Emily stood by the open window in her room willing her hair to dry faster when Sarah rushed in to announce that the Earl of Blackstone had arrived a day early and that they were wanted in the drawing room.

“Can you imagine?” Sarah exclaimed, breathless.

Emily was unmoved. Her friend, ever susceptible to melodrama, often bubbled over with excess enthusiasm.

“It is his house,” she couldn’t resist pointing out.

“Yes, but he wasn’t expected until tomorrow.”

Indeed. And now they would have to spend the evening making polite, mindless small talk. That was exactly why Emily avoided society. People chatting endlessly about nothing that mattered. And Sarah’s father was not even in attendance, and he was the whole reason she’d come. Without Mr. Manning, there was no reason for her to be here either. If she wanted to find Billy, Mr. Manning was the key.

Sarah clapped her hands. “To think, our evening was going to be so dull, but now we’ll spend it with the Earl of Blackstone!” She threw open the armoire and began rummaging through Emily’s things. “He’s very mysterious, you know.”

“So you said.” Sarah had talked of nothing but the inscrutable aristocrat since her family had received an invitation to a party on his Essex estate, a place that had taken on almost mythical status in the collective consciousness of polite society. No one had been to the estate since before the death of the current earl’s older brother nearly three years ago.

“One sees him in London from time to time, but he’s so very…”

“Enigmatic?” Emily supplied. “Unfathomable? Downright odd?” Sarah was a dear girl, and Emily felt the sharp tug of loyalty that only a shared childhood can inspire, but inside that pretty chestnut-tressed head was…not terribly much. It never ceased to amaze Emily that a woman with such a limited vocabulary could be such an expert babbler.

“Mysterious,” finished Sarah with a decisive nod. “He appears at parties and balls from time to time, but he never dances—though perhaps that’s attributable to his injury. He’s not at all interested in female company, even with the question of succession looming. He’s almost a hermit. And yet in theory, he’s one of the most eligible bachelors in the realm. It’s very…”

“Puzzling? Vexing?”

“Mysterious. Because why a house party all of a sudden, if not that he’s decided to turn his attention to setting up a nursery? Why in the world would someone so, so…”

“Antisocial? Misanthropic?”

“…mysterious as the Earl of Blackstone suddenly open his home to a crowd of people he would seem to care nothing about?”

“Perhaps we’ll find out. Did you not say we were wanted downstairs?”

Emily grinned as Sarah shrieked and threw a gown at her head. Her lavender muslin. A little worn, but respectable enough. “I’ll have to put my hair up damp. It will take ages to dry.”

“I’ll send Anne in.” Sarah scowled at what was no doubt the cacophony of curls emerging as Emily’s hair dried.

“Don’t bother.” Her friend’s maid wasn’t up to the task. It was only through years of trial and error—and of walking around looking like she had a bird’s nest on her head—that Emily had learned to wrestle her hair into a state of submission. “Go ahead without me and tell them I’ll be down shortly.”

Sarah gave a little hop of excitement as she departed.

Emily pulled on her stays—short and laced up the front so she didn’t need a maid. As the light boning compressed her upper rubs, she imagined the garment as a suit of armor. She had to believe that Mr. Manning would show up. Going home to Sally and telling her she had no new information about Billy’s whereabouts was simply not an option, so she must be bold. Brave. Real reformers did more than write, more than talk. They acted.

But first, an evening of meaningless conversation. Sighing, she upended a small box of hairpins and prepared to do battle with her chaotic curls, girding herself to meet the mysterious Earl of Blackstone.

“Thank God,” Blackstone said when a sharp rap on the library door was followed by the appearance of Stanway, his London butler.

The man began tidying, his white hair, shirt, and cuffs in sharp relief against the stark black of his attire.

“How was the journey, Stan?”

A single eyebrow lifted almost imperceptibly. “Pleasant, my lord.”

