She was tall and slender and graceful. Her dark blond hair was dressed in a chignon at the back of her head, but the very severity of the style merely emphasized the perfect beauty of her rather long, Nordic face with its high cheekbones, wide, generous mouth, and large blue-green eyes. It also emphasized the almost marble impassivity of that face. That had not changed from two years ago.
“Imogen.” He squeezed her hands and then drew her into a close embrace. He breathed in the familiar scent of her. He kissed one of her cheeks and looked down at her.
She raised one hand and traced a line between his eyebrows with the tip of her forefinger.
“You still frown,” she said.
“He still scowls,” Ralph said. “Dash it, but we missed you last year, Hugo. Flavian had no one to call ugly. He tried it on me once, but I persuaded him not to repeat the experiment.”
“He had me mortally t-terrified, Hugo,” Flavian said. “I wished you were here to hide behind. I hid behind Imogen instead.”
“To answer your earlier question, Hugo,” the duke said, clapping a hand on his shoulder, “you are the last to arrive and we have been all impatience. Ben would have come down to greet you, but it would have taken him rather too long to get down the stairs only to have to go up them again almost immediately. Vincent stayed in the drawing room with him. Come on up. You can go to your room later.”
“I ordered the tea tray as soon as Vincent heard your carriage approaching,” Imogen said, “but doubtless I will be the only one drinking from the pot. It is what I get for allying myself with a horde of barbarians.”
“Actually,” Hugo said, “a cup of hot tea sounds like just the thing, Imogen. I hope you have ordered better weather for tomorrow and the next few weeks, George.”
“It is only March,” the duke pointed out as they made their way upstairs. “But if you insist, Hugo, sunshine it will be for the rest of your stay here. Some people look rugged but are mere hothouse plants in reality.”
Sir Benedict Harper was on his feet when they entered the drawing room. He was leaning on his canes, but his full weight was not on them. And he actually walked toward Hugo. So much for those experts who had called him fool for refusing to have his crushed legs amputated after his horse had been shot from under him. He had sworn he would walk again, and he was doing just that, after a fashion.
“Hugo,” he said, “you are a sight for sore eyes. Have you doubled in size, or is it just the effect of the greatcoat?”
“He is a sight to cause sore eyes, certainly,” Flavian said with a sigh. “And no one told Hugo that multiple capes on a greatcoat were designed for the benefit of those underendowed in the shoulder department.”
“Ben,” Hugo said and caught the other man carefully in his arms. “On your feet, are you? You have to be the most stubborn man I have ever known.”
“I believe you could give me some stiff competition,” Ben said.
Hugo turned to the seventh member of the Survivors’ Club and the youngest. He was standing close to the window, his fair curls as overlong and unruly as ever, his face as open and goodhumored, even angelic. He was smiling now.
“Vince,” Hugo said as he advanced across the room.
Vincent Hunt, Lord Darleigh, looked directly at him with eyes as large and blue as Hugo remembered them—lady-killer eyes, Flavian had once called them in order to draw a laugh out of the boy. Hugo always found his accurate gaze a little disconcerting.
For Vincent was blind.
“Hugo,” he said as he was caught up in a hug. “How good it is to hear your voice again. And to have you back with us this year. If you had been here last year, you would not have allowed everyone else to make fun of my violin playing, would you? Well, everyone except Imogen, anyway.”
There was a collective groan from behind them.
“You play the violin?” Hugo asked.
“I do, and of course you would not have allowed the ridicule,” Vincent said, grinning. “They tell me you look like a large and fierce warrior, Hugo, but if you do, then you are a fraud, for I can always hear the gentleness beneath the gruffness of your voice. You shall listen to me play this year, and you will not laugh.”
“He may well weep, Vince,” Ralph said.
“I have been known to have that effect upon my listeners,” Vincent said, laughing.
Hugo removed his coat and tossed it over the back of a chair before sitting down with everyone else. They all drank tea despite the duke’s offer of something stronger.
“We were very sorry not to see you last year, Hugo,” he said after they had chatted for a while. “We were even sorrier about the reason for your absence.”
“I was all ready to come here,” Hugo said, “when word of my father’s heart seizure reached me. So I was prepared to leave almost immediately, and I arrived before he died. I was even able to speak with him. I ought to have done it sooner. There was no real need of the near estrangement between us, even though I broke his heart after I insisted that he purchase a commission for me, when all my life he had expected that I would follow him into the family business. He loved me to the end, you know. I suppose I will always be thankful that I arrived in time to tell him that I loved him too, though it might have seemed that words came cheap.”
Imogen, who was seated beside him on a love seat, patted his hand.
“He would have understood,” she said. “People do understand the language of the heart, you know, even if the head does not always comprehend it.”