“After that . . . well, after that nothing matters very much. The last forty-eight hours into Corunna I walked. My horse had gone lame and the ball I should have put through the corporal I put through the animal’s head. I did not take part in the battle where General Moore was killed. I was already in the transports in the bay, delirious. Two weeks later, having failed to die, I was at Plymouth. Some time after that, though I have no recollection of it, I was delivered to my house in Somerset where our servant, Nell, tended me with a devotion entirely at odds with what I merited. I recovered. I could not quite keep myself from it—from life, from living. The name I assumed, Lovall, belonged to a blameless young officer who died of a fever on the road out of Portugal. I hope to God I have not disgraced that name, though I suppose I have. I must have. Even more, I fear I have disgraced you and your family. By association, I mean. Certainly I seem to have put you all in danger, though who he is, this Henderson, what he wants of me, why he has pursued me here, that I still do not understand. It is to do with Morales of course, it cannot be otherwise. Some sort of reckoning. Anyway, I have a scheme of sorts. I was piecing it together on the coach today. I will find the means to make my presence known to him. I will advertise myself and draw him away. Away from you, your family, from everyone. He will have no reason to trouble you then. And you will be free of me, Emily. Your life, I think, was a good life before I—”

She stopped him, mid-sentence, with a touch. He had not heard her cross the room. She was standing directly behind him, had walked up the sound of his voice and found him. She had her fingers on his shoulders, then she leaned her head against his back, her forehead pressing between his shoulder blades. When she spoke her voice was a trembling in his chest. What he heard, and he heard it clearly—the connective power of bones and blood—was like the speaking of his own heart.

“I do not know how to judge any of this. It is not for me to judge it. I suppose you must go on living with it somehow. But I do not feel disgraced by knowing you. Nor do I wish to be free of you. I began to love you as John Lovall. I shall love you still as John Lacroix.”