Blackstone set down his newspaper. The butler shared his distaste for rusticating. “A bald-faced lie if I ever heard one.”

The eyebrow traveled a little farther up the wrinkled forehead.

Blackstone amended his earlier thought. There were two people in the world he trusted. Stan had served the family since he was a young footman, and he’d demonstrated his utter loyalty to Blackstone that night at the lake. He’d also proven to have quite the head for strategy. Tea, espionage—there was very little the man couldn’t oversee with aplomb.

“Perhaps you’ve been able to find out why Sarah Talbot is here without her father—and a day early to boot?” he inquired, tracking the older man’s progress as he put the room to rights.

“Mrs. Talbot’s father and husband had some unexpected business in Bristol that will delay their arrival at the party until at least the end of week and possibly preclude their attendance entirely. She was prostrate with disappointment, I am told. But she met a gentleman named Mr. Leighton—I gather he is a neighbor of yours here in Essex?” Blackstone nodded. “Mr. Leighton met the ladies in London and upon discovering they were bound for your property, offered his escort. The ladies wrote to Mrs. Sheldon asking if they might arrive a day early. Assuming you would not be here to be inconvenienced, she agreed.”

Though Stanway delivered the story as if he were giving a staid lecture, Blackstone knew he did not approve of anything about the situation. The nerve of the ladies requesting an early arrival, as if Clareford Manor were an inn, lowering himself to pry information out of the servants, and then having to deliver the absurd little report—it was all an affront to the very proper servant.

“It’s not the day-early part I was concerned about, Stan, but the without-her-father part. This whole exercise is useless without Manning here. If Mrs. Talbot’s father doesn’t show his face, this will all have been for naught.”

“Indeed.” The older man tugged Blackstone to his feet. Though the earl had taken Bailey’s criticism to heart and bathed and shaved, Stanway shook his head as he produced a brush and began vigorously grooming the shoulders of his master’s black evening coat. Blackstone endured the ministrations silently. Some years ago, when his previous valet retired, the butler had taken on the role himself. Though Stan’s sartorial duties were an excuse for the men to share private time to discuss whatever mission was underway, he approached all aspects of his job with the same degree of meticulousness.

Only when he was satisfied with his handiwork did the butler say, “The ladies await you in the drawing room, my lord.”

“You keep saying ladies, plural. Does Mrs. Talbot have a companion?”

“Yes, she arrived with a friend. A childhood bosom friend, I am led to believe.”

“Early and she’s brought a hanger-on. A smashing start. This must be Manning’s former ward.”

“Indeed.”

“Well, it will be good to meet her. Of course she won’t know anything about his dealings, but it’s good to get as complete a picture of Manning’s past as possible.” As he made his way downstairs, Blackstone surveyed the house. The corridors and stairways in the “new” wing, which dated from the middle of the last century, were oak paneled, and though twilight slanted in through the mullioned windows, there was not a speck of dust in sight. Everything was as immaculate as it had always been.

They hadn’t spent much time here as boys, he and Alec, mostly because their mother fared better in town, closer to her friends—and her doctors. Others in his class at Eton talked about their families’ country estates with great affection, joyously bounding off on summer holidays and returning to paint pictures of bucolic paradises, days whiled away riding and fishing. By contrast, when his family removed to Clareford, it was always with great trepidation, the men collectively holding their breath, praying that the countess would stay well, hoping against experience that the sea air would fortify her.

Yes, despite its soot, noise, and displays of human wretchedness, he much preferred London. He glanced at one of the paintings hanging in the stairwell. An old ancestor—he wasn’t sure which one—stared back at him. In the city, he was free to make his own way, divorced from the weight of the past he could, even now, feel settling upon him, a yoke around his neck. He would not be sorry to be the end of this line.

Still, in the meantime, duty called. It always did.

