‘I don’t need your pity,’ Fortis answered Ferris sternly. He didn’t need to be patronised or felt sorry for. Poor broken Fortis—did they think he was a shell of his former self? Did they think he couldn’t function in the world? Beside him, Avaline shifted, uncomfortable with the sharp tone he’d taken. Is that what his wife thought, too? His pretty, surprised wife who’d swooned in his arms? Did she believe her husband was not capable of fully returning? All because of Cam’s damned honest report that had labelled him confused? It wasn’t untrue, he was confused. He felt confused right now sitting amid all this love and luxury, knowing it was his, but not remembering it as his. He just preferred that confusion be private, that it remain his to manage, alone. He wasn’t used to relying on others to carry his burdens with him or for him.
Frederick intervened, smoothing the tension. ‘We know you don’t, Fort. We just need you to know we don’t expect you to disgorge everything all at once. Being home is enough for us. All else will come. It has been a long time. None of us must assume we can all pick up where we left off as if nothing and no one has changed. We’ve all changed, but we will all find our ways back to each other if we’re patient.’
Fortis nodded and took the olive branch, moving the conversation on to safer ground. ‘Helena, tell me about the boys. Five boys all under ten—are they a handful?’ That brought a round of laughter. It was a good choice of topic. Helena was a proud mother and Fortis let talk of the boys’—his nephews’—escapades swirl around him, wrapping him in laughter. He felt himself relax a certain degree. There was no pressure here. There was nothing for him to recall. He’d not known the boys. Helena had been pregnant at his wedding with her first. It was easy to laugh and smile along with the rest of them, to feel as though he was home. And yet, the feeling couldn’t quite settle, like clothes that were just the tiniest bit too small—a trouser waist too tight, a coat stretched too snuggly over shoulders so that every move was a reminder that the fit was not effortless.
After a while, Ferris rose. ‘Fort, come walk with me in the gardens.’
‘Is this your idea of rescuing me?’ Fortis asked once the glass doors were shut behind them. ‘If so, I don’t believe I was in need of rescue.’ He couldn’t seem to help himself from being defensive with his brother today.
Ferris shook his head, unbothered by the surly tone. ‘No, you didn’t. It was me being selfish. I wanted a moment with you. Will you allow me?’
‘As my brother or a physician?’ Fort was instantly wary. All his battle senses were on high alert, ready to protect himself.
‘As both, I hope. War changes a man. I see that change in you.’
Fortis lifted an eyebrow in challenge. ‘Do you? You haven’t seen me in seven years. I am sure everyone looks different after such a long time apart. I don’t think that makes it remarkable or worthy of study.’
Ferris nodded, doing him the credit of contemplating his thoughts. ‘True, your hair is longer, your muscles more defined. You’ve come into your full build. Nothing of the little brother remains. I shall have to get used to looking at the man my brother has become instead of looking for the boy he once was,’ Ferris acceded with a physician’s eye for anatomy. ‘But there are other changes as well. Mental changes.’
Fortis baulked at that. No man liked having his sanity questioned any more than he liked discussing his emotions. ‘What are you suggesting?’
‘Please, Fort. There’s no need to be defensive. I’ve been working with soldiers on their returns from India, the Crimea, wherever Britain has the army posted these days. In places where the men have seen violence, your condition is not unusual, nor, unfortunately, all that rare. War takes a toll on a man we’re just beginning to acknowledge, to say nothing of understand. But I hope in time we may.’
Fortis scowled. ‘And what condition is that?’
‘You sat with your back to the wall today, so you could see the entire room, so you had clear visual access to points of entry and perhaps escape?’ Ferris added with wry insight. ‘That is something men do who live on the edge of danger, on the edge of life. You have the tendencies of one who has lived under stressful conditions where the need to fight is always an imminent possibility.’
Fortis wished he could deny his brother’s conjecture, but he could not. He could not recall anything to the contrary and what he did remember—the smoke, the cannon fire, the rush and riot of battle—certainly upheld Ferris’s assertions. But Ferris wasn’t done.
‘We’ve also found that these soldiers have unclear memories, difficulty explaining their time away to others. They have a reluctance to integrate back into their old lives, back into their families. There are other symptoms, too. If I could ask you a few questions?’
‘I’m not sure I like being a specimen under a microscope or an object of study.’ He did not want to answer any questions. He felt ridiculously vulnerable standing here in the garden with Ferris, his brother’s assertions stripping him bare.
‘Not an object, Fortis. A man. I don’t want to study you. I want to help you, if you need it and if you’ll allow it. Cam’s report suggested...’
‘Damn Cam’s report. Thanks to that blasted paper, you’ve already decided I do need help. You’re all convinced I’m on the verge of craziness.’ Fortis gestured towards the house, anger acting as his best defence. ‘That’s what all of you were thinking in there, too afraid to ask your questions because of what I might say. It’s far safer to not ask, isn’t it? Then everyone can pretend I’m all right.’ A dark thought welled up from deep inside him. Perhaps he was the one pretending he was all right when a part of him knew he hadn’t been all right, not for a long time, not for months, well before he’d walked out of the forest. It was something he wanted to keep to himself like his confusion. But his brother had seen his failings so easily. Did the rest of them? Did Avaline?
‘I am asking now.’ Ferris folded his arms across his chest, the quiet steel in his voice issuing his challenge. His brother was daring him to tell the truth. ‘Do you have dreams? Nightmares? Trouble sleeping? Periods where you lose track of time, where your mind wanders or where you juxtapose reality with a remembrance and your mind thinks you’re there, reliving it, instead of in the present?’
‘I might have dreams on occasion.’ Fortis shook his head. Ferris looked as if he wanted to press for more detail, his physician’s mind hungry for information, but this was all he was willing to offer today. He didn’t want to confess to dreams that left him waking in a sweat, wrapped in a sense of foreboding with nothing to cling to but vague images he could not call into focus, dreams in which he watched himself from other points of view, or wasn’t even himself but some other nameless person. Perhaps he’d admit to those dreams if he could remember them. Perhaps it was best he didn’t remember them. Maybe he should be thankful he couldn’t. Maybe his mind was protecting him.
Ferris nodded, something in his brother’s face easing. There would be no more interrogation today. Ferris clapped a hand on his shoulder. ‘Well, if you do have such dreams or experiences, I want you to know not to fear them or feel you have to hide them, not from me. They’re normal for men who’ve been in your position. They’re nothing to be ashamed of. You can come to me, Fortis. I can help and I can listen.’ Ferris paused, searching for the right words. ‘Sometimes there are things a man may not want to tell his wife, but he can always tell his brother.’
‘Married less than a year and already you have