Ashbee nodded, mission complete.

Hawk headed back into the crowd, looking for Slade. The trouble here was that he was damnably impotent. In the army he’d had rank, authority, and the backing of his department. Here, he could do nothing without his father’s consent.

By his parents’ marriage contract, his father had complete control over the Hawkinville estate for life. He’d heard that his mother had been mad to have dashing Captain Gaspard, and had been the indulged apple of her father’s eye, but he wished they’d fought for better terms.

It was all a pointed lesson in the folly that could come from imagining oneself in love.

He saw Van and Maria dancing together, looking as if stars shone in each other’s eyes. Perhaps sometimes, for some people, love was real. He smiled at Con and Susan too, but caught Con in a contemplative mood, a somberness marking him that would have been alien a year ago, before Waterloo.

No, he’d been changed before Waterloo, changed by months at home, out of the army, thinking peace had come. That change, that gentling, was why the battle had hit him so hard. That and Lord Darius’s death. Amid so many deaths one more or less shouldn’t matter, but it didn’t work like that. He could remember weeping on and off for days over the loss of one friend at Badajoz.

He wished he could have found Dare’s body for Con. He’d done his damnedest.

He saw Susan touch Con’s arm, and could tell that the dark mood fled. Con would be all right.

He spotted Slade over by a beer barrel, holding court. There were always some willing to toady to a man of wealth, though Hawk was pleased to see that not many of the villagers fell into that category. Colonel Napier was there, and the new doctor, Scott. Outsiders.

Hawk had to admit that Slade was a trim man for his age, but he fit into the village as poorly as his house did. His clothes were perfect country clothes—today, a brown jacket, buff breeches, and gleaming top boots. The trouble was that they were too perfect, too new—as real as a masquerade shepherdess.

Hawk had heard Jack Smithers commenting on the horseflesh Slade kept stabled at the Peregrine. Top-class horses, but the man was afraid of them and when he went out riding he sat like a sack of potatoes. Slade clearly wanted to exchange his money for the life of a country gentleman, but why, in the name of heaven, here?

And what new monstrosity did he have planned?

Replace the old humpbacked bridge over the river with a copy in miniature of the Westminster one?

He strolled over and accepted a tankard, and a kiss, from Bill Ashbee’s wife.

“A grand affair, Major,” declared Slade, smiling, though Hawk had noted before that the man’s smiles to him were false. He had no idea why. Van and Con had both complained of the way Slade beamed at them, obviously trying to insinuate himself with the two local peers. A mere Hawkinville wasn’t worth toadying to?

“Perhaps we should have more such fetes,” Hawk said, simply to make conversation.

“That will be for the squire to say, will it not, sir?”

Hawk ran that through his mind, wondering what it meant. It clearly meant something more than the obvious.

“I doubt my father will object as long as he doesn’t have to foot the bill.”

“But he won’t be squire forever,” said Slade.

Hawk took a drink of ale, puzzled. And alert. He knew when people were running a subtext for their own amusement. “I won’t object either, Slade, on the same terms.”

“If that should arise, Major, you must apply to me for a loan. I assure you, I will always be happy to support the innocent celebrations of my rustic neighbors.”

Hawk glanced at the “rustic neighbors” nearby, and saw some rolled eyes and twitching lips. Slade was a figure of fun here, but Hawk’s deep, dark, well-tuned instincts were registering a very different message.

He toasted Slade with his tankard. “We rustic neighbors will always be suitably appreciative, sir!” He drained the ale, hearing a few suppressed chuckles and seeing Slade’s smile become fixed.

But not truly dimmed. No, the man still thought he had a winning hand. What the devil was the game, though?

Hawk turned to work his way through the crowd to where his father sat near the manor’s gates, his valet hovering. A few other people had brought out chairs to keep him company—newer village residents who doubtless saw themselves as too good to romp with their “rustic neighbors,” even for a lord’s wedding.

Hawk put that thought out of mind. They were harmless people. The spinsterish Misses Weatherby, whose only weapon was gossiping tongues. The vicar and his wife, who probably would prefer to be in the merriment but perhaps felt obliged by charity to sit with the invalid. That Mrs. Rowland, who claimed her husband was a distant relative of the squire’s. She was a sallow, dismal woman who dressed in drooping black, but he shouldn’t be uncharitable. Her husband still suffered from a Waterloo injury and she was in desperate need of charity.

