‘Very well.’ Harry nodded. ‘Same time next week, Alec? And Alec—do you think I’m making progress?’
Silence. Then, levelly, ‘Your technique, Harry, never ceases to amaze me.’
‘Oh. Oh, I say.’ Harry left, looking rather pleased. Alec shut the door on his departure a little too hard and brushed the ensuing shower of ceiling plaster from his shoulders.
The damn place was falling to pieces. Rather like his life.
Alec was the younger son of an earl, and had served in the army for seven years. He’d returned home with a reputation for gallantry, and his future should have been bright indeed.
But here in London, the very air was tainted. Tainted by his own brother.
‘Beg pardon, Captain!’ A small but tough-looking man with a black patch over one eye had entered the hall. ‘I’ve got three fellows here, wantin’ to speak to you.’ Hovering behind Garrett were some men who were plainly ex-soldiers, though their uniforms hung in rags from their half-starved bodies. And—they saluted Alec. That got him. In spite of their pitiful condition, they saluted him.
‘They’re old ‘uns from the Fourteenth, Captain,’ Garrett explained. ‘Want to know if we’ve got any room to spare.’
Two Crows Castle was full to bursting. Alec sucked in a deep breath. ‘Garrett, I really don’t see how we can—’
‘We could squeeze some extra pallets in the top attic, Captain!’
‘Right.’ Of course. How could they turn away these brave men, any one of whom might have fought at his side on the bloody battlefields of Spain? ‘Right,’ he repeated, ‘see to it, Garrett, will you?’
‘Straight away, Captain!’ Garrett saluted and turned smartly to escort the ex-soldiers to their new quarters upstairs. ‘Look sharp now, lads!’
‘God bless you, Captain!’ they were trying to say to Alec. ‘You’re one of the very best! A Waterloo hero and more!’
Alec waved them away. Then he sat down and raked his hand through his dark hair.
A hero and more? In his father’s opinion, far from it.
‘My own son.’ The Earl of Aldchester had looked stricken—no other word for it—as Alec had stood before him a year ago in the luxurious drawing room of his Mayfair mansion. ‘Alec, I cannot believe you have come here to try to destroy my new-found happiness with the woman I love!’
Alec had been in his uniform, the famous blue jacket and white breeches of the Light Dragoons. It was February 1815, and all the army’s senior officers had been quietly warned that the Emperor Napoleon was bent on escape from Elba, but Alec had other matters on his mind, for he’d just heard that his father was planning a June wedding.
‘Please believe me, sir.’ Alec had stood very straight, hating every minute of this interview. ‘It’s your happiness that I wish to preserve …’
The Earl had got slowly to his feet, suddenly looking every year of his age. Once, Alec knew, he’d dreamed of a military career for himself, and historic paintings of famous British victories a hundred years ago—Blenheim, Ramillies, Malplaquet—were hung around the walls of his beautiful house. He would await Alec’s brief periods of leave from the army with almost painful eagerness. ‘Ah, this fellow Wellington!’ he used to say. ‘At this rate, my son, he’ll be snatching the Duke of Marlborough’s title as the greatest British general ever!’ He used to listen to Alec’s accounts of Wellington’s campaigns with his eyes full of pride.
But he hadn’t been so proud though on that ominous encounter last February.
‘You surely realise,’ the Earl had said heavily, ‘that I used to live for the times you came home to me. For your news of the war. But—to come to me instead with scurrilous tattle …’
‘Father,’ Alec had said quietly. ‘Father, I only wanted to ask you if you have known her for long enough. If you are sure that she can be trusted, in every way.’
‘Trusted?’ The Earl looked wretched. ‘Trusted? Oh, Stephen warned me, so often, that you were jealous of my marriage and that you were afraid of losing my favour!’
‘Sir, that is not so, believe me!’
‘Enough.’ The Earl sat down again abruptly. ‘Enough. You must see that what you have just tried to say to me means that I can no longer receive you in this house as my son.’
Fateful words. Irretrievable words. And his father had sounded quite broken as he uttered them. Indeed Alec’s voice betrayed his own emotion as he replied, ‘Sir, I am sorry for it. And please believe me when I say I will always hold you in the deepest esteem. But I must beg you, one last time, to listen—really listen—to what I have to say! Sir, this marriage must not take place!’
His father had stared at him. Almost dazed. ‘I just don’t understand. Perhaps if you were to meet her. Meet her properly, I mean, and talk to her.’ He was on his feet again, pacing to and fro. ‘Yes, that’s it. And then you would realise for yourself how badly you have misjudged her.’
‘I will not change my mind, sir. I’m sorry.’
The Earl sagged with despair. Then his eyes grew hard. ‘Very well. So be it. One last thing, then. My future wife requires a London base for her mother. She once mentioned that the Bedford Street house I’ve let you use for the last few years would be suitable. And now I must ask you to vacate it, as soon as possible. Needless to say, your allowance will cease forthwith.’
Alec stood very straight, his face expressionless. ‘There’s the matter of the home for old soldiers in Spitalfields, sir. I trust, however sorely I’ve displeased you, that you’ll continue with your plans to fund it?’
‘Do you know,’ said the Earl, his voice breaking a little now, ‘I’m beginning to think that it’s associating with men of that kind that’s made you lose all sense of family duty!’ He gazed at his younger son in utter anguish. ‘I suggest that you run it yourself, since you obviously care more for your—your lowly battle comrades than you do for me!’
‘That is not so, sir—’
‘Enough!’
Alec, his jaw clenched, had given a curt bow and left.
His brother had his wish at last. This was a breach between son and father that surely could not be healed.
Soon afterwards had come Alec’s recall to duty, for Napoleon had escaped from Elba, and under his leadership the swelling French army had swept northwards to meet the allies in the last and bloodiest battle of the long war: Waterloo.
Then Alec had come home. Only he had no home, of course. His father had married in the summer while Alec was away fighting, and Alec’s new stepmother’s relatives had delightedly appropriated the smart house that he had once occupied.
So Alec had made the decision to move into the home for old soldiers in Spitalfields himself. It had once been a grand mansion, built by a rich Huguenot silk weaver called Ducroix, but the house, like the district, Spitalfields, had fallen on hard times; the name the locals had given to Ducroix’s pretentious home—Two Crows Castle—seemed more than ever like an ironic jest.
Before their estrangement, it had been his father’s idea to buy it and refurbish it. ‘I cannot enjoy my wealth when I see injured and destitute soldiers begging at every