He set down his brush and turned to sit on the edge of the baroque table they’d painted a few days before. “Aren’t you going to tell me what you’re plotting?” he mimicked. “I can tell you want to. You’re all swelled up like a pufferfish.”

“I’m—” She looked down the smooth line of her alizarin-red gown. “I am not. Hal, you’re as bad as my boys.”

He grinned. “No one could ever be as bad as your boys.” He loved his nephews deeply, but they were an exhausting pair.

“True, true,” Emily granted. “This is the plan: since you’ve decided to stay in London, Jemmy and I are planning a ball for you.”

Henry lurched, then scrabbled at the edge of the small table to steady himself. “A ball. You’re planning a ball for me.”

“Yes.” Emily looked pleased. “The ton is marriage-mad during the final gasps of the season. It’s gasping longer than usual this year, for everyone’s staying through Prinny’s birthday. I am sure that, with a ball in your honor, we can draw all the attention to you that you deserve.”

Henry looked down at his right arm, waiting for a movement that never came. A constant reminder of Quatre Bras, of his failure. “I already have what I deserve.”

Emily began to pace; he could hear the rustle and shush of her skirts as she paced around the dimming confines of the morning room. “You won’t have what you deserve until you’re as happy as you were before you left. If your brother and I can do anything to help, we will. And that includes finding you a wife. And that includes hosting a ball for you.”

Henry continued to stare at his arm. Bundled in a coat sleeve, it looked almost normal, except for its eerie stillness. “It’s not up to you to remake my life, Emily.”

The sound of her pacing stopped, and Henry looked up. She was facing the mural of Odysseus, blinking hard. “I really ought to have this painted over with something more pleasant. Perhaps a pastoral scene.”

“It’ll still be there, even if you paint it over,” Henry murmured.

Emily pressed her lips together. “It doesn’t matter what’s below, as long as one can recreate the surface anew.”

Her voice fell, and she added low, “Please, Hal. Let us do this. We must do something.”

He knew that desperate feeling well enough. The need to escape the present, to change it in some way. That slippery discontent had almost pushed him all the way to Winter Cottage.

But there was one unavoidable flaw in Emily’s plan. A flaw that unpinned his knees, made him want to sit down on the cloth-covered floor.

“I can’t…” He swallowed, hating to have to say the words. He jerked his head toward his right shoulder, and Emily’s face softened with understanding.

“Dear Hal,” she said, walking back to his side. “We shall open the ball with a traditional minuet. You need hardly use your arms at all. And after that first dance, you may use your arms however you wish.”

She winked at him roguishly, then patted his cheek, her smile lopsided. “I hope you know that we only want your happiness.”

“I know,” Henry replied. His insides had not yet returned to order. His stomach was twisting, his heart thumping. He was to open a ball—he, with one arm, dancing before the whole ton.

Jem and Emily had never thrown him a ball in all the years before the war. They had always wanted his happiness, but they’d never felt the need to intercede with such a heavy hand. Another reminder that the world didn’t see him as it once had.

For good or ill, just as Frances had said.

Somehow, he would have to make sure it was the former.

“Now that you’re acquainted with my scheme,” Emily wheedled, “do tell me about your painting. Is it some sort of jungle creature?”

Actually, it was a first attempt at a human. But considering the elegant brutality of the ton… “Yes, it is,” Henry answered with a sigh.

“Delightful! And might I paint Aunt Matilda’s table some more?”

***

When Bart Crosby called an hour later, Henry was more than ready to leave behind his snarled-up painting and Emily’s persistent discussion of the ball’s details. He followed Bart down the front steps of Tallant House, where waited the new curricle of which he’d heard so much.

The small open carriage was a graceful, glossy rocker perched atop high spoked wheels. Its reins were held by a tiger in a snug coat and immaculate buckskin breeches; a boy so small that he looked unable to hold the horses if they should bolt. But the two fine grays, matched to the very blaze and stockings, stood with a calm that spoke to Lady Crosby’s—and her son’s—light and skillful hand with horseflesh.

The whole affair seemed precarious and fragile; Henry thought he could have pulled it himself without much effort. It looked far more hazardous than the sturdy gun carriages and supply wagons that had rolled next to Henry for hundreds of miles and hundreds of days.

