Even four years later, he couldn't abide a crowded room or train, and something as ordinary as a chair in a corner, with others-even good friends-between him and the door could leave him shaken. Frances, unaware of her brother's irrational fear, was already enjoying herself, and he watched her flirt with Maryanne Browning's cousin, an attractive man named Geoffrey Blake. She had met him before, and as they caught up on events and old friends, Rutledge heard someone mention Meredith Channing. He himself had called on Mrs. Channing not ten days earlier, to thank her for a recent kindness, only to find that she was away.

Now Blake was saying, "She's in Wales, I think."

And Barbara Westin turned to him, surprised. "Wales? I'd understood she was on her way to Norfolk."

Someone at the other end of the table put in, "Was it Norfolk?"

Frances said, "I don't think I've seen her in a fortnight. Longer…"

"Doesn't she visit her brother-in-law around this time of year?" Ellen Tyler asked.

"Brother-in-law?" Rutledge repeated.

"Yes, he lives in the north, I believe," Ellen replied. "He went back to Inverness at the end of the war. Apparently he was sufficiently recovered to travel."

"A back injury," Alfred Westin put in. "His ship was blown up and he held on to a lifeboat for two days before they were picked up. A brave man and a stubborn one. He was in hospital for seven months. But he's walking again, I heard, albeit with canes now. He was here in the spring, for the memorial concert."

Rutledge remembered: in early spring he'd spotted Meredith Channing trying to hail a cab just as a rainstorm broke, and he'd stopped to offer her a lift. She had said something about a concert. St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

"I'm surprised she hasn't married him," Ellen Tyler went on. "Her brother-in-law, I mean. He's been in love with her for ages."