the ladies he had disliked, the wives and daughters of officers who had insisted upon bringing their families to war. They were almost invariably haughty and demanding. Often they were helpless and clinging and inclined to the vapors and expected every man to dash to their assistance, bowing and scraping and generally debasing himself as he did so. Almost to a woman they had despised those colleagues of their husbands and fathers who were of lower rank or—far worse—not true gentlemen at all.
He had despised the lot of them heartily in return.
Except one . . .
Except Caroline, Lord help him.
Even with ladies, however, it was unfair to generalize. There had been a few among them whom he had respected, even liked.
He liked most of the ladies here at Hinsford, grudgingly, it was true, since their very presence dismayed him on his own account and worried him on Harry’s. A crowd of visitors was exactly what Harry did not need. It was why he had decided to come home to the country rather than go to London. But these people were at least amiable.
He sat between the Duchess of Netherby and Lady Jessica Archer at dinner, and they both conversed intelligently with him. The duchess was Harry’s half sister. She explained to Gil how she had grown up at an orphanage in Bath, unaware of her true identity. She had been twenty-five and teaching at the orphanage school when she was summoned to London to learn that she was in fact the legitimate daughter of the recently deceased Earl of Riverdale.
“A Cinderella story,” Gil said.
“In many ways yes,” she agreed. “But Cinderella was unhappy with her life before she met Prince Charming. She lived with a wicked stepmother and wicked stepsisters and was given grueling chores she did not enjoy. I was well cared for at the orphanage and had good friends there, including the one who later married my half sister Camille. I enjoyed teaching. I actually liked my Spartan little room and my few possessions, which were very precious to me. I was not entirely delighted to learn the truth about myself.”
“You would go back, then, if you could?” he asked.
“Oh, by no means. I did marry Prince Charming, after all.” She laughed and her eyes twinkled, and Gil liked her.
“You spent time with the garrison on St. Helena, Lieutenant Colonel?” Lady Jessica Archer asked him. “What is Napoleon Bonaparte like? We tend to think of him as an evil, black-hearted villain, but I suppose the truth is far more nuanced. I expect he is a fascinating though dangerous man.”
She was a dark-haired, bright-eyed beauty, the duchess’s sister-in-law, and Gil wondered why she was not yet married. Was marriage not the goal of all young ladies as soon as they left the schoolroom at the age of seventeen or so? She must be several years past that age.
“I saw him a number of times, of course,” he told her. “But I did not know him or ever speak to him. I felt sorry for him actually. If he had been made to face a firing squad, I would have approved. If he had been shut up for life in a fortress, I would have thought it a just fate. As it was, he was exiled to that island and housed in what many people seem to believe is a luxury he does not deserve. But in reality it is a house in ill repair. It is damp and unhealthy, and nothing has been done to make it more habitable. It seems to me that he is being treated not with justice but with deliberate contempt.”
“And contempt for such a man is not justice?” she asked. It seemed to be a genuine question, not a snide comment. Her knife and fork were suspended above her plate while she gave him her full attention.
“No,” he said. “I believe contempt says more about the person giving it than the one receiving. It demeans what ought to be righteous punishment.”
It occurred to him that this was probably not at all the sort of thing he should be talking about with a young lady of the ton—a duke’s sister. And it occurred to him as altogether likely that he was being treated with such warm courtesy only because it was assumed that as an officer he must also be a gentleman. But he could hardly be expected to stand up and announce himself to be the bastard son of a blacksmith’s daughter and a