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J ames helped Crispin move from his bed to a chair by the fire in the sitting room.

His bones still ached, his gut still hurt, and he still was weak, but he no longer believed he would die.

The laudanum was finally doing what it was supposed to do.

Perhaps he must accept that he was doomed to a life of mild stupefaction.

He picked up Donne’s Devotions . He had read them all but this last.

Though you have by physic and diet raked up the embers of your disease, still there is a fear of a relapse; and the greater danger is in that.

Grand. Just grand. He set down the book and sifted through a pile of broadsheets James had been bringing him, though he had done no more than skim them until now.

He’d gathered this much: Wellington was no longer in Paris.

No longer in danger of assassination. He’d been sent to Vienna to replace Castlereagh as Britain’s representative at the post-war conference.

The Coalition’s task was now to reconfigure the boundaries of kingdoms after Napoleon’s disruptions.

Tens of thousands of men dead, just to return the world to stasis.

Crispin stared blankly at the window, and summoned the will to push aside the tide of images that would, if he let them, overwhelm him.

At the top of the pile was the day’s Morning Post .

The date was February 15, 1815. February.

He’d left Tonbridge in late November. Nearly three months of his life, lost to him.

And Olivia’s wedding? Late June. Eight months.

What had he done in eight months? Except turn thirty?

Perhaps that was accomplishment enough, considering how doubtful had been the chance of success.

He tried to read, at least the gossipy bits, but could not concentrate.

This was what laudanum did to him. He could sleep, eat, fidget, but he could not think .

Instead, his mind drifted to places it should not go.

Tonbridge. The scent of lilacs. Miss Harrington singing.

Miss Harrington’s bed. Making it up to her for the lack of kisses—in his fevered imagination, he could.

She’d come to see him, and he’d turned her away. Or was that another of his drug-induced fancies? Had there been a letter? Could he have been deadened enough to burn a letter? He had not been able to make himself ask James.

Someone was knocking. Was someone knocking?

“James!” he bellowed. Tried to bellow. He had never been a bellower. “James!”

He heard his front door open. James’s voice. Hazard’s. Jasper’s?

A moment later, his brother stormed into the room. “Crispin!” He halted. Appalled. Then his face crumpled. “Crispin.”

“Believe it or not, this is recovering.”

“Why didn’t you tell us? Why don’t you ever tell us?”

“It is my cross to bear. And you…you had enough to worry over. How is Vanessa?”

“Holding up.” He looked away. A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Your condolence letter. I should have known something was wrong. It was incoherent.”

He didn’t recall writing a letter.

“I thought you were foxed when you wrote it,” Jasper said, shaking his head.

“I should have known. You are never foxed. But when we last saw you, you were so well, so confidently well. And Haz said nothing until two days ago, when Vanessa—the doctor said bedrest—but after a month of that, Vanessa had done with it—and Haz finally told us—”

Hazard walked into the room, and plodding alongside was the Greek.

“Adam?” How in the blazes? “What are you doing here?”

Jasper said, “You’d said he’d been hired by the Harringtons. I went and found him.”

“The colonel needs—”

“The colonel is being tended to.” Adam made a slight bow. “Major, I do not forget I owe my life to you. This”—he swept a hand at Crispin and frowned—“this should not have happened.”

“You need his help more than Colonel Harrington does,” Jasper said.

“James has—”

“Has been invaluable,” Hazard said. “But I am taking him back. Alice is going to Cambridge, and I am not sending my viscountess to Reg’s hovel without a footman.” He pretended to shudder.

“Cambridge?” Crispin asked.

“Georgiana wants her,” Jasper said, stone-faced. “Arthur’s sibling will be here any day.”

Ah, right. Potent Reg and fecund Georgiana. So much pain. Love and pain. “Vanessa will be next.” Crispin heard the words come out of his mouth and cringed. That was the drug. He had no discretion.

“No, it will be Olivia.” Jasper let out a long sigh.

“Olivia?”

“They haven’t said anything. No one says anything anymore. We’ve become a family that keeps secrets from one another. But she has that look about her. And she isn’t riding.”

Crispin didn’t know what response to make. So he turned to Adam. “I can only assume Jasper offered you significantly better pay.”

Adam frowned. “Am I a mercenary? Then considering I received no pay from the Harringtons, I was under no obligation to stay.”

“No pay?”

“It is in arrears. Lady Bodwell assures me—”

“Lady Bodwell?”

