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“The sandwiches are halfway to the inn. We didn’t bring in the basket.”

“Ah.” He wanted to laugh, but Miss Harrington was clearly upset.

“I am so sorry, Major. I should have warned you the house is hardly habitable. I’ve been renovating it for my brother’s return.

I let the servants go, most all of them, after my father died, and dismissed the last two when I went to London to fetch Neville, when I found out it would be months.

Mrs. Tabbit and Mrs. Clay agreed to return when I brought Neville home, but I had no opportunity to let them know we were coming. You must think me witless.”

“Not at all.” If she had managed all this on her own, in three or four months, he was impressed. “You had a plan, and I disrupted it.

“You didn’t disrupt it. The pox did.” She crossed her arms and scowled. Then she threw up her hands. “There are apples and potatoes in the cellar. But I’ve no butter to fry them in. Once I get a fire going, I can boil potatoes if you are willing to eat them plain with salt.”

“I would give my right arm for boiled potatoes with salt.”

She stared at him. Then smiled. It suited her much better than her scowl. “Liar. Major, you are the kindest man I’ve ever met.”

“Ha! Then I don’t imagine—” He halted, swallowing his words. He’d been about to say he didn’t imagine she’d met many men. Which was too likely to be true. It would explain why she was unmarried. “I’d like to change into dry clothes. My valise is just inside the front door. Where should I…?”

“There is a guest chamber upstairs, to the right, at the end of the hall. I believe there are linens on the bed, but if not, I’ll find you some. And there should be wood on the grate and a tinder box on the mantel.”

*

They ate apples and boiled potatoes by candlelight in the kitchen.

No wine or ale, only water that Miss Harrington had fetched from a well.

With dry clothes and his stomach filled, Crispin felt better capable of taking stock of their situation.

While not ideal, it was workable. For one night.

After that, he wasn’t sure. He couldn’t abandon them, but he also couldn’t stay.

Over supper, Miss Harrington wanted to talk about the war on the peninsula.

Crispin did not, until he realized how specifically her questions focused on her brother.

Given their age difference and the length of the war, it must be that she barely knew Harrington.

And yet, her devotion to him was clear. It was no hardship to recount stories of Colonel Harrington’s bravery and strength of command, but a little trickier to steer away from examples of his arrogance and lack of concern for the common soldiers.

Crispin was careful not to embellish, suspecting she was quite capable of calling him out if anything rang false.

He asked her about her life here in Tonbridge.

He feared her answers would be grim from the little he’d seen.

No siblings except the absent colonel. And now two parents dead.

But she told a happier tale of a pampered childhood with a beloved governess, doting parents, and close ties to people in the village.

He wondered if she was censoring her memories the way he was his.

It was pleasant in that half-dark kitchen.

Very pleasant. He found himself growing too aware of the faint scent of lilacs whenever she moved about, rustling her dress.

Too aware of the tumbling black hair she had neglected to fix.

She had a marvelous full-throated laugh.

And he had already noted her prettiness at their first meeting, though that was something he was trying to ignore.

Something he must ignore. She was Harrington’s sister.

She was a lady. She was an innocent. For these three reasons and more, she was untouchable.

She would make a fine sister-in-law if he had any more brothers.

That was the box his brain could shove her into.

The sister-in-law box. Beautiful women who held no attraction for him at all.

Miss Harrington suddenly stood up, her mouth a surprised O .

“What is it?” he asked.

“I believe there is tea. It might be a bit stale.” She stepped, smiling, from the table toward a wall cabinet. “And I think I left some sugar the last time I was here. No cream, I’m afraid. But the fire is still going if you would like tea.”

“I would love a cup.” Tea with sugar, no cream. Perfect. He hadn’t had to refuse anything or make off-putting excuses for his odd eating habits.

She filled a kettle and set in on the stove. Then her head tilted, and she frowned.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Neville.” She pointed at the wall. He heard it now, too. A creaking bed. A low groan. She removed the kettle from the heat and picked up a plate of supper she’d set aside. “I hope he’ll eat something.”

He rose and followed her from the kitchen, then into Harrington’s bedchamber. The man was wide-eyed and red in the face.

“Where the hell am I?”

“Home, Neville. You’re home.” Her voice was soothing. Hopeful.

“How?”

Miss Harrington explained, succinctly, how they’d brought him here. She reminded him of the pox outbreak at the hospital. Harrington nodded along. She told him she’d had his bedchamber furnishings moved to the ground floor. And the library.

He looked peeved. Or pained. But he made appropriate noises of appreciation. Until Miss Harrington began pressing him to eat.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Neville, you’ve eaten nothing all day.”

“I can’t eat. I’m gut sick,” he growled. “I need my medicine.”

Crispin kept his face neutral. He knew firsthand the laudanum-induced gut-sickness.

A cure worse than the injury, worse than the disease.

It had been years since he’d had to resort to it, and he was resolved never to touch it again.

Still, Miss Harrington’s dismayed expression spurred him to speak.

“Try half a dose, Colonel. Then try to eat.”

She held out the potatoes like an offering to the gods.

“Just give me the damn laudanum!”

“It’s in my reticule,” Miss Harrington said, dropping the plate to the bed table, then hurrying from the room.

Crispin scowled but didn’t scold. Harrington was still his superior, and a major did not talk back to a colonel. If Old Harry wanted to waste away in his bed, drugged, that was his prerogative. But there was no excuse for being so rude to his sister.

“Damn it,” Harrington muttered. Crispin heard a hint of remorse. Good.

They waited in silence until Miss Harrington returned. She gave him a spoonful of laudanum.

“Just leave the plate, Camellia. I’ll eat when I can.” He smacked his lips and grimaced. “Now I need a chamber pot.”

Miss Harrington’s face went white.

“Is there a pot?” Crispin asked.

“In the water closet,” she whispered, with a gesture toward the far door. She’d foreseen this necessity, obviously, or she wouldn’t have been waiting to return here until she’d hired a manservant. This was his fault. He’d been too quick to rush her out of London.

“Miss Harrington, there were no linens in the guest chamber. Why don’t you go see to that and I’ll tend to your brother.”

She gave him a look that mixed horror with humiliation and gratitude. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it, nodded, and sped from the room.

Crispin headed to the water closet. The devil.

Snap decisions were his forté, but he generally based them on better information.

He’d thought only “pox, house in the country, escape.” He’d assumed, wrongly, that everything would be in place for the colonel’s return.

Of course it was clever, practical even, to have moved the colonel’s living spaces to the ground floor.

But no servants at all? How was that possible?

Extricating himself from this muddle was a problem for tomorrow. For now, he was a manservant. He sniffed a laugh. Not what one expected of an earl’s brother. And certainly not on his list of options for what to do with the rest of his life.