Colonel Buchanan rose and paced slowly towards the fire, his brow furrowed in thought. The flames caught the gleam of his blue uniform's gold buttons and braid, and threw in sharp relief a scar that bisected his chin. A sabre cut, undoubtedly, and one that had come too close to his neck for comfort.

“It is a highly delicate matter, you understand,” he said, turning to face first Eliza and then myself. “No word of it may reach beyond this room, at least until such time as the matter of his cashierment[42] is resolved.”

“Cashierment! This is serious, indeed!”

“I would not ruin the character of a man under my command for less,” the Colonel said, with a bitter smile. “Tom Hearst is lately accused of such infamous conduct, as cannot rightly be credited to a soldier of His Majesty's Horse Guards.”

“And did this involve a young lady?” I enquired, with a terrible presentiment.

“A young lady? Not that I know of,” the Colonel replied, with brows drawn down. “No, Miss Austen — it involved cards.”

“He is a gamester!” Eliza cried, clapping her hands. “Was ever there a rogue who was not?”

“The Lieutenant is indeed fond of cards, and generally plays for high stakes.”

“The only sort of stakes there are,” Eliza murmured, remembering, no doubt, something of her late husband at Versailles, where the Comte de Feuillide had won and lost a succession of fortunes to Marie Antoinette's favourites.

Colonel Buchanan commenced to pace about the room, his hands thrust under the tails of his uniform jacket, his black boots gleaming with every step. The direction of our conversation certainly troubled him deeply; and I wondered whether he regretted his frankness. From his next words, however, it appeared otherwise.

“Lieutenant Hearst, my dear Countess and Miss Austen, has always played with the very worst sort of luck. He has been losing steadily throughout the year.” The Colonel ceased his pacing abruptly and wheeled about. “Until last month.”

“His luck changed?” I said.

“Dramatically,” the Colonel rejoined, in a voice heavy with irony. “Some few weeks before his Christmas leave — which was taken at the request of his commanding officer, rather than any desire of his own to seek the bosom of his family — he was all success of a sudden, and won such sums as must astonish.”

“Very rash,” said Eliza.

“The Countess, as always, has put the matter clearly,” Colonel Buchanan rejoined, with a grim smile. “Success at cards, shall we say, went to his head; and the Lieutenant became greedy. He soon made the mistake, however, of challenging a stranger to his corps — one who could thus feel no obligation of affection, of comradeship, of experiences shared. An officer nonetheless, imbued with a sense of honour — and one who had seen this sort of luck before. More sherry, Miss Austen?”

I shook my head, too engrossed in the tale even to sip the wine I already possessed.

“This officer so succeeded in tripping up our friend the Lieutenant, that Tom Hearst was accused of having several cards beyond the usual set secreted in his coat-sleeve.”

I could not suppress a small gasp, and won a penetrating look from the Colonel before he continued.

“Lieutenant Hearst vigourously protested the assertion that he had cheated — an offence no gentleman may ever hope to survive — and charged his opponent with trickery. Why such a man — an officer and a stranger — should attempt to secure the Lieutenant's ruin without serious cause, you may well ask yourself.” The Colonel regained his chair and stroked his chin with a worn, blunt hand, his eyes on the portrait of a stallion arrayed in full battle harness.

“It is hardly likely,” Eliza, said. “One surmises that Lieutenant Hearst spoke from guilty rage.”

“However it was, others more objective could prove the truth of neither assertion; the Lieutenant and his adversary had been playing long into the night, and had been deserted by their fellows; and no one had seen the cards the other alleged to have been in Lieutenant Hearst's coat-sleeve.”

“Was no one prepared to vouch for him before his company?”

“I fear that they had all suffered too much at his hands; and some may have shared the stranger's suspicion,” Colonel Buchanan replied shortly. “It ended as all such affairs must and inevitably do end — with Lieutenant Hearst defending his honour in a pistol duel with the gentleman.”

With a start, I remembered Fanny Delahoussaye's words at Isobel's ball, an evening that might have been an age ago; the Lieutenant, she said, was arrived from St. James having recently killed a man in a duel. The affairs of officers are the most romantic, she had prattled, or some nonsense to that effect.

“They met at dawn, not far from the barracks here in St. James, and Lieutenant Hearst succeeded in dispatching his accuser — which may have satisfied him, but only added to his unfortunate reputation. The poor fellow he killed was to have been wed at Christmas.”

There was a brief silence as Eliza and I took all this in; but keenly aware of my purpose I shook myself into awareness and sought once more the Colonel's gaze. “And this debacle has ruined the Lieutenant's standing in the cavalry?”

“An affair of honour is a dubious thing,” the Colonel told us, with a sharply exhaled breath and another impatient gesture. “The law would call it murder. But among military men, nothing is prized so much as one's honour — it is beyond fortune, beyond birthright; it is become the essence of the man. A duel to the death has long been the established mode of satisfying outrages against one's reputation. Had this been the only blot on the Lieutenant's career, he might have survived it. But taken with his pressing debts, and the fact that others of his fellows have called him cardsharp in the aftermath of the duel, he is now under consideration for cashierment by his superiors.”

“Colonel Buchanan,” I said, summoning my courage, “forgive me for prying further in such a matter. But were the Lieutenant presently to satisfy his creditors, discharge his debts of honour among the company, and conduct himself in a manner more suited to a gentleman and a member of his corps, could his commission yet be saved?”

“I fear that little might save Lieutenant Hearst,” the Colonel replied, his eyes stern, “though women ever believe that love alone shall do it. I dearly hope, Miss Austen, that it is some other lady than yourself who has proved so susceptible to the rascal's charms. I should not like to see you lost to all reason.”

I cursed my ready tendency to blush as I replied. “I assure you, sir, that I am come on another's behalf, and must return with the heaviest of burdens — that of advising one in love to look no further for happiness in the Lieutenant's quarter. It is a burden I have gladly shared with the Countess.”

“Indeed,” Eliza said quickly, recollecting our supposed purpose for being there, and reaching for her reticule, “I must thank you, dear Colonel, for your readiness to disclose what may only be to the Lieutenant's detriment. Circumstances required that his character be better understood.”

“The decision of his superiors should even now have been reached,” the Colonel said, “and so you may be saved of your duty. For no young woman should wish to marry a man without fortune, career, or prospects — may he have twenty uncles recently dead.”