Godfrey nodded. “Your walking away from the town was easy, but dishonorable. If I broke out of the fortress, I would be free in an honorable way. I was on the verge of success when my makeshift rope broke, and I crashed to the ground. It felt as if I’d broken half the bones in my body.

“The French guards came to collect me and threw me into a cell with several other prisoners. No medical treatment was provided.” He drew a shuddering breath. “The pain was excruciating.”

“Yet you didn’t die,” Lucas said. “You must have great strength of will.”

“I wanted to die!” Godfrey said savagely. “But my fellow prisoners did everything they could to preserve my worthless life. They set my bones as well as they could, shared rations with me and offered words of comfort, telling me how brave I’d been to attempt the escape and how I would surely survive to go home. I hated myself for my failure and I hated you even more for being a . . . a false idol who had walked away from us laughing.” His mouth twisted. “Spoken aloud, my words don’t make much sense, do they?”

His brother rested a hand on Godfrey’s thin shoulder. “I understand your anger, but perhaps it shouldn’t be aimed at Foxton,” he said in a comforting voice. “Surely it would have been wiser to hate the French and be grateful to your fellow prisoners.”

Lucas shook his head. “Unending pain tends to warp one’s thinking. Particularly when a man you’ve idolized seemed to have betrayed all you believed in and escaped without consequences. I don’t believe I deserve to be the target of your pain and anger, but I do understand why you felt that way.”

Godfrey looked away, not speaking. Lucas sharpened his voice. “Look at me, Godfrey Rogers, and I’ll tell the truth of my imprisonment, escape, and the consequences!”

The younger man swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and raised his gaze to Lucas’s. When he had Godfrey’s attention, Lucas continued in a flat voice, “I didn’t realize that I was an inspiration to the younger officers because I was so often in pain myself and doing my best to hide it. The commander of the fort, Colonel Roux, loathed me for the same reasons you put me on a pedestal I didn’t deserve. Because he was an officer of peasant origin, he despised me for being a ‘damned aristo.’ In his eyes I was a rich, spoiled Englishman, unworthy of respect or honor. Roux wanted me to suffer. He was a master of inflicting pain that wouldn’t leave permanent marks. So . . . I suffered.”