Chapter One
Sam
5th December 1814
“If the Huxleys are coming for Christmas,” Sam said, “then I give you fair warning: I intend to decamp.”
“Decamp?” Lady Alderton exclaimed. She set down the delicate china teapot she’d been pouring from and fixed him with a horrified look. “Samuel, you are no longer in Portugal! Genteel persons do not decamp.” She blinked. “Or camp, for that matter.”
Sam sighed wearily. “As I am sure you are well aware, I was speaking figuratively. I won’t be setting up a tent, but I will go to Little Wolkham and take a room at the White Hare for the duration.”
Little Wolkham, the nearest town, was a dozen miles distant.
“But why?” Lady Alderton demanded, sounding genuinely perplexed. “It’s only your Aunt Augusta!”
“It’s not only Augusta,” Sam said patiently, deliberately leaving off the honorific because Augusta Huxley was not his real aunt, only his mother’s best friend. “It’s Augusta, Sir Ralph, Violet, Jasper, and the twins. And Bertha.”
“That’s Great-Aunt Bertha to you,” Lady Alderton corrected.
“I am not related to her,” Sam pointed out.
“As good as,” Lady Alderton replied with a vague wave of her hand. “Augusta is my dearest friend, and her mother was practically a grandmother to you when you were a boy!”
Sam snorted. Bertha was the least grandmotherly person imaginable. Unless one was thinking of Lucretia Borgia’s grandmother, perhaps. Or Caligula’s.
What was true was that the rest of the Huxley clan were as near to family as could be. Sam’s mother, Lydia, and Augusta Huxley had met at a young ladies’ seminary in Bath when they were fourteen and immediately become the best of friends. After the seminary, they had spent two giddy London seasons together, attending all the same balls and assemblies and ultimately marrying within a month of one another.
Lydia had married the very eligible Earl of Alderton, while Augusta had snared Sir Ralph Huxley. Despite settling down over sixty miles apart, Lydia and Augusta had continued to faithfully write to one another and visited each other regularly enough that their husbands and children also, in good time, became firm friends.
When Sam was a boy, the two families were in the habit of visiting one another at least two or three times each year. There would usually be a short visit over the spring, a longer one in late summer, and a third over Christmas. However, as the children had grown into adulthood, the visits had gradually become less frequent, till only the Christmas one remained.
The last time Sam had been present at one of the Alderton-Huxley parties had been fully five years ago. It had been Sam’s last Christmas in England—he’d been due to sail to Lisbon the following February as a new subaltern in the Thirteenth Hussars. He’d been so terribly excited. So ready to leave England and see the world. Even if it meant going to war to do it.
Now Sam would see the Huxleys for the first time in five years.
They would find him very changed from the young, carefree man he had been then.
“Oh, Samuel, please,” Lady Alderton said, her trembling voice interrupting his thoughts. “Don’t go to the White Hare. The Huxleys were so pleased to learn that you’d be here. And with your brother being away and Ginny not being able to come… at least let me have one of my children with me for this visit!”
Sam’s older brother, John, was visiting his wife’s family in Derbyshire for Christmas, while his sister Ginny was staying at home in Surrey, in anticipation of her latest happy event, which she expected to occur within a few days of the Christmas feast. Which rather left Sam saddled with the burden of his mother’s expectations.
Perhaps it was cowardly of him, but he didn’t think he could bear that weight right now.
He had only been home for two months, and he was very far from being accustomed to the reality of his new life. A life without service, without comrades, without purpose.
Without…
He pressed his lips together, trying not to let his emotions show on his face, aware of his mother’s gaze on him and how easily she became upset. He felt as though he spent his life trying not to upset her. He wore his false arm even when he didn’t want to because he knew how much she hated seeing his empty sleeve. And he tried not to react when ordinary, everyday things were difficult for him, even when he wanted to curse.
It was not always easy to rein himself in. Sometimes he would go to do something perfectly straightforward, only to realise it was no longer the simple thing it had once been. And he hated those moments, hated discovering his own disability, over and over, the constant reminder that he was not the man he had once been.
He was tired of feeling useless, tired of feeling less than he had been before, tired of hiding it from everyone.
And he really didn’t think he could bear to see his new self through the cheerful eyes of the Huxley clan.
Bad enough facing his family when he felt so raw. He wasn’t ready for yet more people, especially all those loud and joyful Huxleys. Those talkative Huxleys. He could just imagine them looking him over, their curious gazes snagging on his rigid false arm. The smooth, unmoving wooden hand protruding from his sleeve.
That thought made his stomach hollow and his heart race. He wasn’t ready for that. At this point, he couldn’t imagine he’d ever be ready.
He especially couldn’t imagine facing Jasper Huxley. Jasper, who always used to look at him with that little bit of hero worship.
When they’d been children, Sam had treated Jasper with the friendly contempt that any older boy would show a younger one. He’d considered Jasper, almost three years his junior, to be beneath his notice. It was only on that last visit that that had changed.
“Samuel,” Lady Alderton said. “Darling, please. We’ve barely seen you these last five years and I just”—she raised her handkerchief to dab her eyes and continued in a watery voice—“I wanted us all to be together again. I thought you’d be pleased I’d invited the Huxleys. It would do you good to spend some time with some young people your own age.” She dabbed her eyes again.
Guilt swamped Sam. He’d never been very good at dealing with his mother’s tears.
“Mother—”
She heard the note of surrender in his voice and pressed her advantage, peeping over her handkerchief to say plaintively, “It’s not so very much to ask, is it?”
In truth, she had no idea how much she was asking. No idea what had occurred between Sam and Jasper Huxley the last time they’d seen one another, here at Alderton Hall, just before Sam had left for Portugal.
The thought of Jasper seeing him like this.
His throat closed.
“Please, Samuel,” his mother whispered. “For me?”
Her light blue gaze pleaded with him, and in that moment, Sam couldn’t find it in himself to refuse her.
He sighed again. “All right. But you must promise not to talk about my arm or nag me to join in any games or excursions I don’t want to take part in.”
Lady Alderton clasped her hands at her bosom and beamed at him. “Of course,” she promised earnestly. “I’ll be as good as gold. Oh, thank you, darling!”