He smiled at her, and she could see that he must once have been very handsome. He still was, but there were cares worn into his face now where once there must have been pure youthful charm. As there had been with Matthew, though she did not suppose Sir Benedict had ever been as breathtakingly good-looking as her husband.
“The years of my convalescence were the worst of my life,” he said, “and also, strangely enough, the best. Life has a habit of being like that, giving and taking in equal measure, a balance of opposites. Beatrice would have had me here to nurse back to health, but she had young children at the time, and it would have been unfair to foist the burden of my wounded self upon her. I was fortunate enough to be brought to the notice of the Duke of Stanbrook. He took me and a number of other wounded officers into his own home, Penderris Hall in Cornwall, hired the best doctors and nurses, and kept some of us there for longer than three years while we healed and recuperated. There is a group of us, seven in all, who still meet there for a few weeks every year. Those five men, including the duke, and one woman are my closest friends in the world. They are my chosen family. We call ourselves the Survivors’ Club.”
“Are two of its members by any chance the hero of a Forlorn Hope who was brought home in a straitjacket and a young blind man?” she asked.
“Hugo, Lord Trentham, and Vincent, Viscount Darleigh, yes,” he said.
“And one of the members of your club is a woman?”
“Imogen, Lady Barclay,” he said. “She was in the Peninsula with her husband, who was a reconnaissance officer. A spy, in other words. He was captured while he was not in uniform, and he was tortured, partly in her presence. Then he died.”
“Poor lady,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I wonder,” she said, “if there is anyone of our generation or the generations directly above and below our own whose life is unaffected by the wars. Do you think there is?”
“We are all always affected by the major events of history,” he said. “It is unavoidable. Who was it who said—” He stopped and frowned in thought. “It was John Donne in one of his essays. No man is an island entire of itself. That was it. There is always some poet or philosopher who has captured in brief and vivid words the greatest truths of human existence, is there not?”
“Are you a philosopher, Sir Benedict?” she asked.
“No.” He laughed. “But I fear I am being a bore. You told me last week that you are tired of sickness and suffering and death—or something to that effect. You told me you wanted to live, specifically to dance. Has it been a long time since you danced? Tell me of the last time—or the last time that was memorable. Where was it? When? What did you dance? And with whom?”
“Goodness.” She found herself laughing back at him. “Can I remember that far back? Oh, let me see. When was it? There were a few regimental balls before the regiment was sent to the Peninsula. I did not particularly enjoy them.”
It was during those balls she had seen Matthew dance with other women, both married and single. Not just dance, though—every officer danced with ladies other than their wives, of course. It was what was expected at any ball. Matthew had openly flirted, and all those wives and others had responded and been flattered and flirted right back. She had hated those balls and having to smile and dance and pretend to be finding nothing distasteful in her husband’s behavior. She had hated the looks of kind sympathy in the eyes of some of the other officers with whom she danced.
“The last memorable dance was at an assembly when I was still living at home,” she said. “Several of the officers billeted nearby were there and sending flutters of excitement through the hearts of every girl in attendance. How the other men must have hated the sight of scarlet regimentals. I had not thought about that before now. Lieutenant Matthew McKay, with whom I already had something of an acquaintance, singled me out for two dances. One was the Roger de Coverley. I can remember the sheer joy of dancing it. I was very much in love, you see. And he asked me that same night if I would marry him, though he had to talk to Papa before he could make an official offer, of course.”
He was smiling at her, she saw when she turned her head toward him. Oh, goodness, when had she last indulged in happy memories?
“When was the last time you danced?” she asked him.
“I suppose it was at one of those regimental balls you did not enjoy,” he said. “In fact, I know it was. I waltzed with my colonel’s niece. I was waltzing for the first—and only—time. The waltz was very new then. There is no lovelier dance in the world for sheer romance.”
“Was there a romance between you and the colonel’s niece?” she asked.
“Oh, yes.” He smiled softly. He was no longer looking at her but was gazing over the flower beds, and she knew that he too was lost in happy memories for the moment. “I had known her for a month and believed she was the other half of my soul.”
“What happened?”
“War happened.” He laughed softly. “We cannot get away from it, can we? Tell me about your home and your family.”
“My father was a gentleman who lived contentedly in the country with his books,” she said. “He was a widower with one son when he met my mother during a rare visit to London. She was twenty years younger than he, but they married and had me. My mother died when I was twelve, my father when I was eighteen.”
“After you were married?” he asked.