“Go,” she said, still smiling. “Kiss me once and go.”

He held her hands still as he kissed her. “I’ll be back,” he said with a sudden grin before turning and hurrying away down the stairs. “I have no intention of relinquishing my claim to be the elder twin, you know.”

She stood smiling after him until he was out of sight. And then the fan that she held broke in two in her hands.

Lord Eden hurried back to his billet to change out of his ball clothes, and found Captain Norton all ready to leave, alert and smartly dressed now that it was time to go into action.

“You go on ahead,” Lord Eden said when it seemed that the captain would have waited for him. “I promised to call on Simpson if there was need. We will catch up to you somewhere.”

His friend grinned at him. “Don’t delay too long,” he said. “You might miss all the fun.”

“Not a chance!” Lord Eden said with a laugh, hurling a silk shirt to the floor and trampling over it a moment later as he went for his boots.

Charlie was not in bed, he found less than half an hour later as he knocked on the door to his rooms. There was light within. If he knew his friend, he was probably all ready to leave.

Their faces were very set and without expression, he saw immediately when Charlie opened the door. He tried to smile. “It’s time to go,” he said.

He would have turned and left, but Charlie went from the room, and Mrs. Simpson stood looking at him. Her face was quite composed and quite without color. She held out both her hands to him.

“You will take care of yourself,” she said.

“Yes.” He smiled and took her hands. “And you, ma’am.”

There was a wonderful comfort in her presence. He never had known what caused it. He would have avoided taking any leave of her if he could. But he was not sorry now that he was holding her hands and looking down into her eyes. Perhaps Charlie was to be envied after all. He squeezed her hands.

“Come home again,” she said quietly. “Please come back again.”

“Yes,” he said.

And when he released her hands, she came into his arms and raised her face for his kiss. And he felt none of the terrible sick panic he had felt with all the others-with Edmund and Alexandra and the children, with Madeline. Only a certain peace as he kissed her and then hugged her to him and breathed in that fragrance from her hair that had haunted him for a few days. And a release of new energy that was no longer nervous energy, but a purposeful desire to go out and do the job that he was trained to do.

He smiled down at Ellen Simpson as she released him. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said. And he looked up briskly at his friend, who had been standing quietly in the room since she had spoken her last words. “I’ll see you outside in a few minutes, Charlie.”

Ellen turned to her husband and looked at him as if down a long tunnel. He held out his arms to her.

“Well, lass,” he said.

“Charlie.” She put herself against him, her face pressed to his shoulder.

And he rocked her in his arms. They communicated at a level far deeper than words. He put her from him eventually and held her face in his hands.

“My precious, precious treasure!” he whispered, and kissed her once, briefly, on the lips. “My sweetheart.”

“Go now,” she said as she always said to him on such occasions.

And after the door had closed quietly behind him, she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. She did not dare move. Not yet.

So. It was done. She had sent her men on their way, and there remained only the wait to see if either or both of them would come back to her again.

Charlie, her love. The light of her life. The precious only light. The only person on this earth she would gladly, gladly die for. The only person she could not-dared not-contemplate living without.

And Lord Eden-Dominic. Her husband’s friend. Her friend. Beautiful, smiling, charming Lord Eden, whom she had seen reluctantly, unwillingly, in the past weeks as a man. As a very attractive man of her own age. And now he was going with Charlie into the carnage of war. She might never see him again.

And so she had sent him on his way with her love. She had kissed him as a mother might. As a sister might. And perhaps a little differently from either.

And Charlie was gone.

Charlie was gone.

She continued to stare at the door even when, eventually, it blurred before her eyes.

THE FOLLOWING DAY was the worst waking nightmare Madeline had ever lived through. She began the day badly, rising for an early breakfast, though she had hardly slept at all. Lady Andrea’s manner, she found, was as brisk and as heartily cheerful as it ever was, though the colonel too had left from the ball to join his regiment, without returning home to change from his evening clothes. The two ladies were alone in the house apart from the servants. Mr. Mason, Lady Andrea’s father, was already out seeing what news he could discover.

