Page 35 of Threads that Remain

“I think that is very much to your credit.”

Brandon looked ahead. “I am not certain it is credit. I was angry. Very angry. I believed myself entirely justified.”

“You were.”

“Perhaps.”

“You were.”

The Colonel gave him a sideways glance.

“You are remarkably willing to pass judgment upon matters in which you were not present.”

“I have had the benefit of hearing my wife speak of the consequences.”

“Then you understand why I am grateful that my aim was poor.”

Edward smiled. “Grateful?”

Brandon’s expression became thoughtful.

“Yes. I have had many years in which to consider what might have followed had I succeeded.”

“And?”

“I should have had to live with it. And, though I had no idea whatsoever at the time that I would be raising Eliza’s child, seeing how now I consider him my child, as much as I do Anne, I think it is for the best, for Henry’s sake, that I did not.”

Edward nodded.

The Colonel was silent for another moment. Then, with complete seriousness, he added,

“However…”

Edward looked at him.

Brandon’s mouth curved slightly.

“Giving the man a good punch in the nose would have been most gratifying.”

Edward stared at him. Then he laughed. Not loudly. He knew Brandon too well for that. But the laughter was genuine, and after a moment Brandon joined him. “I am relieved,” Edward said, “that after all these years there remains some portion of your former self.”

“Oh, there is considerably more of it than my wife permits me to display.”

“I shall never tell her.”

“I should hope not.”

They walked on, their amusement gradually fading into the comfortable silence that had become familiar between them over the years.

Chapter XXIV.

They called for Henry to join them in the library.

It was a small square room at the back of the house, with a green-shaded lamp upon the desk, and it was a favourite room for Henry, for it contained the best window-seat in the house. He sat on it now, with his knees drawn up, and the beginnings of anxiety in his wide-open dark eyes. He had not been told why he was there. He had been fetched from the nursery, in the middle of a game of battledore, by a footman; and he was aware, with the exquisite quickness of a child who lives among people who love him, that something had happened.

“Are you angry with me?” said Henry, at once. “Because if it is the stuffed heron in the hall, I did not break it. I only moved it. Mary noticed it was broken already.”

“It is not the heron,” said the Colonel.