“He died in captivity,” she said. “He was a reconnaissance officer. A spy.”
Ah, poor devil. But were not captured officers treated with dignity and honor and courtesy, provided they gave their parole—that is, their promise as gentlemen not to try to escape? Unless, that was, they were out of uniform when caught, as a reconnaissance officer might well have been. He would not ask. He did not want to know. But—
“You were with him to the end?” He frowned.
“I went partway into the hills with him at the start of that particular mission,” she said, “as I often did when it was deemed safe enough. His batman would have escorted me back. We were still well behind our own lines. We were both captured.”
“And the batman?”
“He was foraging for firewood at the time,” she said, “and was able to make his escape.”
One captive had survived and one had not. Suddenly he saw her marble demeanor in a wholly new light. What had happened to her during her captivity? Especially if her husband had not been in uniform? It was really too ghastly to think about and he was not going to do it. He certainly was not going to ask any more questions. He did not want to know.
“And so you returned to England alone,” he said. “Did you move immediately to the dower house?”
“I went home,” she said, “to my father’s house twenty miles from here. But I would not speak or sleep or leave my room. Or eat. My mother is a cousin of the Duke of Stanbrook. He lives at Penderris Hall on the eastern side of Cornwall. He had opened his home to military officers who had returned from the wars severely wounded in one way or another, and he had hired a skilled physician and other people to nurse them. My mother wrote to him out of despair, and he came to fetch me. I was there for three years. There were six of us who stayed that long, seven counting George—the duke, that is. We called ourselves the Survivors’ Club. We still do. We still get together for three weeks of every year during March.”
They had stopped walking. There was a break in the cliff face here, he noticed, and what appeared to be a zigzagging path down to the beach below—a rather steep and surely dangerous descent. The dog sat down beside him, its head against the side of Percy’s boot.
“When one imagines oneself striding about one’s land, faithful hound at heel,” he said, “one tends to picture a robust and intelligent sheepdog or some such.”
She looked at Hector. “Perhaps,” she said, “when a dog imagines following upon the heels of its master, it pictures kind words and a gentle touch.”
Touché. She had a wicked tongue.
“I am not its master,” he said.
“Ah,” she said, “but who gets to choose?”
“Three years,” he said. “You were at Penderris for three years?”
Good God! How damaged had she been? And why was he pursuing this line of questioning? He did not deal in darkness. He hoped she would answer with a simple monosyllable or not at all.
“Ben—Sir Benedict Harper—had his legs shattered and refused to have them amputated,” she said. “Vincent, Viscount Darleigh, was blinded in his first battle at the age of seventeen, and deafened too at first. Ralph, Duke of Worthingham, was hacked almost to ribbons with a saber when he was unseated from his horse in a cavalry charge. Flavian, Viscount Ponsonby, was shot in the head and then fell on it from his horse. Hugo, Lord Trentham, was not wounded at all. He sustained not even a scratch, though he had led a Forlorn Hope that killed almost all his men and severely wounded those few who survived. He went out of his mind. George did not even go to war, but his only son did and died, and then his wife jumped to her death over the cliffs at the edge of his estate. And I . . . ? I was present when my husband died, but they did not kill me. Yes, three years. And those men are my very dearest friends in this world.”
Percy found himself fondling Hector’s damaged ear and wishing again that he had not started this. Shattered legs. Blind at the age of seventeen—and deaf too. Sons dying and wives committing suicide—over the edge of a cliff. And what the devil had happened to Lady Barclay while her husband was in captivity, presumably being tortured? It was something ghastly enough that she had spent three years at Penderris Hall. He felt a trickle of sweat snake down his spine. He did not want to know.
“When I left Penderris,” she said, “I came here. My father had died during those three years, my mother had gone to live with her sister, my aunt, in Cumberland, my brother had taken my father’s place with his wife and children, and I did not think it fair to go there, though my sister-in-law very graciously invited me. I could not bear to live in the hall here with my father-in-law and Aunt Lavinia, even though more than three years had gone by. I asked for the dower house, and my father-in-law reluctantly allowed me to go there. That is my story, Lord Hardford. You were entitled to hear it since you have come here for however short a time to find me living on your land. Shall we go down onto the beach?”
“Down there?” he asked sharply. “No.”
She turned her head to look steadily at him.
“I have never seen the attraction of beaches,” he said—well, not for a long time, anyway. “They are just a lot of sand and water. Why is Hardford not more prosperous than it is? Or do you not know?”
“It pays its way,” she said. “At least, that is what my father-in-law was always fond of saying.”