Free Shoulder the Sky by Anne Perry Page A

no effect on her career because she had none. It gave her a kind of freedom, and he was amused to see her use it.
    She was brave, generous, funny, and capable of the wildest mis judgements But her innate honesty compelled her to admit when she was wrong. It was on one of those occasions, weeks ago now, when he should have disciplined her, at least verbally, and he had found it painfully difficult to do, that he realized how dangerously his own feelings had overtaken him.
    He had married relatively late in life, only seven years ago, when he had been already forty-one. Nerys had been married before and that union had ended in terrible tragedy. He had found her gentle, charming and so utterly feminine that before he realized it she had become part of his life. Suddenly he had a home, a place of belonging, where domestic order never failed him, where he was loved and comfortable. That he was not understood was something he had appreciated only recently.
    He told her nothing of war; she had already suffered enough with her first husband's death. Even now she had occasional nightmares. He knew it when he saw her face white in the mornings, and her eyes full of fear. She did not speak of it; there were always vast areas of pain they neither of them touched his of the war now, the men broken and lost, hers of the scandal and the suicide.
    Judith was different: she saw as much of the present horror as he did; when she had been driving the ambulance perhaps even more. She might be angry, tender, exhausted or wrenched with pity, but she confronted it. Her parents had been killed shortly before the war, and her own grief was still raw. Every now and then it spilled over and she reached out to other people who were shaken with loss of one sort or another with a tenderness that woke new and profound emotions in the general, hungers that were frightening, and too honest to deny, much as he tried.
    So speaking to Joseph Reavley about Eldon Prentice had been difficult. Nevertheless, Reavley was right, and Prentice must be curbed in his diligence. No, that was the wrong word Eldon was ambitious and crassly insensitive. He was Abby's only son, but Cullingford still found him impossible to like. He had tried, but there was an indelicacy in Eldon's perception of other people that offended Cullingford every time he observed it. It was as if he had an extra layer of skin, so he was unaware of levels of subtler pain in others, embarrassment or humiliation that a finer man would have felt, and avoided.
    His words within Charlie Gee's hearing were unforgivable. His mere wounds too hideous even to think of, mutilations worse than death. A decent man would not have looked. Reavley had said very little of what the American ambulance driver had actually done, knowing Cullingford would prefer not to know; all he wanted was to protect him.
    There was a knock on the door.
    "Come in," he replied automatically.
    It was his ADC, Major Hadrian, who entered. He was a small, slender man, intense, efficient and fiercely loyal. It had taken Cullingford a while to feel comfortable with him, but now habit had won and he accepted Hadrian's supreme efficiency as a matter of form.
    "Yes?" Cullingford asked.
    Hadrian's face was tight, his expression closed in and unhappy.
    "A Mr. Prentice is here, sir. He's a war correspondent, and says that he needs to speak with you." He did not acknowledge that the man was Cullingford's nephew, and that was a startling omission, for Prentice would certainly have told him. "He appears to have met with a slight accident, sir," Hadrian added. "It does not seem to be serious."
    "Did he tell you that?" Cullingford asked curiously. He dreaded having to listen to Prentice's complaints about Reavley, and principally about the American VAD driver who had attacked him. If there had been a way to avoid the interview he would have, but he would definitely keep it brief. This was one place where not even family loyalty required he give time to