“Mrs. Talbot.” Blackstone stood at the foot of the stairs while his guest descended. As was often the case, there was a bit of awkwardness when he offered his hand to take hers. She hesitated, glancing at his useless right arm. He sketched a bow, hoping to smooth things over. Bailey was quick on his heels down the stairs, and Blackstone performed the introductions.

“I hope your father will be able to join us, Mrs. Talbot,” said Blackstone.

“Indeed, I hope so too, my lord. He and my husband were called away on an urgent matter. They asked me to convey their apologies and to tell you they will gladly join us if they can make it by the end of the week.”

Blackstone met Bailey’s eyes. Stuck hosting a party in Essex when their prime target conducted business elsewhere. “I understand you’ve brought a companion?”

“Yes! I know it was presumptuous of me, but she’s practically a sister, and when she learned I was on my way here she…oh, there she is!” She pointed to the stairs.

Blackstone’s sudden intake of breath was audible in the otherwise-silent foyer. The angel from the lake! He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of such a creature doing something so banal as walking down a dim staircase lined with images of his censorious ancestors. It seemed impossible that she could exist independent of the brilliant sun he’d seen illuminating her. Yet here she was, approaching in an unremarkable purple dress, her fair hair, which he knew reached well past her shoulders, confined in a simple knot at the back of her neck.

“Miss Emily Mirren,” said Mrs. Talbot, once her friend had reached the last step, “allow me to present His Lordship, the Earl of Blackstone.”

Miss Emily Mirren. Blackstone didn’t hear the rest of Mrs. Talbot’s words. The rush of blood in his ears made it impossible to focus on anything except surviving this horrible moment he’d dreaded for so long. Miss Emily Mirren. Acid flooded his stomach as surely as it ever had in the heat of battle. He had been naive to think he could avoid her indefinitely. To think that just because she was a bluestocking who didn’t go about in society, their paths would never cross.

He exhaled a short, bitter laugh, which drew Miss Mirren’s attention from where it had rested on Bailey, who had been clasping her hands in a warm greeting.

My God, she was beautiful—slender with just a hint of womanly curviness. And he would know those eyes anywhere—deep blue, so dark they bordered on violet. They were the captain’s eyes. He saw them nearly every night in his nightmares.

Clearly he had been wrong about the appearance of an angel at his lake, in his own personal hell. She merely looked like an angel. But of course she had been sent by the devil, the latest—and greatest—in an endless string of torments, punishments he accepted as his due.

This was an especially cruel one, though.

The Earl of Blackstone didn’t seem particularly mysterious to Emily. In fact, as he stood there silently—except for that sneering laugh he’d tried to cover up—she could think of several other adjectives to add to the list next time Sarah was searching for one: rude, self-important, boorish. And, if one could judge by the slightly slack-jawed way he stared at her, perhaps even “simple.”

Suddenly, though, he awakened as if from a trance. “Miss Mirren, forgive me. I confess I was taken aback for a moment. You look so like your father. I served under him along with Mr. Bailey.”

The earl’s right arm hung limply by his side—the much-referenced war injury, no doubt. When she offered her left hand in greeting, aiming it toward his good hand, his eyes changed. He didn’t smile—far from it. But as he dipped his head over her hand, his sharp-edged, patrician features softened. But then they returned to their previous harsh arrangement, and she wondered if she had imagined it all.

He shouldn’t have been handsome, with a nose that was crooked and slightly too large and eyes so brown they were almost black, but somehow he was more than the sum of his parts. And he certainly had a way of commanding attention. She could see why everyone was so fascinated with him.

He bowed, and as he righted himself he paused with his head at the level of her own. She could have sworn he was looking at her hair, which was still slightly, embarrassingly, damp. Goodness, the man didn’t miss anything, did he? She met his gaze as he continued to hold her hand.

Restless under his scrutiny, she tugged her hand out of his. “The honor is mine, my lord. It is always gratifying to meet my father’s fellow men-at-arms.”

