“I wasn’t with him on the road to Corunna, worse luck. Broke my arm in Salamanca and found myself back in Lisbon again. I suppose he has told you all this. Old campaigners are fond of their stories.”

“He has not been well,” she said. “He was very bad when he came.”

“Yes?” he said. “Well, it is not to be wondered at. I wrote to him here but heard nothing back. Perhaps he was not well enough to write.”

“I expect not,” she said.

“But he is walking now. That must be a good sign.”

“It is,” she said.

“Yet I sense you would not declare him perfectly recovered. Not yet.”

“He cannot hear quite well,” said the housekeeper. “When he comes in you will need to speak clearly and let him see your face.”

“I wonder what that could have been,” said the captain. “The cause of it. He has been attended by an able doctor? We have a very good fellow at the depot. Luff. Looks after the colonel’s wife. She’s often indisposed.”

“He can hear well enough,” she said, “if you speak up a little.”

Lacroix was back in less than an hour. The housekeeper met him at the door. He had already seen the carriage. She gave him his visitor’s name, twice. He frowned. He was angry. Or not angry quite. He was irritable, ill at ease. She wondered if he was frightened.

She went with him to the door of the drawing room and stood aside as he went through. She expected to be told to bring something in, some refreshments, but he said nothing and shut the door behind him. She looked a while at the door then stepped closer to it. It was easy enough to hear them—the visitor speaking as she had advised him to. And it was her business, she thought, to know something of theirs. Certainly there was no one to catch her at it.

For men who had shared an onion loft, who had been in the war together, there was nothing in their voices to suggest any warmth between them, any ease of manners. Captain Wood made enquiries about Lacroix’s health. Lacroix offered his assurances, though when Wood suggested there was still some way to go before he was perfectly his old self again he did not disagree. Wood mentioned a name—Clarke?—who was quite wasted away and in appearance like a man of sixty. Another, Lieutenant Vane, had lost the use of a leg and would perhaps lose the leg itself. Lacroix said he was sorry. They were quiet a moment. Wood spoke of the trunk.

“Is that why you’ve come?”

“You must have been eager for it?”

“Eager? I had given it up. All of it.”