And then the Guy was consumed, the flames began to die back, and the euphoria of the evening seemed to wane as well. Women began to collect reluctant children, and men with rakes and brooms went to brush some of the ashes back towards the center. Voices could actually be heard over the din and the crowd started to move in different directions, freeing him at last.

Elizabeth, her face pink from laughter, looked up at him and said gratefully, “Thank you for coming, Ian! I couldn’t have faced it on my own. Although it’s time I learned, isn’t it?” She was holding his arm again, her fingers like individual bands of steel gripping him.

And then as swiftly as he had seemed to suffocate, his mind cleared and he was himself again. He put his hand over hers and managed a smile.

As she moved away to speak to someone else, Rutledge scanned the far side of the smoking remains of the fire for a last time, but the face was not there. The man was not there.

Surely he never had been—

Elizabeth said, turning to look behind her, “Did you see someone you know? Do you want to try to catch him up?”

“No—!” Rutledge answered abruptly, and then added at Hamish’s prompting, “I—a trick of the light, that’s all. I was wrong.”

It was surely something about the night that had disturbed him, and the noise and the acrid smell of the fireworks lingering in the smoky air. There was no one there—

“He canna’ be,” Hamish reminded Rutledge. “He’s dead. Like me!”

Dead. Like me!

Rutledge hesitated, on the point of asking Hamish what he knew—what he might have seen. Then—or just now.

But before he could frame the words, he stopped himself.

What if this had nothing to do with the war?

After a very fine dinner with Elizabeth and three of her friends at the hotel just along the High Street, Rutledge drove back to London. Introductions and the subsequent settling into chairs as everyone exclaimed over the success of the evening had given Rutledge time to collect himself and present a polite, pleasant facade in spite of his unsettled state of mind.

It was something he was becoming increasingly good at doing, finding the right mask for his terrors.

Caught up in their own excitement, no one at the table noticed his long silences or made anything of his distraction. He was the outsider among them, and they included him from kindness, expecting nothing in return. He overheard one of the women as she leaned towards Elizabeth and murmured, “He’s absolutely charming! Where did you find him?” as if he were a new suitor.

His hostess had replied dryly, “He was Richard’s best man. I’ve known Ian for ages. He’s been a great comfort.”