The squire had given her free tenancy of some rooms at the back part of the corn factor’s, and freedom of produce from the home farm. In return, the woman was a frequent visitor, and she did seem to raise his father’s spirits, heaven knows why. Perhaps they talked of past Gaspard glory.

Hawk remembered that he’d meant to look in on Lieutenant Rowland to see if anything could be done for his health. No one in the village had so much as seen him. Another duty on a long list.

At the moment he was more interested in Slade. There was something amiss there.

So badly amiss that Hawk changed his mind and turned back to the celebration. He didn’t want to confront his father in public, but confront him he would, and squeeze the truth out of him if necessary. Whatever Slade was up to could be blocked. All the land in the village was owned by the manor.

He’d learned to put aside pending problems and grasp whatever pleasure the moment held, so he joined a laughing group of young men, who had once been lads of his own age to play with or fight with.

He kept an eye on the squire, however, and when his father was finally carried back into Hawkinville Manor, Hawk eased away from the revels and followed. He crossed the green and the road that circled it, and went through the tall gates that always stood open these days. Once those gates and the high encircling wall had been practical defenses. A tall stone tower still stood at one corner of the house, remnant of an even-sterner medieval home of the Hawkinvilles. He was aware of a strange instinct to close the gates and man the walls.

Against Slade?

The door opened and Mrs. Rowland came out, a basket on her arm. “Good evening, Major Hawkinville,” she said, as if good was an effort of optimism. She was a Belgian and spoke with an accent. “A pleasant wedding, was it not?”

“Delightful. How is your husband, Mrs. Rowland?”

She sighed. “Perhaps he grows a little stronger.”

“I must come and visit him soon.”

“How very kind. He has some days better than others. I hope it will be possible.” She curtsied and left with a nunlike step that made him wonder how she’d produced two children.

A very strange woman.

He shook his head and crossed the courtyard, evening-full of rose perfume and bird twitter. The hounds greeted him at the door, still not entirely used to him. Only old Galahad dated from his boyhood. Hawk had named him, in fact, to his father’s disgust at the romantical name.

The squire called him Gaily.

Perhaps it was a miracle that his father’s dogs didn’t bite him on sight.

When he walked in through the oak door his boots rapped on the flagstoned corridor. Strange the things that a person remembers. When he’d returned here two weeks ago, that sound—his boots on the floor along with the slight jingle of his spurs—had been a trigger for explosive memories, both good and bad.

There were other triggers. The smell of wax polish, which this close to the door blended with the roses in the courtyard. There had always been, as now, roses in the pottery bowl on the table near the door. In the winter, it was rose potpourri.

Hawkinville’s roses had perhaps been his mother’s savior. Over the years she had abandoned everything to her husband except her rose garden. Wryly, he could remember being jealous of roses.

When he was young. When he was very, very young.

He had always been practical, and had soon learned to do without family fondness. Anyway, he’d had the families of his friends to fill any void.

It would be different now. Perhaps that was what had tinged the day with slight melancholy. By some miracle, the close friendship of the Georges seemed to have survived, but it could never be the same, not now that Van and Con had another special person in their lives. Soon, no doubt, there would be children.

But it was still there, the rare and precious friendship. As close as brothers. As close as triplets, perhaps.

Perhaps that was the tug of Hawk in the Vale. It was the home of his closest friends. But here, in the entrance hall of the house in which he had been born, he knew it was more than that.

The Hawkinvilles had been here far longer than the house, but even so his family had worn tracks in these flagstones for four hundred years, and doubtless cursed the damp that rose from them when heavy rain soaked the earth beneath.

Perhaps his older ancestors hadn’t needed to duck beneath some of the dark oak lintels, though at least one had held the nickname Longshanks. Hawkinvilles had made marks in the paneling and woodwork, sometimes by accident and sometimes on purpose. There was a pistol ball embedded in the parlor wainscoting from an unfortunate disagreement between brothers during the Civil War.