The Soldier's Dark Secret

by Marguerite Kaye

  Jack ran his fingers through his hair. He ought to have it cut. Just one of many things he ought to do, and had not the gumption to attempt. Every day he swore he would try to be normal. He would take an interest in mundane things like harvests and dressing for dinner and the weather and the king’s health. With increasing regularity, he failed. So many things important to Charlie and Eleanor seemed so trivial to him, and so trivial things tended to take on a disproportionate importance. Like that kiss.

  Just a kiss, Celeste had said, though he could have sworn she was as unsettled as he had been by it. And then she’d made that comment about abstinence enhancing its intensity. Bloody stupid phrase. Presumptive. Though she had not been referring to him, as he’d assumed. She was no innocent, she claimed, and she certainly didn’t kiss like one. He’d never experienced a kiss like it. Was that due to enforced abstinence? It had come as a surprise, certainly. He’d assumed that aspect of his life, like sleeping soundly, was beyond him, at least for the time being.

  Jack leant his head back against the hearth. It should be reassuring that it was not. Reassuring that he could still—what? Experience desire, lust? He swore. Most likely the woman was right, and it really had been just a kiss, blown out of all proportion by the circumstances. No mere kiss was that momentous. He wished he hadn’t run away now, like a raw recruit retreating under enemy fire. He wished he’d stayed and kissed her again, and proved to himself that it was not a one-off and that his body, unlike his mind, was not completely in limbo.

  He closed his eyes and allowed himself to remember the taste of her and the feel of her and the smell of her. She was quite lovely. She was altogether ravishing. She would set any man’s blood on fire. He shouldn’t have kissed her. As it was, his self-control hung by a fragile thread. He was confused about many thing but the one thing he knew for certain was that maintaining his self-control was crucial. So he could not risk kissing her again. Definitely not picture her lips pressed to his, her hands...

  ‘I wonder how Mademoiselle Marmion is faring?’

  Jack’s eyes flew open. The name leapt out at him, bringing the background buzz of conversation in the room below to the fore.

  Charlie was speaking now. ‘I’m sure she fares perfectly well. She seemed to me an uncommonly confident woman for one of her years. Perhaps it comes from being French. And she is a successful artist too. No, my love, we need have no fear for Mademoiselle. Jack may be— He has developed something of a temper, but he would never behave with impropriety, I am certain of that.’

  ‘It is not only his temper, Charles. He has a look in his eyes sometimes that frightens me.’

  ‘The things he has experienced on the battlefield would frighten anyone.’

  ‘Yes, but—Charles, you must have noticed, there are times when one may address any number of remarks to him, and it is as if he were deaf or asleep. I thought he was simply being rude the first time, but—it is very odd.’

  What was it they said about never overhearing good of oneself? Snooping and listening in to private conversations had been the tools of the trade of his carefully cultivated informants, but this was different. Jack cringed.

  ‘We can be sure of nothing with regard to your brother these days, Charles,’ Eleanor continued after a leaden silence. ‘He is so very changed.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Charlie’s voice was wooden, a sure sign that his stiff upper lip was being called into action. No doubt he was wringing his hands.

  ‘He rebuffed poor little Robert again yesterday. I have told the child time and again not to plague his uncle for war stories, but...’

  ‘He is only five years old, and his uncle is a hero to him. Indeed, Jack is a hero to us all, if only he could see it. If only he could talk to me, but I fear...’

  Jack leapt to his feet. So much for his naive belief that he had been covering his tracks. It was mortifyingly clear that Charlie and Eleanor had merely been pretending not to notice his odd behaviour.

  I’m sparing you, he wanted to roar at Charlie. I’m preserving all your sad, pathetic illusions about me, he wanted to tell him. He wanted to shake his brother into silence. He wanted to be sick, because he loved Charlie, and he even cared about Eleanor, dammit, because Eleanor loved Charlie too. He wished to hell, for Charlie’s sake, that he could sit down with Robert and tell him tales of derring-do. He wished that it was true, that he really was the hero mentioned by Wellington in despatches, but it was not the case. Heroes didn’t have stains on their soul.

  Jack crept from the room. He might not be a hero but he had survived. He would continue to survive. To live, to be truly alive though, that was quite another matter. An aspiration for the future, perhaps. In the meantime, it was a question of enduring.

  Chapter Three

  Next day, Celeste set to work in the walled garden, the morning sunshine sending fingers of light creeping along the western border. She knew from the landscaper’s plans which Jack had shown her that the oldest of the succession houses and the pinery were to be demolished and replaced with modern structures which could be more efficiently heated. There was a charm to the original buildings which she had started to capture in charcoal, the paper pinned to a large board propped on a portable easel.