It was true, mostly. But the honor was always accompanied by a bit of bewilderment. She never knew how to act around her father’s men. They always vaunted him as a hero, a deity even. That wasn’t the man she knew. But of course that was the rub—she hadn’t really known him.

No wonder the Earl of Blackstone was “mysterious.” She glanced at his injured arm. Men didn’t survive war without consequences, and not all of them were physical.

Bailey’s eyes followed hers. “Lord Blackstone was injured at Badajoz. Three weeks after your father died.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, and meant it. “I understand the siege was long and difficult.”

Lord Blackstone stared straight ahead, as if he hadn’t heard her at all.

“Your father’s death was a great blow,” Bailey said quietly. “Allow me to say how sorry I am.”

She hoped she wouldn’t have to spend the week listening to Mr. Bailey talk about her father. Though if Mr. Manning didn’t show up, it wouldn’t matter anyway—she’d learn nothing about Billy, and she’d have to call the week a loss. Even if all was for naught, at least she might carve out some time to work on her upcoming columns without Sally fussing over her.

Dinner was not quite the trial Emily had imagined, thanks in large part to Sarah’s ability to talk. And talk and talk and talk. Mr. Bailey was gracious and made every attempt to answer her questions, not having learned yet that Sarah wasn’t really in search of answers, just an audience.

The earl ate in silence, but she felt his regard. Every time she risked a glance at him, he was already looking at her. It wasn’t that he wasn’t listening to the conversation. In fact, when asked a question, or prompted to speak by something Mr. Bailey said, he knew his part. But it did feel like he was playing a role on stage, showing them only a surface version of himself, while something else entirely went on inside his mind.

Near the end of their final course Emily was startled when he cleared his throat and said, “I understand you’re a scholar, Miss Mirren. They say you’re quite the book lover.”

She wanted to ask who “they” were, but Sarah spoke before she could. “Miss Mirren is indeed a bluestocking! And she doesn’t even mind you calling her one, can you imagine? She once told me she was of a mind to have a modiste fashion some actual blue stockings for her! Too busy, though, isn’t she, with her nose in a book, to visit a modiste?”

Emily watched the earl’s eyes narrow. She knew that to outsiders the comment sounded like a set-down. He didn’t know that Sarah wasn’t wily enough to be cruel, that she merely spoke what she believed to be the truth. And it was the truth, for the most part. Emily’s devotion to reading prevented her from paying as much attention as she perhaps should to corporeal matters. Lately, though, when tucked away in her rooms at her grandmother’s house, she was writing more than she was reading. Writing—and preparing for action. But Sarah didn’t know that. No one did.

The earl stood abruptly. “Clareford Manor has an impressive library. Or so I am told. Would you like to see it?”

Sarah, in an almost comedic reversal of gender roles, popped to her feet after the earl did, but Emily remained seated. “Or so you are told? Haven’t you been there?”

“Yes of course, but I’m not much of a reader. My father and brother were collectors, though.”

“I can’t imagine being surrounded by books and not wanting to read them.”

“I prefer to get my information firsthand, from experience rather than theory.” It sounded as if he were scolding a recalcitrant child.

What an odd man. Emily rose and smiled to break the standoff. “I should adore seeing your library, my lord.”

Why the hell hadn’t they known about her?

After bidding the ladies good night, Blackstone returned to the library and tried to look at it through Miss Mirren’s eyes. When he’d ushered them in, her face had lit up. He’d been forced to spend the next ten minutes manufacturing small talk with Mrs. Talbot while Miss Mirren drifted around, running her hands along spines of books. He’d watched the long, elegant line of her throat as she tipped her head back to gaze at the gallery above, which was also filled with volumes. Her hair had become curlier as it dried, little ringlets popping out of their knot. Watching her mind whir as she took in the collection, he imagined that damp hair being heated from inside, from the sheer intensity of activity inside her head.

