“And a good officer would never leave his men.” The big room was silent save for the murmur of the fire and the bumping of the kettle, about to boil. I closed my eyes, thinking, Beauchamp, you idiot…Because he’d done that. Abandoned his men at Monmouth, in order to save my life. It didn’t matter that the battle was over, the enemy in retreat, that there was no danger to the men at that point, that nearly all of them were militia on temporary enlistment, whose service would be legally up by the next day’s dawn. Many had left already. But it didn’t matter. He’d left his men.
