Hamish must have written to her about his commanding officer and what Rutledge had done in civilian life. And Rutledge had written to her, too, giving her the news of Hamish’s death, offering empty platitudes of sympathy and concern: “He spoke of you often. You were his bulwark and shield throughout the fighting, and he would have wanted you to know how bravely he died for his country—”

She had believed the comforting lies. She had cherished them—

He added quickly, “No one told me—the Yard, you see, didn’t know who you were. My superior was concerned with the Gray family.”

“Would you have come—if you’d known?”

He didn’t answer that directly. He said, “It wouldn’t have been my choice—to come or not. It has to do with protocol, not personal decisions.”

“I still have your letter,” she told him. “Did he write, before the end?”

Hamish had written a letter that last night, but afterward it had been stained with his blood and with Rutledge’s. The Army had not seen fit to send it. Someone had told Rutledge as much a month or more later.

Heavy censorship kept the people at home ignorant of the suffering and despair in France. The expectation was that loved ones would offer encouragement and hope to the brave men they’d sent off to battle, and bolster their courage—if they didn’t know the truth. The men themselves wrote home what they thought their families could bear to hear. It was a vicious circle of lies that was classified as military necessity: “Good for morale.”

In that last letter, had Hamish told the woman he loved so deeply the truth about his death? Or had he told her sweet lies that would prepare her for the news that would be brought to her? A condemned man was not always circumspect. He wrote what he felt and believed in in those last dark hours. And Hamish had been torn apart—he had wanted to die, before he was forced to lead more men back into the face of certain death.

Rutledge said, “Our sector was heavily shelled. Letters and the like are hard to find in the mud, afterward.” He didn’t add that buried men disappeared in the stinking black depths as well, eaten by rats, used as lumber underfoot until someone could retrieve the decaying corpses.