And they were to spend the day, Madeline discovered, laying in as many supplies as they could, both of food and of medical necessities, clearing rooms of unnecessary furniture, and gathering as many sheets, blankets, and pillows as they could lay their hands on. It mattered not at all that there were servants in the house who might be set to performing these tasks.

“Soon it will not signify whether we are tavern maids or the Queen of England or anything else in between,” Lady Andrea said. “They will send the wounded back here, you know, and before we know it, there will be scarce room even in the streets for them all. We will be ready to take in as many as we can.”

Madeline blanched at the mental image of wounded soldiers-those same soldiers whom she had seen thronging the streets and dancing at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball only the day before.

“There will be surgeons?” she asked.

“They will probably all stay at the front,” her friend said, seemingly quite unmoved by the horror of her own words. “The wounded who are sent back here will be dependent upon our care. We must be ready for them.”

“I have no experience. I will not know what to do.” Madeline swallowed awkwardly.

Lady Andrea allowed herself a short bark of laughter. “Yes, you will, my dear,” she said. “Of course, I forget that you are raw out of England. Believe me, Madeline, my dear girl, by this time tomorrow or the day after, you will know exactly what to do. You will see need and you will be there to supply it. We do not know what inner resources we have until they are called upon.”

But she had none, Madeline thought. She would not even be able to shut herself away in the kitchen and cook broths for the wounded. She did not know how to cook. And the sight of blood made her feel faint.

“Don’t worry,” Lady Andrea said, patting her on the arm and rising resolutely from the breakfast table. “When the time comes, you will be far too busy to remember that you are a delicately nurtured young lady.”

Perhaps there was some truth to that, Madeline thought as the day proceeded and she rushed about without maid or chaperone, though the streets were far more crowded than usual. Although a surprising number of people seemed to be going about their business as usual, there was also an unusual press of vehicles in the streets, piled high with baggage and furniture, often pulled by fewer horses than was customary with the particular conveyance.

People were leaving Brussels in droves. But it was not easy, one chance-met acquaintance told Madeline. Some other mutual acquaintances who had tried to leave by barge on the canal to Antwerp had found that there were no barges available. They had all been commandeered under the duke’s orders for the purpose of bringing artillery up to the front. Horses were selling for a king’s ransom, and the crudest wagon for a fortune. People were panicking.

Madeline was glad that she had more than enough to do. There was no time to panic or to worry about Dom. She would not think of Dom. She bought all the bandages and all the laudanum that one chemist was willing to sell her and hurried back home with them.

There was no news, though Mr. Mason made frequent outings during the day and both ladies were constantly in and out of the house bound on some errand. But the guns began in the afternoon. Madeline was outside and looked up in some surprise to find that indeed there were no clouds either above or on the horizon that could presage a thunderstorm. And then she realized that the sound was not thunder and felt her knees turn to jelly and her stomach perform a somersault.

And it was not quite accurate to say that she could hear the guns, she realized. She could feel the guns. The sound was too deep and too distant to have any great effect upon the ear. But the echoes and vibrations could be felt to the very marrow of the bones.

Dominic!

She was greatly relieved to recognize Mrs. Simpson hurrying across the street toward her, head bent.

“Good afternoon, ma’am,” she said, catching the lady by the arm. “Can you hear them too?”

Ellen looked up, startled. “Oh, Lady Madeline,” she said, “it is you.” And she stopped walking and looked more closely. “Oh, my dear,” she said, “you have never experienced this before, have you? Are you going to faint? Bend your head sharply forward and take some deep breaths. Come, I shall walk with you for a little way. I was on my way to a grocer’s. My poor maid had the hysterics this morning. She is fresh from England, poor girl. I succeeded in getting her a place on the cart of a neighbor, bound for Antwerp and home.”

Madeline was glad of the quiet cheerfulness of her voice. “I am very silly,” she said. “I am ashamed of myself.”