Adam’s frown deepened. “The colonel has gone to live with the Bodwells. One of the staff will be assigned to his care.”

What the devil? “And what about Miss Harrington?”

Adam cocked his head. His frown disappeared. “Miss Harrington is Lady Bodwell.”

Crispin felt kicked in the gut. Or stabbed in the heart. The pain even penetrated the laudanum’s shield. He could do nothing but stare. He must have misheard. Misunderstood.

“She wed Sir Bodwell last week,” Adam said.

“She wed Sir Bodwell,” he echoed. She had said she wouldn’t marry. She wouldn’t marry him . And she would not marry at all . The sly she-devil. She lied. But he could not piece together her motive. Bodwell? God damn it! He wished he could think !

Jasper said, “I want to bring you back to Chaumbers.”

“What? No. I’m not going to Chaumbers.” If he were to go anywhere, it would be to Tonbridge to sort this out. Adam must be wrong.

“You should come home. It would do you good.”

“I’m fine here.”

“We want you near.”

“I don’t need a nursemaid.”

Jasper’s jaw set. “I am not comfortable bringing Vanessa to London. But if you insist you won’t travel, she will have to.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” He could not help a twitch of a smile. “Excellent use of filial manipulation, Jasp. I could not have done it better myself.”

*

“Not beef. I cannot eat beef. Not like this.” Crispin pushed away the plate with its repulsive slab of flesh.

Ignoring Adam’s consternation, he turned his focus to the wall.

His bedchamber. At Chaumbers. His walls, familiar since childhood, were covered with old light-brown paper with faded yellow fleur-de-lys.

The symbol of French royalty. Whoever thought that was a good idea?

“Major.” Adam rapped his knuckles on the tea table. The table was a new fixture in the room where Crispin took his meals to avoid his family’s worried scrutiny. “You’ve determined it is not meat that makes you ill. If you wish to regain muscle, you must eat muscle.”

His throat tightened. He shook his head.

“Why? What is the difficulty?” Adam had a way of posing questions as simple interest. He didn’t twist arms. And yet, Crispin found it impossible to refuse to answer Adam’s straightforward why?

“I have flayed men.” He choked. “Do you understand? I never ordered a flogging unless I was prepared to carry out the punishment myself. Flogging tears a man open. It separates muscle from bone. I look at that plate…”

Adam was quiet a moment. Then he said, “Will you eat fish?”

Crispin nodded.

“You should speak up sooner. We cannot work at cross purposes.”

“Yes,” he groaned, hating himself, his vulnerability. “I know.”

“Then you also know you must stop taking laudanum. You forget half of what we say from one day to the next. You are befogged.”

“I don’t want to relapse.”

“I will give you cat’s-claw. An herb from South America. It is better for your particular complaint. I believe your intolerance has progressed to an inflammation of the bowels. I can’t agree with using laudanum for—”

“It works. It has always worked. Why should I put myself through—”

“Major, laudanum is for men like the colonel. He suffers from pain that can never be healed. He will not live very much longer. That is not your case.”

Crispin slumped. Every word Adam said was true. He murmured a confession. “I don’t know if I have the strength.”

“You do.”

*

Adam said some men required a slow reduction in dosage, but that for others, the best course was to stop all at once.

So Crispin did. Adam said he had two great advantages.

One, that in spite of everything, his body was sound.

Sound? His body? And two, he did not enjoy the effects of the drug on his brain.

That, of course, was a matter open to debate.

But it was true that he preferred being clear-headed to artificial bliss.

He spent a week in the depths of hell. Another week in a lesser hell. And finally, although physically he was still limping along, his head felt clear.

Adam told him to go out in the fresh air. Enjoy the springtime. Stop acting like a sick man. So Crispin was riding Mercury about the property, counting his blessings.

Now that logic had returned to him, it mattered not one jot that Miss Harrington had married that dull stick Sir Manfred Bodwell. He’d foreseen it. Lady needs security; man needs heir. They were lifelong neighbors. Of course, they had eventually wed. If only they had done so sooner.

He was now considering a journey to Cambridge. While he had been in hell, word had come that Arthur now had a baby brother. Randolph. Crispin had missed the celebration with Mother, Jasper, Vanessa, Olivia, and Benjamin. Had it been awkward? Or sincerely joyous?

He should go visiting. He would like to see Reg.

Georgiana and Reg. To experience their unadulterated, simple goodness.

He wanted to get to know his nephews. The one unalterable fact of his life was that his family meant everything to him.

That, and that he had been granted another chance at living.