He’d suffered several wounds, shell-shock, and severe claustrophobia, but the doctors at the aid station had pronounced it fatigue, given him twenty-four hours to sleep it off, patched him up, and sent him back to the lines. Experienced officers were in short supply. He couldn’t remember much about the year after that, only Ham-ish’s voice keeping him at his post-harrying, tormenting, haunting him until he was sure that others must have heard it too. He’d lived in agony at the thought of seeing the owner of that voice in the dark of the night or a star shell burst or among the rotting corpses that sometimes twitched from the maggots inside them. Somehow he must have carried out his duties well enough-no one reported him, and his men left him alone, too exhausted and worried and frightened themselves to care about anything except survival, and the dreaded next offensive. A long war…

The road to Salisbury was not busy. And in the air flowing through the motorcar, sweet scents of wildflowers and ripening corn and the early haying followed him through the countryside. It would have been faster by train but he hated the small compartments, crammed cheek by jowl with other people while his heart pounded with fear and the palms of his hands were damp with the sweat of being hemmed in and unable to fight his way out.

Finding an inn twenty miles beyond Salisbury, he stopped for the night, ate a dinner of baked mutton and potatoes, with green beans on the side, and slept ill in the small, airless, low-ceilinged room he’d been given. The next day he picked up a line of squalls along the Devon border, riding the winds over the coast and disputing with the sunshine for dominance. Twice he nearly missed his turning as the rains poured down, and half an hour later the roadsides steamed as the sun broke through again. Hamish kept up a running commentary as they drove through villages that brimmed with life, waysides still thick with late wildflowers, and tiny, isolated cottages with thatched roofs or rampantly blooming gardens.