Well, back in England, at least. Twenty months had passed since his last brief, disastrous stay here, after the Battle of Waterloo, in 1815. Now he was back.
But as Lieutenant Colonel Gilbert Bennington, Gil to his friends and acquaintances, disembarked from the packet in Dover after making the night crossing from Calais, he felt only weariness, irritation, and a heavy foreboding that coming home was not going to bring happily-ever-after with it.
He grimaced at the sight of an elegant traveling carriage, ducal crests emblazoned upon its doors, standing on the dock, for it was obviously awaiting him. Or, more specifically, Avery Archer, Duke of Netherby, one of his three traveling companions. Gil would have far preferred to hire a chaise for the journey ahead, but he might have guessed that nothing but opulent splendor would do for His Grace on his own native soil. And it had to be admitted, grudgingly, that this conveyance would be far better than a hired chaise for one of their other companions, Harry. Harry was looking gray with exhaustion.
Gil had not intended to have three companions for the journey. He had recently spent a year on the island of St. Helena as part of the garrison that guarded Napoleon Bonaparte during his second exile. When he had returned, on a ship bound for France rather than England for the simple reason that it was the first outward-bound vessel after his term of duty was over, he had gone to Paris. There he had discovered, quite by chance, that his old friend and comrade Major Harry Westcott, who he thought had died at Waterloo, was convalescing at a facility for military officers. Gil had last seen him after the battle, when his injuries had seemed mortal. But against all odds Harry had survived—barely. And after more than a year and a half he was itching to go home, though his physicians advised strongly against the strenuous journey. He was still not fully recovered.
Gil had offered to escort him, and Harry had jumped at the opportunity. He had invited Gil to stay with him for a while once they were back home, and Gil had accepted. He wanted to be in England. He needed to be there. But he was reluctant to go all the way to his own home. There were things that must be done first.
But then, at the last possible moment, two of Harry’s kinsmen had arrived in Paris with the purpose of conveying him home themselves. And although Harry himself was a mere illegitimate member of his family, his kinsmen were powerful men. Aristocrats. They were Avery Archer, who had once been Harry’s guardian—before the illegitimacy was discovered—and was now his brother-in-law; and Alexander Westcott, Earl of Riverdale, head of the family and holder of the title that had once been Harry’s—also before the discovery of the illegitimacy.
It was a bit of a complicated family, Gil understood. Harry had never spoken much about it.
They had traveled together, the four of them, though Gil had tried to bow out. He did not feel comfortable in aristocratic company. Despite his senior military rank, he was in reality a nobody from nowhere and as illegitimate as Harry. A gutter rat, if one chose to call a spade a spade. But Harry had begged him not to change his mind, so Gil had come. His friend would need him after his relatives had conveyed him home and returned to their own families.
“Ah,” the Duke of Netherby said now, looking at his carriage through the quizzing glass he raised to his eye. “A sight for sore eyes. How much did you wager, Harry, that my carriage would not be here?”
“Absolutely nothing, if you will recall,” Harry said. “It would be more than the life of your coachman is worth, or his livelihood anyway, to be late.”
“Quite so,” His Grace said with a sigh. “Let us go find a nearby inn and enjoy a good English breakfast. I daresay there will be a meaty bone somewhere on the premises too.”
The meaty bone would be for Gil’s dog, a great lump of a canine of indeterminate breed that had followed him from Waterloo to England to St. Helena, to France, and now back to England. She stood panting at Gil’s side, happy, he believed, to have her paws on firm soil again. Within moments she was inside the Duke of Netherby’s carriage with the rest of them, draped over Gil’s feet like a large sheepskin rug and half