always been a dark and stuffy place, too far from good roads to be a convenient place for Sir Humphrey to entertain guests and therefore hardly worth the upkeep. Centuries of footsteps had worn depressions on the flagstones of the steps and hall, and everything had the blurry-around-the-edges look of an item that had been handled too much. But on the walls hung portraits of people who looked like Martin. Below, in the great hall, was the hearth around which Martin’s ancestors had gathered. He had been raised to lay claim to this place and it would never sit right with Will that the man he loved had been done out of the life he should have had. Will would always, in some small way, grieve the future that Martin never had, even if Martin didn’t himself care.
Maybe it was the old familiarity of the setting, maybe it was the fatigue after so long on the road, but Will had the sudden memory of his younger self in this house. He had been fifteen or sixteen, home on leave for the first time, and almost overflowing with happiness. His future felt full of such joy, ripe fruit available for the taking, and all he had to do was reach out. Martin had been so proud of him. Will had long since made his peace with his current state, but maybe it was all right for Martin to regret the future Will didn’t have—the loss of that effortless happiness, the narrowing of his prospects. Maybe Martin could be bitterly angry about the harm that had been done to a person he loved, but still love the person Will had become. Will hoped so, because he was fairly certain he was going to die angry with Sir Humphrey for what he had done to his son.
Will wended his way through the maze-like passageways of Lindley Priory. As the home of a single child and his unloving parent, it had been cold and dreary. As a school for boisterous children who were unsuited to typical schools, it was oddly fitting. Nothing in this building of battered stone and ancient oak could be damaged by less than a mortar shell. He heard the sound of a class being dismissed overhead—chairs dragged across floorboards, footsteps just short of a run, barely suppressed laughs, and then a deluge of small bodies pouring out the front door. If anything could chase out the ghosts of Lindley Priory, it was a hundred happy children. If anything was a fair replacement for what Martin had lost, it was this.
He climbed another flight of stairs and made his way to a room on the southerly side of the house, just beneath the attics. The door was ajar, so he pushed it the rest of the way open. Three beds were lined up against the wall, a clothes press overflowed with grass-stained garments, a pair of muddy boots sat on the window sill, and a badly blotted copybook rested on the desk nearest the fire. Any trace of Martin’s solitary childhood had been wiped clean by the dirt and chaos of little boys.
Will descended a set of stairs that had always been reliably deserted, but which now contained several children building what looked alarmingly like a siege engine, but they had a teacher with them so he supposed it was all right. From there he slipped into the kitchen and out through the buttery then into the boot room. Every twist and turn of the house was the same, etched into his memory from dozens upon dozens of clandestine entrances and exits. When he finally stepped out into the warm summer air he knew it was for the last time. He’d never come back.
Maybe that was why he let his path continue along a familiar course, out through the gate and through the little wood, then up and across the hills, and finally to the house where he had spent most of the first fourteen years of his life. He hadn’t been here in—he stopped to count. Certainly not since leaving the navy. His last leave had been only days, not long enough to get this far north. He had been eighteen, just about to be assigned to the Fotheringay, still young enough to think his future held nothing but adventure. Martin had been gloomier than usual, not ill but drawn and tired; a few days ago Martin had said it was that summer he realized he was in love with