Lysander looked again at the woman in the chair. Beneath her polished calm, he finally noted the slight shadows beneath her eyes and a small scrape high on one cheekbone. His eyes traveled down, looking for more damage. Then he realized that her hands were not actually folded in her lap, but that her left hand cradled her right wrist and that the wrist itself was thickened by bandages beneath her long sleeve. Lysander's belly flipped queasily. What had he done to her?

Although his battlefield experiences had left him unsure of many things, of right and wrong, of socially suitable reactions, the one thing that never faltered has been his protective instinct toward his mother and sisters, toward all women.

Clearly he had done a great deal of damage in his extreme response.

You broke everything.

"I'm … sorry." He wished for better words. He wasn't quite certain what had happened, but there was that dark empty place in his memory. That was never a good sign. Eventually, the memory might come back to him. Or it might not.

That shadowed blot was the stain of war, of that frenzied state that left him outside himself as if all other parts of him were evicted for a time so that the house that was Lysander could be taken over by a fiend made of pure battle instinct.

"I hurt you." It was not a question. It was clear in the expression of the man that Lysander alone was responsible for the lady's injuries.

"You threw me. It was the landing that did the injury, in fact. I find I much prefer landing a bit wrong on soft grass than to have the pavilion crush me as it did you."

Lysander studied her, ignoring his throbbing head to focus on her expression and her words. He desperately needed to know. "I helped?"

"You truly have no memory of it? Well, when the pavilion began to fall — "

"When you made the pavilion fall!"

The lady ignored the man by the door. "You dashed into the pavilion, picked me up and tossed me aside, among others. Rather incredibly far, if truth be told. You are very strong for being so thin."

"And the roof fell right on your thick head." The man clearly felt that this was no more than Lysander deserved.

Lysander felt such intense relief that his head began to spin a bit. He had not ever intentionally injured anyone in his life — except in the time of war — but in the past few years the dark battle instinct had taken him over on rare occasions.

As if echoing that thought the woman spoke again. "I suppose you were in the war? You are clearly not entirely recovered from your harrowing experience. Are your relations aware you ride through England on your own?"