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“You haven’t recovered, then,” said Walden quietly, squeezing Richard’s hands and bringing him back to the present. “Not completely, anyway.”

Richard blinked. The smoke was gone, the panic slowly draining from his lungs, and he stared into his friend’s blue eyes.

He was safe. He was in England. It was over.

Snatching his hands from his friend’s and wishing to goodness he did not have to dash tears from his eyes, Richard threw himself back into his armchair. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

His gruff voice was pathetic in its lie, but thankfully, Walden did not say a word. He merely resumed his own seat and looked curiously at his host, as though attempting to study him for an examination later.

Richard swallowed and tried to forget. That was what he had to do: forget. That was what the government official had told him, when he had finally managed to make his way back to Dover.

“Just forget, man. There’s nothing for you back there but painful memories and darkness. Just forget.”

Forget. Like he didn’t wake up almost every night from dreams so painful and confusing that he thought for a moment he was there still. Fighting for his life…

“You can talk to me about it. If you want.”

Richard’s head snapped up. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“I’m just saying, if you needed to—”

“I said , there is nothing to talk about,” said Richard firmly, in his best impersonation of the immutable lord Walden seemed to think a viscount ought to have been.

It was largely in the tone of voice, one he had perfected over the years.

He had been forced to. Few people listened to a boy of fifteen when it came to obeying their lord and master, but he had been viscount by that age for several years.

He had studied the ledgers, he’d known the law. And that had been half a lifetime ago.

“It’s not good for you.”

Richard’s head jerked up. “What do you mean?”

“Wallowing like this. Not talking about it.” Walden’s face was pinched, his lips a thin line, his expression far more serious than Richard had ever seen on him. “I had a cousin—”

“Don’t talk to me about cousins,” Richard said darkly. “It’s never a true story. People always tell a story about a cousin and instead, it’s just something they’ve made up or overheard at White’s.”

“My point is, you could be doing yourself a real injury, a true disservice, if you don’t let out whatever you’ve got bottled up in there,” persevered his friend with a frown. “Why don’t you tell me what happened out there? Why you came back? Why you never talk about it?”

And precisely how would that help? Richard wanted to ask bitterly. Talking about it would only double the trouble. Then it would not be merely I facing the nightmares, imagery seared into my mind that no amount of drink or sleep or entertainment can burn out, but yourself as well.

And I won’t have you sacrifice your sanity for mine.

Richard swallowed, desperately casting about for another topic of conversation. “Tell me… how is… how is your sister?”

When he met Walden’s eyes, he could clearly see that his friend had not been fooled.

And rightly so. Walden was no fool.

But he wouldn’t subject his friend to hearing about his time in France. Richard would never do that, not to anyone. If he revealed all, what was the point in him having gone in the first place to prevent others from having to face such terrible things, such terrible places?

No, I am shielding Walden , Richard told himself. And that was a good thing. Perhaps the only good thing still left in his power.

“You know, you could do with some reading yourself, if you ask me,” Walden said lightly.

Far too lightly. Richard examined him and saw the slight bob of his throat, the man’s pinched expression an echo of the concern that had also been on his mother’s face when he had finally returned after two years.

“You look changed, my son.”

“Spying will do that to you, Mother.”

“No, this is more. Something more. What did you see over there? What happened?”

She had passed shortly thereafter. Richard shook his head, as though that would remove the bad memories from his mind. “Reading? I’ve read everything.”

Walden snorted. “Now that, I do not believe.”

“I haven’t purchased any new books for the Sempill estate for… Oh, I don’t know, a decade?” Richard shrugged. “Save for that one, which my butler insisted on. Everything I own, I have read.”

“You must get newspapers, though,” his friend said, pointedly looking at a stack of newspapers over on the desk by the window.

Richard rolled his eyes. “Oh, as though there is anything interesting or new in there.”

“They are called new spapers.”

“Just because they want to sell a fresh edition every day,” Richard said dismissively.

“You open up one of those things and all you see is the same, old things day in, day out. The government is corrupt, the queen is with child, France is a terror, the Germanic states are revolting, and there is someone complaining about the state of the roads.”

He had ticked them off on his fingers and scowled to see his friend grinning.

“Perhaps you should start your own newspaper,” said Walden. “As you seem to know so much about them.”

Richard had to laugh at that, and this was a good-natured chuckle. “Even if I had the coin to do such a stupid thing, which I don’t, I think there are more than enough papers out there hawking the same, old rubbish.”

