Or perhaps it had. She hadn’t seen him in months, and his life had been disrupted almost as badly as hers had been. What lies had his father told him about the divorce? Had he told Christopher that his mother was a whore whose name must never be mentioned? Surely not, Christopher was only nine!

But Denshire was capable of great vileness, so perhaps he had poured the whole ugly set of lies into his son’s ears. Would Christopher believe his father’s stories? She and her son had been very close, while Denshire had been a distant father, not very interested in his son except because he needed an heir for the title.

She prayed the love between her and her son had not been destroyed.

Her fingers whitened on the gilt frame of the miniature as the horror of her recurring nightmare swept through. Time and again she dreamed of Christopher being wrenched from her arms. Always he was a helpless, crying infant and she could do nothing to save him, nothing.

She must get her son back, for both of their sakes.

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 4

Lucas felt surprisingly invigorated as he walked back to Duval House, where he was living with Simon and Suzanne while they helped him rebuild a life in the society he’d been born to. He owed his family that after all the grief he’d brought them, and it wasn’t as if there was some other place he’d rather be.

Only now, as he felt himself becoming focused, did he realize how long he’d been drifting. Ever since he was captured by the French, in fact. He’d drifted through the years as a prisoner of war when his life was about survival and a desperate hope that someday he would be free again.

Then there were the penance years of traveling the Belgian countryside as apprentice and servant to Frère Emmanuel. He had lived the simple life of a Franciscan friar and helped many people in pain, but never felt that he truly belonged where he was. Though he’d been mildly content, he’d neither seen nor wanted a future beyond the life he was living.

Then Simon had found him. Lucas’s first reaction to their meeting had been a fearful withdrawal into his familiar routine. But in the days that followed, he’d recognized that it was time to return to the life he’d lost.

His first wary steps had taken him to Brussels. Though he was not a trained surgeon, his bonesetting and bandaging skills had helped save lives among the flood of wounded after Waterloo. He’d set bones and even used the strange, unreliable gift of healing that sometimes flowed through his hands.