The concentration deepened in his eyes, and then suddenly there was a flash of recognition, although for the life of her she could not think of any occasion on which she had seen him before. Curiously he did not refer to it.
"I am inquiring into the murder of Joscelin Grey. I wonder if you had known him."
"Good heavens!" she said involuntarily. Then she collected herself. "I have been accused of tactlessness in my time, but you are certainly in a class of your own." A total lie-Callandra would have left him standing! "It would be quite in your deserving if I told you I had been his fiancee-and fainted on the spot!"
"Then it was a secret engagement," he retorted. "And if you go in for clandestine romance you must expect to have your feelings bruised a few times."
"Which you are obviously well equipped to do!" She stood still with the wind whipping her skirts, still wondering why he had seemed to recognize her.
"Did you know him?" he repeated irritably.
"Yes!"
"For how long?"
"As well as I remember it, about three weeks."
"That's an odd time to know anyone!"
"What would you consider a usual time to know someone?" she demanded.
"It was very brief," he explained with careful condescension. "You can hardly have been a friend of the family. Did you meet him just before he died?''
"No. I met him in Scutari."
"You what?"
"Are you hard of hearing? I met him in Scutari!" She remembered the general's patronizing manner and all her memories of condescension flooded back, the army officers who considered women out of place, ornaments to be used for recreation or comfort but not creatures of any sense. Gentlewomen were for cossetting, dominating and protecting from everything, including adventure or decision or freedom of any kind. Common women were whores or drudges and to be used like any other livestock.
"Oh yes," he agreed with a frown. "He was injured. Were you out there with your husband?''
"No I was not!" Why should that question be faintly hurtful? "I went to nurse the injured, to assist Miss Nightingale, and those like her."
His face did not show the admiration and profound sense of respect close to awe that the name usually brought. She was thrown off balance by it. He seemed to be single-minded in his interest in Joscelin Grey.
"You nursed Major Grey?"
"Among others. Do you mind if we proceed to walk? I am getting cold standing here."
"Of course." He turned and fell into step with her and they began along the faint track in the grass towards a copse of oaks. "What were your impressions of him?"
She tried hard to distinguish her memory from the picture she had gathered from his family's words, Rosamond's weeping, Fabia's pride and love, the void he had left in her happiness, perhaps Rosamond's also, his brothers' mixture of exasperation and-what-envy?
"I can recall his leg rather better than his face," she said frankly.
He stared at her with temper rising sharply in his face.
"I am not interested in your female fantasies, madame, or your peculiar sense of humor! This is an investigation into an unusually brutal murder!"
She lost her temper completely.
"You incompetent idiot!" she shouted into the wind. "You grubby-minded, fatuous nincompoop. I was nursing him. I dressed and cleaned his wound-which, in case you have forgotten, was in his leg. His face was uninjured, therefore I did not regard it any more than the faces of the other ten thousand injured and dead I saw. I would not know him again if he came up and spoke to me."
His face was bleak and furious. "It would be a memorable occasion, madame. He is eight weeks dead-and beaten to a pulp."
If he had hoped to shock her he failed.
She swallowed hard and held his eyes. "Sounds like the battlefield after Inkermann," she said levelly. "Only there at least we knew what had happened to them-even if no one had any idea why.''
"We know what happened to Joscelin Grey-we do not know who did it. Fortunately I am not responsible for explaining the Crimean War-only Joscelin Grey's death."
"Which seems to be beyond you," she said unkindly. "And I can be of no assistance. All I can remember is that he was unusually agreeable, that he bore his injury with as much fortitude as most, and that when he was recovering he spent quite a lot of his time moving from bed to bed encouraging and cheering other men, particularly those closest to death. In fact when I think of it, he was