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CHAPTER 1

The house in St. James’s Square had grown intolerably dull and respectable.

Major Basil Baines stood with one shoulder against the drawing-room mantel and surveyed the evidence of this decline with profound dissatisfaction. The fire burned low but in an orderly fashion; the decanters remained precisely where they had been left; no one had burst through the door at midnight bleeding from the lip; and, most unnatural of all, the silence had settled into the place like dust upon neglected furniture.

It was the silence which rendered the matter truly alarming.

Only a twelvemonth earlier, the house had been a perpetual confusion of voices, boots upon staircases, unfinished correspondence, military reports, and arguments carried from one room to another. Manners had objected to everything, Stuart had mocked him for objecting, Fielding had attempted to restore order, Chum had contributed cheer whenever conversation grew too melancholy, and Baines himself had done his utmost to ensure no discussion retained dignity longer than ten minutes at a time.

Now the place resembled the residence of sober statesmen, which was intolerable. The fault lay with matrimony, he reflected darkly.

Stuart had married first and thereby destroyed the entire tone of the establishment. Fielding had followed, scarcely long enough afterwards to preserve even the pretence of resistance, and now Manners’ surrender to domestic felicity had completed the ruin. Chum was off attending to his inheritance in Cheshire and had shown no indication of immediate return. Thus the great machine of disorder had collapsed until only Colonel Renforth and Baines himself remained to haunt the premises like two survivors of a distinguished catastrophe.

Renforth, seated opposite him, with a glass of brandy untouched beside his elbow, appeared considerably less affected by this transformation.

Indeed, Colonel Renforth possessed the irritating ability to regard almost any alteration in circumstance as strategically useful.

“You are glowering again,” Renforth observed, without looking up from the papers spread before him.

“I am mourning the death of civilization.”

“You are mourning the absence of noise.”

“I have always maintained noise to be one of civilization’s finest accomplishments.”

Renforth turned a page. “You maintained precisely the opposite last winter, when Stuart attempted to sing Neapolitan ballads after midnight.”

“That was not noise,” Baines replied gravely. “That was an offence against humanity.”

A faint shift at the corner of Renforth’s mouth acknowledged the distinction.

Outside, the square lay quiet beneath a damp spring mist, the lamps beyond the window softened by rain which had begun sometime during the wedding breakfast and persisted ever since with dreary consistency. Baines disliked rain in London. Rain in the country possessed charm; rain in London merely produced mud and political opinion.

He crossed to the sideboard and replenished his glass. “I still think that they have all behaved selfishly.”

“They married.”

“Precisely. A man ought not abandon his comrades merely because he has fallen in love.”

“You encouraged them.”

“Not to marriage, surely, but I admit I encourage many regrettable actions. It is one of my finer qualities.”

Renforth at last laid aside the papers before him and leaned back in his chair, studying him with the measured patience one reserved for lively dogs or minor explosions. “You are restless.”

“I am perfectly content.”

“You reorganized the gun cabinet this afternoon.”

“That was necessity.”

“You alphabetized the French intelligence dispatches from the Peninsula.”

Baines paused. “That may have been restlessness.”

Renforth inclined his head whilst still looking at him knowingly.

Baines carried his glass toward the window and looked down upon the square, where the rain silvered the pavement beneath the lamps. Somewhere across London, Manners was undoubtedly behaving with alarming sincerity toward his bride, while Stuart was probably being bullied affectionately by Patience and Fielding quietly adored by half his family at once. Disgraceful conduct all around.