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And little Sebastian grew into a solid, healthy little boy with his father’s blue eyes and hearty laugh and affectionate nature—the joy of his mother’s life.

Every day she thanked God that, though her boy had no father, he had a half dozen relations eager to pet him and play with him and transfer to him the love they had borne his father.

Thus had the memory of her lost husband slowly, imperceptibly faded to a wistful glow, like dying embers which occasionally still flared, but less and less often, and with diminishing strength.

Though Sarah would have said she loved her departed husband as much as she ever had, the truth was that the healing effects of time and circumstance could not be entirely withstood.

And perhaps there was something on that particular morning—her sister-in-law Jane’s blissful expression as she was joined to her beloved Philip, or the stolen kiss Sarah saw Adela’s husband give her when he thought no one was looking—which niggled at her, something which in another person Sarah would have called restlessness.

Whatever it was, on this hundredth or thousandth time when she took up Sebastian’s packet of letters and untied the ribbon, she passed over the most familiar and timeworn passages to linger on those she usually skipped.

His descriptions of nautical minutiae, for instance.

His expenses. His anecdotes of political wrangling aboard the Penelope or in the larger navy.

His more unsettling tales of foreign shores and shore leaves.

The penultimate letter she ever received from her husband came from Palermo, in the Kingdom of Sicily, and truth be told, Sarah had only read it in its entirety once, the day she opened it.

For one of the stories it contained had so annoyed her she refused to read those particular paragraphs again—and then his next letter, his final one, came from the hospital some weeks later.

She almost smiled now, remembering her earlier vexation. What had been the incident described? Would it still have any power to move her?

… in the Albergaria near the palace, making our way back to the ship.

You know how buoyant Langworthy’s spirits are at all times, how irrepressible, and on this occasion even a far soberer fellow would be forgiven ‘a madness of frolick and intemperance.’ To have his own Miss Pence pledge herself to him!

Though this Miss P can be nothing in comparison to you (as I have told him on more than one occasion, when he would weary me with her praises), you are mine, and the rest of the world must shift as they might.

In any event, we had been toasting the good lady’s decision with likely more diligence and loudness than you would approve, and in doing so, it seems we also overtaxed the goodwill of the citizens and local gendarmerie.

In short, the early hours found Langworthy drunk as a wheelbarrow and myself not much better.

(You will frown, darling, and how I wish you were at hand to punish me!) We were expelled from our cozy tavern in Via Porta di Castro and forced to take flight.

He and I lost sight of each other in the darkness, and I was nearly to the Scrigno Tower when I heard him cry out.

The fool had climbed to a rooftop to make his escape, but, not being in perfect command of mind or limbs, he had fallen and broken his leg.

It was just as well, Sarah, for then he was taken to the Ospedale “Grande e Nuovo” (how’s that for a name?) instead of being arrested, and I, being also in uniform and having some little Italian, must accompany him.

It's bad luck for Langworthy, for the Penelope sails tomorrow. You may imagine Captain Blackwood’s disgust with the whole situation.

It has been all I can do to make explanations and compensate for my friend’s absence.

Horace himself is as sorry and remorseful as a man newly engaged can be, for he fears what he will miss.

What adventure and what possible prize money. But Blackwood says…

Not caring to read more, she refolded the letter with a grimace.

“Exactly,” said Sarah aloud to her little chamber. “No wonder I never read that bit again. It was all Horace Langworthy, doing Horace Langworthy things.” As pleasant as it had been to rediscover Sebastian’s little compliments to her, the sensation gave way to crossness.

Horace Langworthy!

Time had done its work during Sarah’s mourning, and like all good, loving wives, she had gladly let it blur and then obliterate the few faults her husband had possessed. Sebastian Barstow emeritus retained all that was sterling, like a monument in a church, the rest left unrecorded.

But this brief excerpt on this January morning operated as a key within a lock. Its creaking lid giving way with a protest, the chest of truth was opened once more, and from its depths emerged things long disregarded. Other passages in other letters which she had read once and never again.

The time the two lieutenants were thrown out of the Blue Posts in Portsmouth because Langworthy “had words” with one of the older midshipmen.

That one shore leave in the West Indies where “a number of them had their eyes blacked during a scuffle where some tempers ran high.” The trick played on a seaman whose talk had grown too big for the officers’ taste.

Sebastian made light of the episodes, laughing them off as “boys being boys,” but it had never escaped Sarah that the chief boy always being a boy was her husband’s boon companion. Was Horace Langworthy.

“Sebastian wasn’t perfect, of course,” she said softly to the dressing-table mirror, in which her troubled reflection gazed back at her, “but he would have approached much nearer that state, had it not been for that one particular, regrettable friendship.”

She realized her heart was pounding irregularly, and she flattened a hand against it. And it was in this attitude she was caught when a rap came at the door, followed at once by its opening and the appearance of Frances.

“Has Bash woken from his nap?” asked Sarah, blushing guiltily as her hand fell back to her side. She hoped the discontentment which she was certain lingered on her face had gone unnoticed, but judging from Frances’ curious expression that seemed doubtful.

