“I forget nothing about my firstborn and your elder brother, but he is gone, God rest his soul.” Tugging at the lapels of his coat, Father stood tall with his usual pomposity. “What use is there to dwell on a future that no longer exists?” he asked, with nary a hint of emotion. “And you are here, to take up the reins and ensure the continuation of our legacy, so all is not lost.”
“Ah, yes.” At the prospect, Anthony swallowed hard, given he never desired the title and its myriad responsibilities. Indeed, he preferred the relative invisibility associated with the life of a second son, and he longed for the bygone simplicity. Could he not just be himself? “There is that, Your Grace.”
Yes, he deliberately goaded his father, as he did before the war, but his father didn’t take the bait, much to Anthony’s disappointment. Could they not return to the old days, marked by good-natured ribbing and morning horse races along Rotten Row?
“You will check your tone, sir, because I raised you better than that, and you will not speak to me thus.” The formidable patriarch, unerring in his focus, emerged, and Anthony’s knees buckled, because he would rather cut off his other arm than fail his father. In an instant, Father bent and drew Anthony into a reassuring hug. “Easy, my boy. I do not pretend to understand your obsession with what is done and cannot be undone, or the invisible scars you carry as a blockade, of a sort, to exclude those who would provide succor in times of heartache. While I am proud to have sacrificed my sons on the altar of freedom from Napoleon’s tyranny, I know you cannot persist in this fashion. I will no longer permit you to linger in this pitiful state.”
“What do you intend?” As Father brushed Anthony’s hair from his forehead, he arched a brow. “A spanking?”
“Something much worse, but do not tempt me.” Father chuckled, and Anthony walked to the armoire, in search of distraction, that he might gather his wits and counter whatever hair-brained scheme his father proposed next. Could he simply not let Anthony mourn the loss of his arm? “A missive is just arrived from Lord Ainsworth.”
“What has that to do with me?” He retrieved a yard-length swathe of linen and sighed, because the item represented another in a series of tasks Anthony could not perform for himself, given he had only half a left arm. Instead of seizing a diversion, he only reminded himself of his deficiency, and he cursed his miserable hide. “Lord Ainsworth is your friend, is he not?”
“Indeed, Ainsworth is my oldest and dearest childhood chum, dating to my tenure at Eton, when I still wore shortcoats.” Father flicked his fingers, and Anthony dragged his heels as a petulant child. While his father tied a perfect mathematical, he sniffed. “Tomorrow, you and I shall journey to Upper Brook Street and pay call on your fiancée, Lady Arabella, because it is past due for you to renew your acquaintance. By the by, I plan to announce your engagement at the ball, in a fortnight.”
“I beg your pardon?” A shudder of pure dread gripped his spine, and the room seemed to pitch and turn. Anthony hobbled and tripped, and in the floor an imaginary, fiery chasm opened wide, threatening to consume him. He fell to the carpet. The resulting jolt thrust him, headlong and without warning, into the grip of a gruesome reverie he could not defend against.
A rapid salvo echoed in his ears, accompanied by the telltale caustic fetor of gunpowder, which permeated and burned his nostrils. In a delusory flash of cannon fire, he transported to the bloody field and the infamous day that destroyed so many lives and with them the dreams borne of youthful ignorance and naiveté. Amid the black vortex, which threatened to swallow him whole, a faint summons beckoned.
“Anthony.” Father’s voice came to Anthony, as if from afar. “Anthony, I am here, son. Please, don’t do this to yourself. You must let go of the past.”
Of course, his father would assume Anthony controlled the vicious, unrelenting memories that caught him in their unforgiving trap without notice. In truth, he had no command of the tortuous curse that plagued his consciousness. Slowly, Anthony emerged from the horror. His lungs screamed for air, and he discovered he remained in his room, in London. The instruments of war faded into the background, and he returned to the present.
That was the cruelest aspect of his disability—the loss that seemed never-ending. What no one understood was that he didn’t lose his arm just once, on that hill. Indeed, he lost it in countless different times and ways. Again and again, he suffered the injury in a seemingly agonizing cycle of the everyday trivialities of life that he could no longer perform: the inability to cut his own food, the helplessness when he struggled to dress himself, and the half-empty sleeve forever pinned to his coat, which all but screamed impotence. Little, if anything, of his former confident self endured. As the tattered remnants of his world crumbled to the ground, he collapsed in his father’s arms and vomited on his pristine coat.
“Shh.” Sitting on the floor, Father rocked, to and fro, and patted Anthony’s back. “I am with you, my son, and you have my solemn vow that, together, we
