull?”

“I return you to my original statement,” said his friend lightly. “When did you become so dull?”

“Perhaps I always have been,” shot back Richard, always willing to tease a friend as much as he was being teased. “Perhaps you are the one at fault for befriending me in the first place.”

“Now that,” said Walden dryly, “I can well believe.”

Heaving a sigh, Richard tried to think back to the numerous suggestions his friend had arrived with when he had turned up, most unexpectedly, at Sempill House an hour ago. Now, what had they been?

Oh, yes. The first had been that they go to Hyde Park and walk around staring at the ladies.

Not a terrible idea, Richard had to admit, but one without any guaranteed excitement.

What if there were no interesting ladies there?

What if they saw a beautiful minx—what then?

What was the point in speaking to one, particularly under the watchful eye of an insipid chaperone, when he was a mere viscount and Walden had no title at all?

No, that was out. The second idea had been to head on over to the docks, see what ships had come in—but honestly, it was a long walk there and the weather today was most inclement.

Richard had been certain it was to rain and had been disappointed and delighted in equal measure when he had been proven right.

So that had been out. Walden’s third idea had been to go to White’s. Not very inspired at all.

Richard sighed.

“Oh, will you give it a rest?” Walden said, his voice losing that lightness of touch. “Find a pack of cards. Take me to a pianoforte and I’ll play for you. Have a nap. Eat an early luncheon. Write a letter to—”

“You are full of good ideas, aren’t you?” said Richard archly.

His friend peered over the pages of his book. “At least I’m not sighing away like a princess locked in a tower.”

Richard had to laugh. The image was so ridiculous. “I am not sighing like a—”

“Yes, you are, and it’s mightily amusing for me only for a limited time,” quipped his companion.

“You’re a viscount, man! You are honestly telling me that the thrills of London are barred to you—or that you have experienced them all to such an extent that you have tired of them?

London? One of the greatest cities in the world? ”

It was daft, when his friend put it that way. But still, Richard could not pretend he had found much amusement in the place in the last few months since he had returned to England and her capital city.

“Don’t you have… I don’t know, ledgers to look at? Notes from stewards to review? A housekeeper to dictate menus to? A butler to complain about the state of your cellar to? Petitions from tenants?”

Perhaps another man would have missed the slight envy in Walden’s words, but Richard caught it.

“You make me sound very grand and very important,” he muttered, glancing over at his friend and seeing his forehead was a mite pink.

“Mrs. Anstruther knows her own mind about menus and I wouldn’t dare suggest anything about wines to Verwood.

I tell you truthfully, being a viscount is not all that exciting. ”

“You tell me that, a man with neither title nor fortune?” asked Walden jovially.

Only Richard, and perhaps a few other friends, would have caught the tension underneath.

“I’m not saying that—look, my father died when I was six, you know that,” Richard pointed out.

“I’m not like most of the nobility gadding about this place, newly come into a title and all the excitement that it promises.

I’ve known the responsibilities, the burden, the mind-numbing bureaucracy of being a viscount for years.

It’s not fun anymore. It’s not interesting. It’s not exciting.”

And it never would be again, Richard knew that. Not after… Not since he had…

“Besides, it’s not even much of a title,” he said firmly, pushing aside the thoughts that had started to most inconveniently creep into his head.

He was never going to think of that place again.

“Viscount? I ask you—there’s no power in it, no pleasure, no opportunity, yet you’re bound by the same inane restrictions that Society places on you! ”

“Yes, yes, it all sounds most terrible,” murmured Walden, turning another page.

This time, Richard put more effort into throwing the cushion. It hit his friend right in the face. “You know what I mean.”

“I know you are bored out of your skull,” Walden said conversationally, finally putting the book down and fixing his friend with a serious stare. “I would have thought you would prefer a bit of boredom, after what you’ve presumably gone through.”

Richard’s whole body tensed. It took a great effort, to slowly release the stiffness in his arms, his chest, his legs. Finally, there was only his jaw remaining, but try as he might, he could not release the strain there.

“I mean, you were a spy for your country,” his friend said, lowering his voice as though the French might have infiltrated Sempill House. “You served your queen. You did things I can only dream of!”

There was a hint of longing in his friend’s tone now, a hint Richard did not like.

The man has no idea , he thought viciously. No idea at all what he’s glorifying! The danger, the pain, the heartache, the peril—

And that is a good thing , Richard reminded himself, managing to pull himself out of the spiral downward with a great effort. You don’t want your friends to suffer what you have suffered. You don’t want anyone to endure what you did.

That is why you did it. To save others.

“—and now you find yourself bored with Society. Well, I suppose most things will be tedious after spending a few years in France,” Walden pointed out, as though he had remarked on the very strange coincidence that whenever the sun went down, the place grew a little dark.

Richard shifted uncomfortably in his armchair. “Hmm.”

Walden’s breath hitched, as if realizing all that he’d said. “I… I suppose you have recovered from the… the difficulties of your time there.”

And for a moment, Richard was back there: back in France, in the darkness, bullets flying through the air in all directions, and he had no idea where to turn, where safety could be found.

Just as Richard felt as though he were drowning on dry land, there was fire, flames licking up the walls beside him and around him, and there was nowhere out, nowhere to run, nowhere to escape—

“Richard?”

Richard jerked and rose, panting, hands outstretched as though he were once again finding his way from the burning building. His lungs were heaving, tasting smoke through the ragged breaths, and suddenly, someone was holding his hands.