This was what he had been afraid of all these years? This beautiful, scholarly, slight woman? He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it. He, who had faced down enemies, French and otherwise, who had witnessed evil and survived war, had spent years avoiding the society of Emily Mirren. And now, despite the stab of guilt that pierced his gut anew each time she trained those deep blue eyes on him, she seemed far less fearsome than he’d imagined.

She’d given a little sigh of delight as she stood on her tiptoes to see the titles on a shelf above her head. It was hard to make sense of her. If everything said about her was true, the woman was as disinclined to the social scene of the ton as he was. He was forced into polite company from time to time when working on missions. But why would Miss Mirren suddenly decide to attend a house party hosted by someone she didn’t know, which would, in turn, be attended by scores more people she didn’t know?

It couldn’t be simply a question of loyalty to Mrs. Talbot. Obviously, the pair was well acquainted, but they lacked the easy shorthand he often observed between long-time women friends.

He shook his head. He was overly suspicious—an occupational hazard. Not everyone had a secret agenda. And even if this woman did, as long as it didn’t involve a threat to the Crown, it was no business of his. Perhaps she was husband-hunting.

Hearing Bailey enter, he returned to the question at hand. “Why didn’t we know Emily Mirren was Manning’s ward?”

Bailey held his hands up, as if surrendering. “We knew he had a ward—had being the key word. She attained her majority nearly eighteen months ago and moved to town to stay with her grandmother earlier this year. It’s a coincidence, yes, but does it matter?”

Blackstone didn’t like coincidences. They usually signified sloppy work. “And what of this grandmother? What happens when she dies? It would be good to see Miss Mirren married. She has beauty. Does she have money?”

His friend went to the sideboard and poured himself a brandy.

When Bailey didn’t answer he continued. “Is she destitute? I wouldn’t have thought so, but that’s easily fixed. God knows, I owe her that much.” Bailey still didn’t speak. “You can’t be disagreeing over the beauty. She looks like she stepped out of a painting, for God’s sake, with that riot of curls cascading…”

He trailed off as Bailey shot him a quizzical look. Since they’d seen Miss Mirren with her hair up, there was no respectable reason for him to have knowledge of anything cascading.

“What about Mr. Leighton?” Blackstone continued. “My neighbor—you’ve met him. A gentleman farmer. She could do worse.”

Bailey took a chair near the fire and sighed. “I know that seeing her so unexpectedly is unsettling. But she’s not your responsibility. We’ve got to focus on Manning. He’s the target.”

“Le Cafard is the target,” said Blackstone, more harshly than he intended.

“One step at a time. We know that a smuggler is transporting l'espion de maître. It might be Manning. It might not. We’ve eliminated several of his competitors, but there are other possibilities.”

“It’s him.” Blackstone watched his friend swallow a retort. He knew he was being irrational. But he also knew Manning was the one trafficking secrets and spies among his casks of brandy and bolts of silk. But that was no reason to become snappish. He should have been proud. Bailey was doing exactly what Blackstone had taught him, approaching a mission with cool, detached logic. It was just that sometimes truth transcended logic, arriving inexplicably in a man’s heart. Manning was the one who would lead them to Le Cafard.

“Regardless,” Bailey cleared his throat, “my point is that Miss Mirren’s surprise appearance is unfortunate, but you mustn’t make it a distraction.”

Blackstone was about to open his mouth to protest that he wasn’t distracted, when Bailey held out a hand. “Don’t argue with me. What happened was not your fault.” Setting his drink down with a thud, he grinned suddenly. “Unless you’d like to volunteer for the role of bridegroom? That would solve your succession problem!”

“Good God, no! And I don’t have a succession problem. I just thought—”

“Soldiers die every day,” Bailey interrupted. “It’s what happens in war.”

Blackstone glanced down at his good-for-nothing arm and winced, trying to block the wall of memories that was always threatening to fall in on him.

“Does it hurt?”

