have to be my excitement. It would be easy for a girl to misunderstand.’
She meant Cecilia, of course. Cecilia had no claims on him. But under the grounds of Claire’s argument earlier today that men and women couldn’t be friends, Cecilia and her self-made claims would be jealous. She shouldn’t be envious of flowers and a dance. Still, he knew the kiss was not well done of him, even if it was one kiss to weigh against a lifetime spent doing his duty.
‘Claire, I...’ He should apologise but he didn’t want to. He wasn’t sorry and wasn’t that what apologies were for? He wanted to kiss her again.
‘I should go.’ She stepped around him and he let her by, knowing he wouldn’t get that second dance. If he let her go now, she would be gone from the ballroom when he returned inside.
He had no right to have taken such a liberty. He couldn’t even justify it as an act to inspire her suitor. He’d asked far too much of her today: friendship, a kiss in the Rosedale garden that had inflamed him far more than a simple kiss should have. She knew nothing of him other than what she saw at parties, that polite social mask he kept carefully fixed in place. Cecilia would never look beyond that mask; would never feel the need to or the want. She was perfectly happy with the smiling, charming Jonathon Lashley. But Claire would not settle for such a façade.
Claire had glimpsed beneath that mask. He’d let the façade slip for just a moment tonight and she had filled that moment with prophetic words: this is what I believe...nothing will change until we do. Cecilia would be an easy wife in that regard, never pushing him to expose himself. He could spend his life walking around pretending he was happy, like he had been before the war, before Thomas.
He pulled a leaf off the tree and twirled the stem between his fingers idly. He’d once believed he could masquerade himself back into happiness. If he pretended he was happy, eventually he would be. So far, the façade had fooled everyone except himself. Well, if he couldn’t be happy, he could at least make Claire happy. He would help her with her reluctant suitor whether she wanted him to or not. It would be easier if she’d just tell him the man’s name. But everyone was entitled to their secrets. Secrets were secrets no matter how big or small, his being larger than most.
He drew a breath. He needed to return to the ballroom. Just in case. But he knew when he stepped inside that Claire was gone. He scanned the perimeter any way for good measure. There was no sign of her. He might as well leave. There was no reason to stay. He made his excuses to the hostess and left, pretending urgent business had come up.
The strains of music and merrymaking followed him out from the ballroom into the hall. What would all those people inside think of him if they knew the truth? What would Claire say if she knew he’d been the one who’d made the decision to leave Thomas behind?
* * *
That night he dreamt of Thomas...
Cannon fire sounded down the road, the rumble still in the distance, but nearer than it had been before. His horse moved uneasily beneath him as he argued with his brother. ‘You cannot deliver the dispatch, it’s too dangerous.’
‘Someone has to and it sure as hell can’t be you. You’re the heir. Everyone is counting on you to come back.’ Thomas was being obstinate while the rest of his men cast nervous eyes down the road and with good reason.
‘The entire French corps could be out there,’ he insisted, urging Thomas to see the impossibility of the task.
‘All the more reason for me to go.’ His brother’s jaw was set and Jonathon recognised intractability when he saw it. ‘There are officers waiting for what’s in that bag.’
‘Headquarters didn’t know the road would be blocked when they sent us out. Those officers are capable of making their own decisions.’ Another cannon fired and Jonathon struggled with his horse. ‘We will not make it through, Thomas, don’t you understand? We have to retreat.’ He was angry now. He was not risking the lives of his men for a dispatch bag. But this was classic Thomas, the stubborn hero, and Jonathon worried that war was still very much a game to his younger brother.
Thomas wheeled his horse around, a big, strong bay gelding, and peered down the road. ‘A single man could do it. A good rider could make it through. Of the two of us, I’m the better rider.’ That was debatable, depending on one’s definition of ‘good’, Jonathon thought. If one defined it as reckless, then Thomas had the right of it.
‘Let me go, Jonathon.’ Steely grey eyes met his, reminding him that while his brother was younger than he by two years, his brother was no longer a child. ‘Dithering with me any longer puts the lot of you at risk and it diminishes my chances.’
‘We can’t wait here.’ Jonathon prevaricated one last time. The ride might take only an hour, but an hour was an eternity in battle.
‘I know.’
‘You know the meeting point? We’ll stay there as long as we can.’ He reached over and gripped his brother’s arm. ‘No heroics. You come straight back and meet us there.’
Thomas laughed. ‘I’ll probably beat you there, slowcoach.’ He wheeled his horse around one last time in a brave circle and was gone.
‘Thomas, no!’
Jonathon woke up in a sweat, heart pounding. Even in his own dream, he couldn’t change the outcome, couldn’t stop Thomas from riding off into the unknown.
Thomas hadn’t met them at the checkpoint even though Jonathon had held it far longer than anyone required. It had been bloody work, too. How would Thomas find them if they left that last point of contact? Even when they were forced to move out, he hadn’t been ready to give up. There were so many reasons Thomas was late. The most harmless reasons were delays—the roads were full of fighting, he couldn’t get through, someone else had needed a rider and Thomas had volunteered. Or perhaps the big bay had thrown a shoe, or taken lame on the road and couldn’t ride. Thomas loved that horse. He’d never leave him behind.
But there were darker explanations, too. The longer Thomas was gone, the more seriously Jonathon had to contemplate them: the big bay had been shot down, Thomas thrown, as absurd as that seemed. It was impossible to throw Thomas. Knowing how improbable that was only made the other scenarios worse: Thomas shot from the saddle, wounded in a ditch without help. Thomas dead.
Jonathon got out of bed and poured himself a brandy. He poked up the fire in the grate, any activity to keep the black thoughts at bay. His body was starting to recover from the dream; his pulse slowing, but his mind was still racing. To this day he couldn’t bring himself to believe Thomas was dead.
He took a seat in the chair closest to the fire. There was no point in going back to bed. He wouldn’t sleep now for a while. Even if he did, he’d only dream again. He knew this routine well. The farewell dream was always accompanied by the searching dream—the one where he wandered the battlefield looking for Thomas. He’d done it, too, in real life. The dream was no fantasy.
He’d combed the fields afterwards, looking at body after body, hoping each one he turned over wouldn’t be Thomas. He hauled wounded men to the surgeries, asking them if they’d seen a tall brown-haired man who looked like him. When those efforts had failed, he turned his attentions further out to the woods and roads near the fighting, to places where a rider on a long-distance mission might have met with trouble. There was carnage there, too, in the ditches and in the trees, but none of it was Thomas.
There was danger in those places still and that