“Oh, just humor me for once in your life,” his companion shot back. “Come on, at least try to read one for five minutes. You might actually find something interesting.”

Richard very much doubted it, but as finding a pack of playing cards would mean moving from his seat and playing billiards would mean removing from the room entirely—neither of which Richard wished to do—he supposed there was nothing for it.

The first newspaper wasn’t really a newspaper. More a scandal sheet.

Richard sniffed. “As though I care particularly what Lady Romeril said at some toff’s wedding.”

“Speaking as someone who is not a toff, to someone who is very much a toff… isn’t that the whole point of your little Society? Gossiping about others?” Walden teased.

Frowning, Richard threw aside the scandal sheet and picked up a newspaper proper. It did not take him long to find something utterly ridiculous.

“Who cares if Miss Ashbrooke is considering matchmaking again, or if prison reform is needed,” he muttered darkly. “I never really entered Society. I became viscount, grew up, went to university, then—”

“Headed off to France most mysteriously, yes,” Walden said with a grin. “Did you even meet Lady Romeril? One cannot be said to be in Society if one has not met her.”

“To my great relief, I have never met Lady Romeril,” Richard snapped. “I haven’t met anyone in Society, much to my relief, preventing nonsensical invitations that I would only have to decline, avoiding their banal mutterings about this or that debutante or this or that bachelor.”

“You know, for someone who has served his country, you are particularly down on most of the inhabitants of said country,” came his friend’s helpful reply from behind the book.

Richard sighed.

Perhaps his friend was right. Perhaps he was just dull, himself, as a person. There was a constant in all the activities in which he’d attempted to find relief, and it was himself. Perhaps he was the bore, not the things themselves.

It was not a very pleasant thought.

He picked up a fresh newspaper and skipped the first twenty pages or so. Well, they were all full of politics and governmental arguments and economic disasters. The topics would be the same in every newspaper.

No, it was from page twenty-five or so that things became interesting. That was when the personalities of the editors really came to the fore. What they selected to include, or not include, was usually very different.

Richard’s attention slowly meandered down the column. A lost dog, a governess seeking employment, several angry letters to the editor pointing out that the world was infinitely worse off now than it had been twenty years ago, and what did the government think it was going to do about it…

And then something odd caught his eye.

Richard blinked. Perhaps he had read that incorrectly. He read it again, more slowly this time, allowing his focus to rest momentarily on every word.

Artist of significant talent but no renown seeks model for practice. No experience necessary. Skills required: sitting down and not moving for hours at a time. Recompense offered. No fools, please.

Richard’s eyes narrowed.

Now that was different. He had never seen anything quite like it. Bold, direct, unusually honest— no fools, eh?

Significant talent but no renown. Probably some third or fourth son who had been given the choice of the clergy or the easel—and had made his choice.

Skills required: sitting down and not moving for hours at a time.

Almost despite himself, Richard glanced up at the longcase clock just to his right. By his reckoning, he had been sat here almost completely immobile, other than his momentary relapse into French memories, for three hours.

Recompense offered.

He didn’t need the money. Oh, he wouldn’t say no to a fortune dropping into his lap, but he was hardly penniless.

And it was different.

“You’re smiling.”

Richard immediately wiped the grin from his face. “No, I’m not.”

“You’re not now, but you were,” pointed out Walden. He had evidently been watching him from around the leather corners of the book. “What are you smiling about?”

“Nothing,” came the instinctive reply.

Precisely why he did not tell his friend what he had read, Richard did not know. It would surely turn out to be some young idiot who was a dullard himself, and Richard would kick himself for not staying out of it.

Besides, who would want to paint him? He would not go so far as to call himself unsightly, but the few times he’d ventured outdoors, he could hardly say he had turned a lady’s head.

No fools, please.

There was something so intriguing about the little advertisement that Richard knew, before he had pulled pen and paper across his desk, precisely what he was going to do.

Answer it.

Why not be a model for an afternoon? It was something different, something new and fresh.

His housekeeper, Mrs. Anstruther, was desperate to get him out of the house so she could finish the spring cleaning.

It would be something that could blot out the memories that crept around the edges of his mind, threatening to turn any sunny spring day into a cold night in hell.

“Pass me that pen and paper, would you, Walden?” asked Richard, far more calmly than he felt.

Walden grinned. “Finally decided to do something?”

Do something? Certainly , Richard thought with a sigh. But it won’t turn out to be of much interest, I’m sure.