“There were five of us in school. Inseparable. Besides me, only one is left. And he’s still on the front lines.” Clarke’s jaw ticked, then eased. “Pneumonia was probably the best thing that could have happened to me. Everyone on the ground prays for trench fever—one of the only ways to get safely back to England for a while.”

“It was no better on the Eastern Front. I feared every day that we would receive word of death. My father’s. My brother’s.” One had hit. One had not. Not during the war, anyway.

Clarke gusted out a breath. “Cheery thoughts for this holiest of days. We’d better change the subject so we don’t arrive all dour-faced and gloomy.”

Zivon breathed a laugh of agreement and cast his mind about, searching for something, anything, that was brighter as they neared the tube station. “What do you know of croquet?”

Clarke explained the game to him on the train ride, and their moods improved considerably by the time they knocked upon the Blackwell door. Though even if their moods hadn’t, Zivon suspected that merely arriving here would have brought the grin back to Clarke’s face.

How nice it must be to be able to give oneself over so fully and completely to fresh hope.

Eaton opened the door with a welcoming smile, ushering them in and informing them that the family and guests were gathered in the drawing room. They were soon shown to the bright chamber, filled today with laughter and chatter.

And with shaking heads. “Turn and run, lads,” a middle-aged man said upon their entrance. He was smiling, though, and bouncing a toddler upon his knee. Given the man’s coloring, Zivon would have guessed him to be a close relation of Mrs. Blackwell. “Before you get pulled into the melee too.”

Mrs. Blackwell swatted playfully at the man’s arm. “Don’t warn them off, Geoffrey. They may well take my side—which would be a novelty.” Her grin covering the flash in her eyes, Mrs. Blackwell motioned to a poster resting upon an easel in the corner of the room. “Tell me, gentlemen. What do you think of the latest masterpiece my husband has commissioned from one of my esteemed colleagues?”

Of its own volition, Zivon’s gaze drifted over the room until he spotted what he’d apparently been looking for—Lily, reading a book to a little girl who appeared about four years old. She glanced up with a smile that Zivon couldn’t help but return.

Clarke cleared his throat. “Given that I had a hand in the commissioning, madam, I think it would be wise for me to abstain from offering my opinion. Though I take it you do not approve?”

“Should I?” Mrs. Blackwell chuckled, softening her words. “I grant you can hardly be unbiased. But what of you, Mr. Marin? What do you think of the poster?”