Sedgwick grunted. “She was the one who died young, before they’d been married five years. Arthur took it hard, of course, but I must admit I was not particularly fond of her. A pretty simpleton.”

Edwin, the younger son, appeared to worry Sedgwick. “I see much of my father in him. Strange, isn’t it, how a man’s nature can jump a generation?” It seemed not to be a compliment. But then the grandfather had made a fortune in the City, and was not, perhaps, a rough diamond in his own son’s eyes.

Sedgwick dwelt on none of this, but a word here and there told Rutledge more than perhaps his host had meant to reveal. It was often a failing of lonely men.

“It doesna’ signify,” Hamish pointed out, “if there’s naught to hide.”

Certainly in Sedgwick’s case, that appeared to be true.

As the table was cleared, Sedgwick looked out beyond the terrace at the expanse of formal beds and cropped lawns, and sighed. “I’ve a mind to marry again, myself. If only to fill this garden with young voices and bring a spark of life to the house. Damned silly thing to do, but I’m not by nature a man who prefers his own company. Have a wife, do you?”

“No. The War altered any plans I might have made.”

“Never too late to start over.” He regarded Rutledge for a moment. “It’s odd, you know, but you remind me of Arthur. I don’t know quite how to put my finger on it. It’s there in the way you carry yourself and something in your voice.”

“A holdover from the Army,” Rutledge said.

“I suppose it must be. You’d like him. A good man. And a deeper thinker than the rest of us—he got that from his mother, not my side. I see it more and more often these days.” There was a sudden flash of grief in Sedgwick’s face, as if Arthur wasn’t the man he’d been before the War, losing that edge that had made him a fast driver and a dashing figure to watch in a race. Wounds changed a man in more ways than the physically apparent damage. Nerve, for one thing, was easily worn down by constant pain.