that.

It was not knowing what to do that haunted him.

Chapter 3

London, Late May, 1920

Before leaving the next morning to give evidence in a court case in Sheffield, Ian Rutledge had taken his sister, Frances, to dine at a new and popular restaurant. There they encountered friends just arriving as well and on the point of being shown to a table. They were invited to join the other party, and as new arrangements were made, Rutledge made certain that his own chair remained at what had become the head of a larger table. His claustrophobia after being buried alive when a shell blew up his salient in 1916 had never faded. Even four years later, he couldn’t abide a crowded room or train, and something as ordinary as a chair in a corner, with others—even good friends—between him and the door could leave him shaken. Frances, unaware of her brother’s irrational fear, was already enjoying herself, and he watched her flirt with Maryanne Browning’s cousin, an attractive man named Geoffrey Blake. She had met him before, and as they caught up on events and old friends, Rutledge heard someone mention Meredith Channing. He himself had called on Mrs. Channing not ten days earlier, to thank her for a recent kindness, only to find that she was away.

Now Blake was saying, “She’s in Wales, I think.”

And Barbara Westin turned to him, surprised. “Wales? I’d understood she was on her way to Norfolk.”

Someone at the other end of the table put in, “Was it Norfolk?”

Frances said, “I don’t think I’ve seen her in a fortnight. Longer . . .”

“Doesn’t she visit her brother-in-law around this time of year?” Ellen Tyler asked.

“Brother-in-law?” Rutledge repeated.

“Yes, he lives in the north, I believe,” Ellen replied. “He went back to Inverness at the end of the war. Apparently he was sufficiently recovered to travel.”

“A back injury,” Alfred Westin put in. “His ship was blown up and he held on to a lifeboat for two days before they were picked up. A brave man and a stubborn one. He was in hospital for seven months. But he’s walking again, I heard, albeit with canes now. He was here in the spring, for the memorial concert.”

Rutledge remembered: in early spring he’d spotted Meredith Channing trying to hail a cab just as a rainstorm broke, and he’d stopped to offer her a lift. She had said something about a concert. St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

“I’m surprised she hasn’t married him,” Ellen Tyler went on. “Her brother-in-law, I mean. He’s been in love with her for ages.”

“Speaking of love, have you seen the announcement of Constance Turner’s engagement in the Times? I am so pleased for her. She deserves a little happiness.” Barbara smiled. “But wouldn’t you know—another flier.”

Rutledge had known Constance Turner’s husband. Medford Turner had died of severe burns in early 1916, after crashing at the Front. He’d been pulled from his aircraft by a French artillery company that had risked intense flames to get to him. Rutledge and his men had watched that dogfight, before both planes had disappeared down the line. He hadn’t known it was Turner at the time, only that the English pilot had shown amazing skill.

Their orders were given to the waiter, and the conversation moved on.

Hamish, ever present at the back of his mind, said to Rutledge now, “Inverness is a verra’ long way.” The voice was deep, Scots, and inaudible to the other diners—a vestige of shell shock, guilt, and nightmares that had begun during the fierce battle of the Somme in July 1916. In the clinic, Dr. Fleming had called that voice the price of survival, but for Rutledge it had been a torment nearly beyond enduring.

Inverness might as well be on the other side of the world. Rutledge had made it a point since the war to avoid going into Scotland. And Hamish knew why. Even his one foray there, on official business, had not ended well. In truth, he’d nearly died, taking Hamish into the darkness with him.

At that same moment Frances turned to her brother with a question, and he had to bring his attention back to the present.

But after he’d dropped her at the house that had belonged to their parents, and driven on to his flat, he couldn’t shut the words out of his mind: Doesn’t she visit her brother-in-law around this time of year? I’m surprised she hasn’t married him. He’s been in love with her for ages.

Meredith Channing had never spoken—to him—of her family or her past.