Bart tapped a crop in the palm of one gloved hand, waiting for the verdict.

“It’s just as fine as you described it,” Henry said, knowing he’d given the right answer when Bart grinned.

“I wanted a phaeton,” Bart excused in a quiet voice, so the wide-eyed tiger would not overhear, “but, well, you know how mothers are. Always sure a fellow’s going to overturn and break his neck. Ah—beg pardon, Hal. You know. About your mother.” He swatted his crop against his thigh, marking the pale dun nap of his buckskin breeches.

“There’s no need to apologize,” Henry said. “The loss of my mother is hardly a fresh one. Besides, your mother has an excellent eye. I am sure this is very modish.”

“Modish isn’t the word, old fellow,” Bart said with a waggle of his dark brows. “It’s all the crack. Don’t you know?”

No, he didn’t. He felt a heavy, sliding awareness that he had missed out on a great deal.

He shook it off and summoned a smile. “So even modish words are modish now. Well, well. Such is life in the beau monde.”

“Where do you want to go?” Bart asked. “We can go anywhere you like.” He rubbed the neck of the near horse, which whickered and bobbed its finely molded head.

“What sort of places do you go? I don’t know what’s all the crack this season.” This cant sounded odd on Henry’s lips, as wrong as if he’d lisped in a Catalan accent or tried a Scottish burr. But Bart grinned again.

“That’s the spirit, Hal. Let me think. There’s Jackson’s, for one, but I don’t know if you could spar with your… er…”

Henry rescued him before he could apologize again. “No, not Jackson’s. What else?”

“Shooting or fencing. But… er…”

“Maybe another day,” Henry said in a voice as mild and smooth as butter. “If my brother were with us, we could go to Gunter’s for an ice. Jem is fiendishly fond of sweets.”

“And what about you? What are you fond of nowadays?”

Blinking, Henry took a moment to reply. “I…oh. Many things?” It ought not to have sounded like a question.

Bart whisked his crop one more time, then swung himself up into his polished carriage with the ease of a man born to driving. The well-oiled springs made not a sound as Bart shifted into position and took up the reins. “Hop in, Hal,” he said. “We’ll find somewhere that suits you.”

He sounded so sure of himself that Henry almost believed him. With a heave and a tug and a quick catch from Bart, Henry settled his unbalanced body into the high, rickety perch of the curricle.

And off they headed to someplace that would suit him. Though where such a place might be in a London of fencing and boxing and all the crack, he couldn’t imagine right now.

***

Bart Crosby was a quiet fellow, and therefore the world did not regard him much. With a voluble mother and three still more voluble sisters, it was a wonder he had ever learned to talk at all.

It was not a wonder that Bart was not sure what to say right now. He would usually have offered to turn the reins over to Hal. But his oldest friend had only one arm now, and there were two spirited horses. The math did not add up.

Bart took great comfort in the steadiness of routine. Every spring, he came to London. Every autumn, he brought a passel of friends to Lincolnshire to shoot at his country estate.

Over the years, change had inevitably come. Bart’s sisters had each married and left the ancestral home, which Bart found very bearable. Then his father had died, which was a shattering loss. His parents had ruled the world as Bart knew it, and now Bart was expected to step into his father’s place and serve as a baronet.

Sir Bartlett, everyone should be calling him now. The idea was laughable, even to himself. He was still just plain “Bart” or “Crosby” to both friends and strangers. Maybe because his mother had continued to run things as she saw fit, just as she had when Bart’s father was alive.

Since the years of their boyhood, Hal was the only one who had ever trusted Bart to make up his own mind. Where do you want to go? Hal would ask. We’ll go anywhere you like.

It became a game, to listen at doorways and gather clues from their elders. London seemed full of places with odd and wondrous names. Boodle’s. Jermyn Street. Hatchards. The Star and Garter.

And so would begin one of their adventures. Hal always knew where to find their quarry. He and Bart would slip out of Tallant House and run through the streets of London, their feet crunching on stone macadam or raising puffs of dust. Sometimes they wore no shoes, and every scratch, every cuff, every time someone shook a fist at the two dirty ragamuffins felt like a victory. They were in disguise. They were not young scions of the gentry; they were simply free.