“He’s still asleep,” answered her sister-in-law. “Do forgive me for surprising you. I should have given you a minute to collect yourself. I suppose it was a very trying morning for you.”

Sarah swallowed. “Why so? Here I am, spoiled with my very own room.”

But Frances wasn’t fooled. She sat beside Sarah and tapped a finger on the letters spread across the coverlet.

“I meant because of Jane getting married. I thought it might make you sad about Sebastian.” Her brow knit as she peered more closely at her.

“Though you don’t look sad—you look…I would say ‘cross,’ if you were anyone else. But you are never cross.”

“Of course I am cross on occasion,” Sarah said with a rueful grin. “I would not be flesh and blood if I were not.”

“If you say so,” answered her sister-in-law dubiously, “but why should today be one of the occasions, if I might ask?”

Ordinarily Sarah would have put the younger Frances off with some neat evasion, but perhaps the peculiar mood which impelled her to read the Palermo passage in the first place gripped her still.

All she knew was that, in the resuscitation of her dislike of Horace Langworthy, she wanted to complain of him to someone.

“It’s this,” she said, snatching up the letter and thrusting it at Frances, a fingertip marking the offending paragraphs. “Look here. If I am cross, it is because I was reading this.”

Frances needed no further urging. Sebastian had been quite a few years older than she, and he had passed the last of those years mostly away at sea, but she still remembered the glow his dashing, infrequent presence imparted to her childhood home and the excitement his letters brought.

He had been generally admired—adored, even—and though Frances was proud of him, she could not say she truly knew him.

And certainly she had never heard any story of Sebastian like the one she now read.

Before she knew what she was about, she gave a low, unladylike whistle. “Fancy that!” she marveled. “Nearly being arrested in Palermo for drinking and making a row! I wonder if Mama knows.”

“I suspect she does not,” Sarah replied crisply, gathering the other letters into a neat stack.

“Arrested!” repeated Frances.

“ Nearly arrested.”

“Chased by the gendarmerie for drunkenness and—and riotry!”

“He didn’t say he was drunk!”

Frances merely raised a skeptical brow, her lips twitching. “He was, in his own words, ‘not much better,’ in any event. Did he—write to you of such things often?”

For a moment Sarah was silent, but when Frances did not retract the question, she reluctantly replied, “…Sometimes. Not too often, mind you.” As if a veil might be drawn over a handful of occasions. And indeed it might, though in truth each instance had pained her.

Now Frances was forced to repress a smile, accurately translating “not too often” as “more than I would ever like known.” Eyes alight, she murmured, “So he did, then. You know, Papa and Mama always did speak of Sebastian as if he were at least as much saint as he was sailor. It was always, Your brother is so good and brave and honorable —”

“And so he was, all those things,” insisted his widow.

“Of course he was,” agreed Frances cheerily, “but I daresay I like him the better now for learning he was no angel. One can’t have one’s older siblings too perfect, you understand. So good old Sebastian got up to mischief and malfeasance, did he?”

“Not ‘malfeasance,’” Sarah objected. “Mischief perhaps, but not ‘malfeasance.’”

Frances shook this off. “Well, I don’t know. Look at when Jane’s Mr. Egerton was arrested for disturbing the peace in Oxford. Would you call that mere ‘mischief’? For it is precisely what they were chasing Sebastian for in Palermo—”

“They weren’t only chasing Sebastian, Frances,” cried Sarah, seizing upon this.

“In fact, they were also— primarily —chasing his fellow officer—this Horace Langworthy. If not for Horace Langworthy, I doubt Sebastian would ever have found himself in such circumstances. In fact, those—few—times when he ever…mentioned…things of this nature, Horace Langworthy was without fail always at the bottom of it!”

“Oh, do tell me more, Sarah,” urged Frances. “I am old enough to hear such things now, and I promise I will say nothing to Mama, though Gordy might like the—escapades—too. Was there more drinking and carousing in foreign places? More disturbing the peace? Perhaps a little gambling?”

Sarah stared at her, telltale color flooding her face.

“I’ve nicked it!” whooped Frances, waving the letter she held like a victory banner.

Plucking the sheet from her sister-in-law’s grasp, Sarah began to fold it up, pressing the creases more firmly than was strictly necessary.

“There were indeed other incidents he told me about—and possibly even others he spared me, knowing they would put me out of countenance. I suppose such is the case for all navy men. But I persist in believing that, if not for fate placing him in the constant company of the…less-principled Mr.—”

“—Mr. Horace Langworthy. Yes, I caught the name,” Frances finished for her dryly.

“And yes, I suppose this person was Sebastian’s preferred confederate.

But surely Langworthy could not always have been the instigator!

That would make my brother his spiritless lackey; whereas I am certain so dashing a fellow as Sebastian was entirely capable of getting up to no good on his own. Come now—let’s have it.”

But Sarah had reached her limit. Tying the ribbon around the packet, she stuffed it back in the drawer and rose. “You have guessed it all already.”

“But I want details!”

“Another day, perhaps, you greedy girl.”

“Do you promise?”

Sarah arched an eloquent eyebrow of her own, and Frances’ shoulders drooped. Clearly she would have to be cleverer about this, if she ever hoped to learn more.