The frankness of the question surprised him a little. He shrugged out of his coat and rolled up his sleeve. “No more than usual.” Even now, all these years later, he hated looking at the stump. It repulsed him. But he made himself do it every night. Made himself remember. “Focus on the target, you say. That’s impossible, isn’t it, without Manning here? Instead, we’re stuck with his chatterbox of a daughter.”

Bailey remained silent a moment, as if resisting the change of subject. “We need to try to learn what he’s up to. What is the urgent business matter?”

“If his business is in Bristol, it’s got to be slaving,” Blackstone said. “He was quite openly running slaves before ’07, so there’s no reason to think he’s stopped merely because it’s illegal now.”

Bailey nodded. “As I see it, all we can do now is wait and hope he arrives.”

“Agreed. It’s too late to cancel the party.”

Bailey tapped the edge of his glass. “Perhaps we can get something useful out of the daughter?” He grinned, as if acknowledging the futility of that avenue.

“I’m afraid there’s nothing of substance there.”

“Perhaps Catharine could help,” said Bailey, referring to Catharine Burnham, who would be among the guests. She had done some spying for Blackstone six months ago, and her ability to extract information from society’s drawing rooms was unparalleled.

“Catharine knows nothing about this mission. Only those—”

“Who need to know, need to know.” Bailey, a stellar pupil, was familiar enough with Blackstone’s maxim to finish the sentence. “I would have thought you’d make an exception for Catharine.”

“No exceptions.” Blackstone conducted his espionage according to rules. Relaxing them put everyone in danger.

“Perhaps the more promising lead is Miss Mirren,” Bailey said.

Blackstone looked up sharply.

“She and Mrs. Talbot were childhood friends, yes?” Bailey asked. “And she lived with the Mannings for long stretches. Mightn’t she know about the family’s dealings?”

“What the favorite puddings are, how Manning ever got anyone to marry that daughter of his, that sort of thing,” said Blackstone. “But treason? No, I can’t imagine she knows anything.”

“So merely a regular party, then.” Bailey rolled his eyes. Blackstone knew his friend had as little patience for polite society as he did. The difference was that where polite society revered Blackstone, they looked down on Bailey, whose wealth, though as vast as Blackstone’s, had been earned in trade.

Blackstone sighed. “Merely a regular party.” He reached for Bailey’s drink and threw back the remainder in a single gulp. “God help us.”

After Bailey said good night, Blackstone remained in his chair, staring at the fire as he settled in for his nightly trial. He didn’t care for reading, it was true, but he did like the library at Clareford. Even as a child it had been a favorite spot to pass the time when the weather was ill. His mother never set foot in this room, so there was no trace of her memory here now.

As always, he began with his mental lists. A spy didn’t have the luxury of committing pen to paper, but over the years he’d learned to keep elaborate mental lists. He broke down each mission into its constituent tasks, every move mapped in his mind. Sifting and sorting, he rearranged the pieces until he saw the outcome he wanted.

But the lists were never enough. Eventually, his mind drifted, half awake, coming to rest as it did every night, on a battlefield across the sea, back before he’d inherited, when he was plain old Lieutenant Eric Woodley, the second son of the Earl of Blackstone.

It was the quiet he hadn’t expected. The din of battle had, for the most part, lived up to his naive imaginings. Screaming horses. The clash of steel. Shouting so frenzied one could forget who was an enemy and who was a friend. It was horrific. But not as horrific as the eerily muffled aftermath. Bodies strewn in unnatural angles. Low moaning from fallen men.

Hands grasped at his ankles, and he shook them off. He was looking for the captain, and he would have to harden his heart to the rest of these poor bastards. In polite society, people talked about the skills one acquired as a soldier. They spoke admiringly of qualities like discipline and loyalty. As far as he could see, the only thing war had taught him was the fine art of triage. Which right now meant ignoring anguished cries of his fellow men.

“Captain!” he shouted. “Can you hear me?”

It was impossible to imagine the company going on without their leader. A career soldier, he’d taken a hundred men from all walks of life—gentlemen from the ton’s highest-ranking families, farm boys from Kent, the sons of chimney sweeps who’d never been outside Southwark—and made them brothers.

