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C rispin did not sleep well. The devil .

He always slept well—except when bedbugs like Lizzie’s were biting.

His conscience bothered him during the day, not at night to keep him up.

The only time he tossed and turned was when he was sick, and he was not sick.

He was not. He’d had a random cramp; that was all.

He rose and washed. A peek out the window showed drizzle, putting a damper on his desire for a long walk. He donned his drawers, his shirt, then his uniform. In the colonel’s presence, he preferred to be a soldier-in-reserve rather an earl’s-second-son-with-no-occupation.

He stepped out of the guest chamber and walked quietly past Miss Harrington’s door. A capital lady. A poetess. A contralto. He found her as funny as Georgiana and as resilient as Vanessa. He rather wished the women could meet.

It was too early to be up and about, but that gave him liberty to eat breakfast in solitude.

Oat porridge if Mrs. Clay would provide it.

God. This was wearying. This constant fixation on what he might eat.

And people’s reaction. As if he must either be malingering, mad, or courting attention.

Even his beloved family skidded between skepticism, annoyance, and pity.

There were times he wanted to stand up and shout, It’s not my fault!

Miss Harrington and Adam were the only two people who had ever managed to be helpful rather than irritating.

Adam, when they had first met, had been disinterestedly fascinated by the evidence of Crispin’s chronic ill health, to wit: his absurd thinness.

He asked about it in such a matter-of-fact way that Crispin answered.

And Adam had believed what Crispin confided about the bewildering array of symptoms he’d suffered at seemingly random intervals throughout his life.

Just being believed had helped. Adam wanted to approach the problem systematically.

He was convinced the condition could be managed if not cured—without leeches, cupping, purges, or laudanum.

Crispin was not cured. He was markedly improved, but not cured.

Removing practically everything from his table had been difficult, but worse was adding things back.

Especially after Adam had been released from parole and Crispin had been left to muddle through a course of trial and error on his own.

Now he was cursed to wonder things like: was that cramp in his gut from the bite of beef or the wine? Or was he imagining it because he’d dared to taste both?

As for Miss Harrington, she seemed to empathize.

Moreover, she must have guessed that he disliked nothing so much as a small dinner party with strangers.

Friends and family were used to him. At large events, no one paid attention to his plate.

But it was impossible to hide when there were only five at the table.

So Miss Harrington had arranged it so he could appear to be eating what everyone else ate.

Even so, dinner was excruciating. The Castors were an unpleasant couple. Maybe that was why he’d slept poorly. Lingering abhorrence.

He descended the stairs and made his way to the kitchen. It was warm from the heat of the stove, but with no lamps lit and the small window, it was dim. There he found Adam, eating what looked to be the remains of last night’s stew.

“Good morning, Major,” Adam said, standing up, then sitting back down to continue his meal. The man had adopted some British manners but not all. Crispin suspected he picked and chose.

“Good morning. Is Mrs. Clay about?”

“She is. The laundress comes today, and she is gathering what needs to be washed.”

Crispin hmmm’d . His breakfast could wait.

Adam gave him a long look. Then he said, “Mrs. Clay is a gossip.”

That was blunt. Crispin sat down at the table and leaned on his elbows. “Is she?”

“I do not intend to make it a habit to speak about my employers.”

“No, I wouldn’t think it of you. But is there something necessary for me to know?” It was too bad Adam wasn’t a spy. He would make a fine one.

“Not ‘necessary.’” Adam laid down his knife and fork. “But possibly helpful.”

“Go on.”

“Mr. Castor tried to woo Miss Harrington.”

Bile rose in his throat. “Did he?”

“Mrs. Clay said he put little effort into it. He told the old gentleman, Mr. Harrington, that there was no point in a long courtship. They knew each other well enough from church.”

“He wooed her with his sermons, eh?” Crispin’s dislike of the man grew exponentially.

“Mrs. Clay overheard the proposal. I suspect she had her ear to the door.”

Crispin snorted. Servants knew everything.

Adam’s expression turned thoughtful. “She said he became angry. He told Miss Harrington he’d asked her only as a kindness because no one else would have her. And that marriage to him would make her more acceptable to the parish.”

A kindness? What the devil was that supposed to mean? “More acceptable?”

“He told her people say that she looks like a witch. They don’t like to be near her.”

Crispin stared. No reasonable person believed in witches. “Why? You can’t mean because of her hair ?”

