LITMIR.BIZ

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evening, sir,” he said, smiling.

      “What’s this?” Viscount Yalding said, confused. “You two know each other? Why didn’t you tell me?”

      “That should be obvious, Fletcher. I didn’t realize.” Lucas moved forward, holding out his right hand. “Rafe Daughtry. My God, how long has it been? The last time I saw you, you and your Irish friend were marching away from Paris just as I was marching in. What was his name again? Ah, I remember. Fitzgerald. One of the fiercest soldiers I’d ever seen. Completely fearless. He’s well?”

      Rafe shook his head slowly, looking past Lucas to the ladies just entering the drawing room. “We lost Fitz at Quatre Bras. He was about to be betrothed to my sister Lydia.”

      Lucas felt the too-familiar punch to the midsection that overtook him whenever he heard of the loss of another brave soldier. Even now, with nearly a year gone by, those blows remained too frequent. “My most sincere condolences, Rafe. I’ll not say another word.” He then quickly introduced Fletcher, and, together, they all turned to bow to the ladies.

      There were three of them. Lady Lydia, along with Rafe’s clearly pregnant young wife, Charlotte, and Lady Nicole. Lucas bowed over Her Grace’s hand, begging her not to bother to curtsy to a gentleman who should be leading her to a chair and not allowing her to stand about, and then smiled to the younger ladies.

      At least he hoped he’d smiled to both, as it was only Lady Nicole that he really saw.

      If she’d been appealing that afternoon, this evening she was positively bewitching. He’d wanted to see her hair sans her bonnet, but he hadn’t been prepared for the impact of those thick black tresses, arranged with artless simplicity in the latest French mode, wondrously framing that perfect heart-shaped face and accenting the deep violet of her eyes.

      Her pale peach gown was simple, as befitted a debutante, but there was nothing simple about the body beneath that gown. Her breasts were lush above the thin silken sash tied just below the bodice, and the sprinkling of freckles across the expanse of skin visible above that bodice made it impossible for him to think anything else save how he needed to know—had to know, would know—if the freckles extended everywhere, even to where the sun did not reach her.

      Over drinks—wine for the gentlemen, lemonade for the ladies—Rafe told them all how he and Lucas had met many times on the Peninsula. He kept the telling light, relating an amusing incident involving a captured pack of supply mules and a shared meal fit for a king—but meant for the enemy.

      “And you, of course, husband, only observed during this grand adventure in thievery,” Charlotte said, her eyes sparkling.

      Rafe took his wife’s hand, raising it to his lips in a way that told Lucas the man was comfortable in allowing the world to see he was besotted with his lovely wife. “Oh, yes, certainly. I was always a pattern card of respectability, even while cold, halfstarved and in mud up to my knees.”

      “No, you weren’t,” Charlotte corrected. “And I think we should applaud your ingenuity, all of you who had to deal with such extraordinary hardships.”

      “Why, thank you, darling. But it was Lucas here who masterminded the raid on the supply train, and it was brilliant. He even kidnapped the man’s cook while he was about it. The cook spoke no English, we spoke no Spanish, but we managed. We hadn’t eaten so well in months.”

      “I kept him for most of that summer, as I recall,” Lucas told them. “Until we understood each other sufficiently for him to inform me that he had a wife and, as I remember it, a dozen children in a village just over the hill. At which point we said our farewells. I still miss his way with a chicken. At the time, I mostly missed the chickens he stole when he left.”

      By the time the majordomo announced that dinner was served, the small party had agreed to dispense with the formality of titles, and it was a fairly merry group that sat down to bowls of hot, clear consommé.

      “Chicken,” Nicole pointed out as Lucas lifted his spoon. “Feel free to wax nostalgic once more about your Spanish cook.”

      Lucas looked at her inquiringly. “You didn’t enjoy our small story?”

      “I did, yes,” she told him quietly, her attention seemingly on her dish. “But I could not help but wonder, for all the stories you and Rafe told, that Captain Fitzgerald played no part in them. You know, don’t you?”

      “Your brother was kind enough to warn me off,”

      Lucas said, chancing a look across the table to where Lady Lydia appeared to be listening with rapt attention as Fletcher spoke just as quietly, gesturing with his hands in that way his friend had about him. “He becomes excited enough about his subject,” he said, indicating Fletcher, “and someone might be prudent to move those wineglasses. Once, when he was describing a boxing match he’d been to in Epsom, he knocked a candlestick into Lady Hertford’s lap. She was not amused.”

      “I’d have been highly amused, and it will do no good to attempt to change the subject. I think my brother is entirely too protective of my sister. How will she heal if everyone continues to coddle her, to hide their memories of Captain Fitzgerald from her? To elevate him to sainthood, put his memory on a pedestal where he is no longer human, no longer real, is a disservice to the captain as well as to Lydia. He was a flesh-and-blood man, very much so. She will always love him, always remember him, but it’s time she smiled when she said his name. It’s time she makes him more than the dream he was to her.”

      Lucas looked at her in some astonishment. Clearly polite dinner conversation, safe and innocuous, was not going to be the rule of the evening. “You may be right, Lady Nicole. But do you want to chance upsetting your sister?”

      “No, I suppose not. Not right now. But I would think we need not tiptoe around the subject when we all meet again. To constantly avoid the captain’s name is cheating Lydia, and difficult for those around her.”

      “When we meet again? Ah, a glimmer of hope invades my being. Then you have permission to drive out to Richmond tomorrow?”

      The dimple appeared in her cheek as she smiled at him. “Rafe considers you harmless, yes. How does it feel, my lord, to be considered harmless? I’m only curious because no one has ever applied that description to me.”

      “I can’t imagine why not,” Lucas said tongue in cheek as the soup plates were removed and the second course served. He had no appetite, unless it was for the woman sitting beside him, deliberately goading him, testing the boundaries to see how far she could go before she shocked him.

      He’d like to know that, too.

      “Lucas,” Fletcher said, leaning his elbows on the table. “You won’t believe this. Lady Lydia here has read Thomas Paine. Isn’t that beyond anything you’ve ever heard?”

      “Is that so, Lady Lydia,” he said, truly interested, if mildly surprised. “His most famous Common Sense is thought by some to be the major goad for the then American colonies to rise up against us in the last century, did you know that?”

      Lydia’s cheeks had gone quite pink, but she looked directly at Lucas. “But there are things that must be said, don’t you agree, wrongs that must be righted? As Mr. Paine wrote, we cannot allow ourselves to be complacent, and to never question authority.”

      “Yes, I remember. ‘A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.’”

      “You’ve committed him to memory, Lucas?” Rafe remarked from the head of the table. “Don’t tell me you claim the man as family.”

      “Not at all, although sharing a surname has caused my family to feel forced to defend his memory from time to time. I admire some of his writings, but I wish he’d stopped before he vented his spleen with The Rights of Man. For a time, it was a crime for an Englishman to possess a copy, did you know that?”

      “Lydia possesses a copy,” Nicole said quietly. “I read some of it just this afternoon.”

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