The irony was not lost on him as he righted carts and kicked away spent muskets to clear a path through the destruction. He’d run off to war to escape his family, not caring about the danger he faced, half hoping he’d be killed. The last thing he expected to find, among the deprivation and violence, was a ragtag clan of brothers. The kind of family a man chose to be in—those voluntary ties more powerful than the blood bonds that had always felt like chains.

The captain was the glue. He had the ability to look at a solider and see a person. It had been unsettling at first, because no one had ever looked at Eric and seen anything besides his position. Society saw the eligible if younger son of an earl. His mother saw another son when she’d wanted a daughter. His father and brother were both too wrapped up, in their separate ways, with their own burdens, to see him at all.

He respected the captain more than anyone he’d ever met. If he were the kind of person capable of love, if his mother hadn’t drummed the ability out of him altogether, he would even venture to say he loved the man. So when their commanding officer hadn’t appeared as they regrouped that day, panic began to claw at his gut.

“Captain!”

An answering grunt made its way to his ears, sailing across the macabre, silent tableau. He whirled, trying to locate the source of the sound.

“Captain! I’m coming for you! Make some more noise!”

“Woodley,” came a quiet voice.

He turned toward it, leaping over a lifeless French soldier.

A barely audible whisper floated up from the carnage. “I’m trapped under a horse.” Heart racing, Eric rushed toward a fallen chestnut giant, a casualty of the cavalry that had charged ahead of them. Beneath it lay the captain and an unconscious Jasper, the company’s youngest soldier, who claimed to be sixteen.

Blood everywhere, but it was impossible to tell if it belonged to the boy, the man, or the horse.

“Get Jasper,” the captain rasped. “He’s passed out, but alive.”

Eric ignored the order. The boy was a sweet-faced Liverpudlian they all knew had lied about his age in order to enlist. He never spoke of his family. Perhaps he’d been escaping something, too. If Captain Mirren was the company’s surrogate father, Jasper was its son.

Still, there was no question, not really.

Crouching, he braced his shoulder against the horse’s withers. With a great cry, he managed to move the beast a few inches. Blood spurted from the captain’s midsection. The weight of the horse had been acting as a tourniquet.

“No!” shouted the captain, finding his voice. “Get Jasper.”

“I’ll come back for him.”

“I’m too far gone! It’s not just the horse. I was hit before I fell. Jasper will lose that leg, but if you hurry, he’ll survive.”

“I don’t accept that, I—”

“Woodley. Look at me.” Eric met his commanding officer’s eyes. The normally blue-violet irises were tinged with blood. “You know what you have to do.”

He hesitated. The captain lifted a hand, and the men stared at each other, the hand suspended in air.

He heard the whack of skin against skin ricocheting through the silent battlefield before he felt the sting of the slap.

“Get the fucking boy, Woodley.”

He got the boy.

In the five or so minutes it took him to free Jasper, he sneaked glances at the captain, who watched him silently, his face slowly draining of color.

With a final heave, he pulled the unconscious boy out from under the animal.

“Thank you,” whispered the captain.

“I’m coming back for you.”

The older man shook his head. “It’s too late. I won’t be here.”

Eric thought his chest might crack open. “You can’t stop me from coming back.” He hated that he sounded angry, that, as ever, he didn’t seem to be able to marshal a tone that matched what was in his heart. “I can’t just let you die.”

“There is one thing you can do for me.” The hand came up again, but this time it couldn’t make it all the way to its destination.

Eric used his own to grasp the icy, white fingers of the only true father he’d ever known. He brought them to his cheek. “Did you want to slap me again?”

The captain smiled weakly and shook his head. “No. Woodley. This bloody war has to end. Finish it. I don’t care what you have to do—assassinate that little French bastard yourself if you have to.”

“Yes, sir.”