CHAPTERONE
“Your Grace, you have to actually getoutof the carriage.”
Albion Winter blinked. “What?”
“We’ve arrived, Your Grace,” his friend, Ben Lomax, replied with a knowing smile. “You have to get out of the carriage, or folks are going to start thinking you’re not supposed to be here. Took a wrong turn somewhere and came up the wrong driveway. I have to say, you’re a sly one—never knew you had yourself a house like this when we were knee deep in French mud.”
Albion shuddered. “Don’t call me ‘Your Grace.’ I know you’re just doing it because you find it funny, but don’t.”
“Well, I can’t very well call you ‘Captain’ anymore, can I?” Ben grinned.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re not a captain now, you’re a duke.”
Albion groaned. “Don’t remind me.” He glanced out of the carriage window at the grand sandstone manor that stretched upward and the rose borders his mother had insisted on now in full bloom along the front terrace. “I might be mistaken, but I’m sure coming home is supposed to feel… better than this.”
“When was the last time?” Ben asked, his tone turning more serious.
“Four, five years ago.”
Ben nodded. “Be patient with yourself, Captain. This isn’t exactly an ordinary return home. Bad news is never easy to bear, and you’ve been struck twice—hard, at that.”
“He sent me a letter three months ago. I was too distracted to reply, but he seemed… happy.” Albion shook his head, like it could shake out the crushing thoughts.“This is not a command that thrills me.Iwas happy where I was.”
“And that makes you all kinds of mad, Captain,” Ben teased. “I suppose that’s a trait we all share. Why else would we do it if we weren’t a little bit insane?”
Albion bristled as the front doors of Whitecliff Manor opened with a shriek of old hinges, and a familiar—albeit more weathered by time and grief—face peeked out. His mother, Constance Winter. Her lips pursed at the sight of the carriage, her blue eyes squinting at the window Albion stared out from.
“Onward,” Albion muttered, opening the carriage door. Like any good captain, he would do his duty regardless of the circumstances and whether he wanted to proceed or not.
His stiff muscles complained as he crunched across the gravel toward the porch steps while the muscles in his lips did their best to remember how to smile. He had no idea what the result might be, but the disapproving look on his mother’s face suggested it was not as affable as he had been aiming for.
“You are late,” his mother said curtly, flinching at the sight of his face.
He had worn his battle scars for so long that he had forgotten they were there, but his mother’s expression served as a ripe reminder.
“I wasn’t aware I was expected at a certain hour,” he replied coolly, wondering if she might have preferred him in a mask.
Her disapproval transformed into horror. “Whatis the matter with your voice?”
“My voice, Mother?”
“You sound so… so… common!”
Ben popped up behind Albion, raising a hand. “That would be my fault, Your Grace. Well, my fault and the fault of the rest of the soldiers this fine fellow was in charge of. We could never understand him when he spoke like he had a plum in his mouth, so he adapted accordingly.”
“Who on earth are you?” Constance asked, nose wrinkling.
“My second-in-command on leave from the Continent,” Albion answered stiffly. “He wanted to accompany me on his way to see his own family. I wasn’t going to make him journey in the same direction on his own.”
Constance folded her bony arms across her chest, bristling in her black bombazine. “He has a manor nearby?”
Ben snorted. “Alas not, Your Grace. I’m but a simple man. My pa is a blacksmith in Dovecote; my ma a laundress.”
“Oh goodness,” Constance whispered under her breath. “Will your… second-in-command be staying with us? I suppose not since his family is not far.”
Albion clenched his jaw. “He will stay until the morning. The least I can do is offer him somewhere to rest and wash and eat after he has come all this way with me.”