Adam nodded. “I suspect even if they said such things, they said it in fun.”

It wasn’t funny. “But she’s a beautiful woman.” The yellow dress had darkened her soulful eyes. And it had revealed, in a way her black ones did not, that she had a shape. A very appealing shape.

Adam cocked his head to one side and regarded him. “She’s pretty. Yes.”

Crispin’s chest felt tight. “How did Miss Harrington fare after this insulting proposal?”

Adam sniffed. “Mrs. Clay said that she laughed. She thanked him for his consideration, but her answer was still no.”

She hid her hurt well.

“I should not have said anything,” Adam continued, “but I thought it might explain the atmosphere last evening.”

“Castor holds a grudge and Mrs. Castor is jealous.”

“That was my thought.”

Mrs. Clay bustled into the kitchen. “Oh! Major. Good morning. Have you anything to send to the laundress?”

It startled a laugh from him. “I just got here!”

“Well, but who knows where you came from.”

Adam pushed away his bowl. “I hear the colonel stirring.” He rose. “I’d best go to him. He had a bad night.”

Him, too? “A bad night?”

“He suffers nightmares. About Vitoria. Did you not hear him? I think that is why they gave him so much laudanum at the hospital. To keep him quiet.”

That was sobering. Crispin remembered Vitoria as a triumph, the victory the British so desperately needed. But Colonel Harrington would remember it differently.

Crispin had his own torturous memories. Things he’d done of which he was not proud. Things to which he could never confess. Things that had needed doing that it had fallen to him to do.

“Oh, it is wrenching,” Mrs. Clay said. “He screams so awfully. You’re fortunate the walls are thick, and you can’t hear it upstairs.”

He was fortunate in more than thick walls. He had to remember that. He was fortunate.

*

Crispin stayed. He wasn’t bored. Strangely, he was anything but bored, and they made it clear he was welcome, so he stayed.

He endured two supper-and-cards Saturday evenings with Sir Bodwell, and was still there though it was approaching a third.

It amused him, in a cruel way, to see how his continuing presence bothered the man.

And then it bothered him that he could enjoy being cruel.

The war had done that. It had taught him to steel himself against softness.

But he had overshot the mark and become mean.

He told himself he was staying for the colonel’s sake.

Harrington seemed stronger in body under Adam’s care, but his spirits were often low.

He had things he needed to get off his chest—the young deserter whom he’d caught and sentenced to thirty lashes, a lethal punishment for a mere boy; his willingness to execute Adam who’d been guilty of nothing; the confiscation of a stolen chicken from a starving foot soldier, that he then shared with fellow officers who had plenty to eat.

Crispin shared no confidences, but he excused his old superior’s offenses in the same way he tried justifying his own.

It was war. It was war. It was war.

*

“You plant yourself here,” Crispin said, putting his hand on the seat of the sidesaddle. “Then you hook your…your right knee here, over the pommel.”

Miss Harrington paled. “I don’t know. Perhaps this would be better attempted on a pony.”

“We don’t have a pony.” They had Mercury.

And they had an old sidesaddle that had been Miss Harrington’s grandmother’s.

He’d checked and rechecked that the saddle fit his horse properly so that it wouldn’t rub or slide.

Crispin was using Mercury as a training horse.

Olivia would have a conniption fit and Jasper would faint.

But Miss Harrington had confided that she had never ridden.

That was a deficit needing correction. “Hold the reins loosely. I’ll have the lead rope.

He won’t bolt, and I promise you won’t fall off. ”

He’d brought Mercury back to the farm early in his stay, after seeing to it that the barn was well-provisioned. He had to serve as his own stable hand, but that was fine, since he trusted no man with Mercury more than himself.

His pupil looked frightened.

“Miss Harrington, don’t let me browbeat you into something you’d rather not do.”

She tilted her head to look up at him. “This is the second time you’ve mentioned browbeating. Are you often accused of such?”

He started. Yes . Then made himself chuckle. “By my sister. She says Jasper wins arguments with charm, and I win them by bullying.”

“And your younger brother?”

“Reg? Reg wins by being right.”

“Are you ever right?”

“Seldom.”

“Well, this is a dilemma. Since you have said that I won’t fall off.”

“If you do, I will catch you.”

He saw something in her expression. A flash of something undefinable in her eyes before she turned her head and set her jaw. “All right. Help me up.”