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By Root 1232 0

. . . Hamish. The War. The impossibility of forgetting, when England was full of wounded men, struggling to go about lives that years in the trenches had altered irretrievably. People looked away from such men now, embarrassed by them, unable to think what to say to them. The War was finished. Over and done with. Except for the crosses in Flanders’s Fields. And the living reminders no one quite knew what to do with. He saw himself a dozen times an hour on the streets—among the amputees, the blind, the ugly coughing of the gassed—even though he’d come home from France whole in body. His wounds were invisible, yet he shared the misery of such men. Even now he could see clearly the poor devil he’d watched from his window that very morning, clumsily managing his crutches and attempting to steer a reasonably straight course among the passersby. Or the hideously burned face passing under the street lamp three nights ago, long after dark. The man had tried to hide the worst of his scars with a scarf. But with one ear missing, his hat had settled awkwardly . . . A pilot, shot down in flames and unlucky enough to have lived through it.

As he had lived through Scotland . . . somehow.

Hamish said, “Ye ken, I wasna’ ready for ye to die!”

To silence his thoughts, Rutledge agreed to dinner with Frances. The prospect of working a full day again was daunting; he knew quite well he hadn’t regained his full strength. All the same, it would do no harm to try, and possibly offer him some little respite from Hamish’s morbid concentration on Scotland.

Rutledge didn’t want to think about Scotland.

Scotland had haunted him while he was recovering from surgery. It had filled his drugged dreams. It had brought him upright, drenched with sweat and pain, in the darkest part of the night when defenses were at their lowest ebb. Words, faces, the sound of pipes, that last day of rain when nothing stayed dry . . . It was all there in his mind when he was most vulnerable—on the edges of sleep, waking in the predawn hours—fighting the overwhelming pain for fear the doctor might give him more drugs if anyone guessed how much he suffered.

He’d never wanted to go back to Scotland. Too many Scots had been killed in the trenches—he had given the orders that sent hundreds of them charging into No Man’s Land through gunfire that was pitiless, inhuman. He had watched them scream, he had seen them drop, he had stepped in the thick red blood where they had crawled in agony toward their own lines. He’d heard their last fumbling words as they died. It was a burden of guilt that still burned like live coals in his conscience. But the Yard had seen fit to send him north, whether he wanted to go or not. Barely a month ago, he’d done what he had sworn he would never do. And he didn’t want to think about it now.

There were letters from his godfather, David Trevor, who lived near Edinburgh, lying in his desk across the room. Unopened. He didn’t want to read them until he was well, until he was back at the Yard and his mind was filled with other problems. He didn’t want to hear how it had ended. He wished to God night after night that it had never begun—and knew that he lied even as he said the words. He had had to stay—

But Hamish reminded him of those letters day and night, and he’d ignored the voice until his head ached. When he was healed, fully healed, he’d read them. . . . Not until then. Hamish be damned!

Oh, God. Scotland be damned—!

Frances was watching his face, and he dragged his thoughts back to the present before she could read them.

Much as he disliked admitting it, she was right— one-armed, he was worse in the kitchen than he was with a razor. And his cooking would keep her happy, too. Less likely to chide him for looking like a scarecrow.

“Now let’s see about that tie. Then I must go, I’ve a party tonight and nothing to wear.” She smiled as she rose and crossed to the wardrobe. “This one, I think, with the gray suit.”

Chief Superintendent Bowles was not happy to see him. But then Bowles never was pleased to find Inspector Rutledge at his desk.