Chapter One

      August 2nd, 1815

      His head hurt. The pain thudded, pounding and stabbing into his temples with every beat of his heart. Tony pulled himself to an upright position, squinting at the obnoxiously bright daylight flickering through the narrow gap of the drawn curtains.

      ‘Good day, my lord,’ Mason said, crossing the floor and pulling open the curtains with a raucous rattle. Bright sunlight spilled through the glass, filling the bedchamber.

      ‘Must you make it so infernally bright this early in the morning?’

      ‘It is past noon, my lord.’

      ‘Fantastic, time for another drink,’ he muttered. ‘Why are you here anyway? Didn’t ring for you. Sleeping.’

      ‘Lady Beauchamp is downstairs, my lord.’

      ‘Actually, not so much “downstairs” any more,’ his sister announced, laughing from the doorway.

      ‘Elsie!’ he said, keeping his injured hand hidden under the bedclothes. ‘You can’t come barging into a gentleman’s bedchamber, even if I am your brother.’

      ‘I have visited for three days and I am tired of waiting. You are either out or sleeping or in your cups. Besides, you do not return one’s calls.’

      ‘And you insist on visiting in the middle of the night. Anyway, what is so damned urgent?’ He spoke too loudly so that he winced at the noise of his own voice.

      ‘I need to go to the country.’

      ‘Then go. You do not need my permission.’

      ‘I wanted to talk to you first. Provided I could catch you in a moment of sobriety.’

      He glared. ‘Fine. We will chat, but for goodness sake, wait outside while I make myself decent.’

      ‘Very well, I will see you in the breakfast room, but do not think you can lope off again.’

      With those words, his younger sister gave a decisive nod and, thankfully, left the room, the door shutting firmly behind her.

      He again flinched, glaring irritably at the closed door. Truthfully, he had been avoiding her. Her presence reminded him too much of the gaping holes within their family.

      As well, there was this peculiar, detached feeling. He knew her to be his sister and knew that he loved her, yet could not seem to find the emotion.

      He lay back on the bed, staring between half-closed eyes at a crack in the ceiling. Even the concept of rising felt exhausting.

      And his bloody head hurt.

      ‘My lord?’ Mason said, clearing his throat.

      Tony groaned.

      ‘She will be back.’

      He nodded, pulling himself upright. His sister had always been persistent. ‘Stubborn and obstinate as a mule,’ their brother had said.

      While George, her husband, had called her ‘steadfast’ and ‘resolute’.

      But she was his family. Even though he couldn’t find the emotion, he knew he loved her, or had loved her. He knew he had been best man at her wedding. He could see himself. He could see George. He could see Elsie.

      But everything felt distant. As though recalling something he had observed—a wedding that was pretty, charming, happy, but in no way closely connected to himself.

      Perhaps that was it. Everything felt distant. Both the wedding and that which had come next: the cannons, the corpses, the smell, the blood...

      And Elsie and George and Edgar and his father, the happy and the sad, all seemed intertwined, so that he wanted only to shove them from his mind and lie within the dark, oblivion of this room.

      * * *

      Shaved and dressed, Tony exited his bedchamber. He still had a headache. As always, movement hurt. It was not excruciating any more, but rather a raw tautening, as his skin and muscles moved where the bullet had lodged within his ribcage.

      He was already looking forward to his next drink.

      Elsie glanced up as he entered the drawing room. As always, she wore the latest fashion. Of course, she was in deep mourning but even this suited her. George, Edgar, their father. Gone.

      He hated black.

      Sitting opposite, he stretched his feet towards the hearth, wincing slightly with the movement. ‘So why are you going to the country?’ he asked without preamble. ‘It seems a departure from your usual habits.’

      Elsie had a low tolerance for boredom. In their youth, he’d tended to egg her on while Edgar, always responsible, had bailed her out of numerous scrapes until she married George, who had then assumed the role.

      Until Waterloo.

      ‘I have been feeling unwell.’

      He glanced up sharply. She looked pale, he realised, although her appetite must be fine. She had gained weight. ‘Too many late nights, I suppose.’ While grief and injury had made him a hermit, she had become a social butterfly.

      ‘You are one to talk—well, at least about the late nights. No, it is not that.’ Elsie paused, glancing downwards, her fair ringlets falling across her forehead. She rubbed the black silk of her dress between her fingers. ‘You see, I am having a child.’

      He heard the words. They hung in the space between them, almost visible within the room. He felt nothing. He knew he should feel something: joy, worry, sorrow that George would never see his child...

      ‘Right,’ he said.

      Elsie frowned, scrunching up her face almost as she done when younger. ‘I am announcing that you may soon have a nephew, that George, who was your best friend, might have sired an heir prior to his death and all you can say is “right”?’