  She had not seen Jack since he so abruptly left the Topiary Garden. He had not appeared at dinner, nor breakfast. According to Lady Eleanor, this was not unusual behaviour, as Jack often skipped meals. Sir Charles had reminded his wife that the remains of his late-night snacks were regularly found by the kitchen maids, so there was no need to worry that Jack had no appetite whatsoever. Which meant that they clearly were worried, and equally clearly set upon pretending to the source of their concern that they were not. Celeste was not, after all, alone in thinking Jack Trestain’s behaviour decidedly contrary.

  She pinned a fresh sheet of paper on to her easel. She would not speculate as to the cause. She found him intriguing. She found him interesting. She found him very attractive. All of these, she took as positive signs of her own return to normality, but she would not allow herself to dwell on the subject any further. She had more than enough issues to occupy her thoughts without adding Jack Trestain to her list.

  She picked up her charcoal, decided to adjust her perspective and set to work.

  * * *

  Half an hour later, deep in concentration, Celeste did not notice Jack’s arrival until he was behind her, making her jump, squiggle a line across her drawing, drop her charcoal and swear rather inappropriately in French. ‘You gave me such a fright. Look what you’ve made me do.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to startle you, but you were miles away.’

  ‘I was concentrating on my work.’

  Jack was looking at her drawing, but Celeste got the impression he was thinking about something else. She had not misremembered how attractive he was. Nor the strength of her reaction to his physical proximity. Her skin was tingling as if the space between them was charged, like the atmosphere prior to a lightning strike. ‘What do you think?’ she asked, in an attempt to restore some semblance of normality. She was on sure ground discussing art.

  He blinked. ‘I think I should apologise for my abrupt departure yesterday.’

  Celeste too kept her eyes on her drawing. ‘I was actually referring to my sketch, but since we are on the subject, I fear we were at cross purposes yesterday. When I said— When I mentioned abstinence— I know nothing of your circumstances. I was speaking for myself.’

  ‘You may as well have been speaking for me,’ Jack admitted ruefully. ‘I have not— It has also been some time since I...’ Their eyes met briefly, then flickered away. ‘I was therefore rather taken aback.’

  ‘As was I.’ This time their gaze held. Celeste smiled faintly. ‘I am sure that was the reason for the— It explains why we allowed ourselves to become somewhat carried away.’

  Jack touched his hand to
the squiggle Celeste had drawn, tried to rub it out, then stared at the resultant smudge. ‘Stupid thing for me to get so aerated about. It was, as you pointed out, just a kiss. We’re adults, not flighty adolescents.’

  ‘Yes, exactly.’ She nodded determinedly to disguise her disappointment. She should not be disappointed. He was agreeing with her, after all. ‘Most likely we would be disappointed if we—if we repeated the experience.’

  It came out sounding like a plea to be proved wrong, and for a moment, Jack looked as if he would comply. ‘Most likely,’ he said as he took a step towards her. She could feel his breath on her cheek. He smelled of grass and sunshine. Her heart was beating hard again, making it difficult to breathe. She stared into his eyes, mesmerised. The gap between them imperceptibly, tantalisingly narrowed. Their lips almost touched before they both leapt back as if they had been singed by a naked flame.

  Celeste snatched her sketch from the easel and tore it in half. ‘I don’t know what is wrong with me today. I am struggling to find the correct perspective for what should be a simple sketch.’

  Jack hesitated, then threw himself down on a wooden bench, his long legs sprawled in front of him. ‘I doubt either Charlie or Eleanor will care which angle you choose, provided you deliver something that closely matches reality. I’m sure the drawing you have just torn up would have proved perfectly satisfactory.’

  ‘Not to me,’ Celeste said indignantly. ‘I would have known I could have depicted the scene in a more accomplished manner. You may consider what I do to be a trivial endeavour. My paintings don’t save lives or win wars or—or whatever it was you did when you were a soldier, but they are still very important to me.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to patronise you.’

  His smile was disarming. Celeste bit her own back, refusing to be so easily won over. ‘But you did none the less.’

  ‘I did,’ he conceded.

  He dug his hands into his pockets. ‘You know, life in the military is not as exciting as you might think. There’s far more time spent marching and drilling than waging war. And in the winter, when the campaign season is over, there’s a deal more playing cards and making bets and drinking than doing drill.’

  ‘When I am between commissions, I still paint,’ Celeste said. ‘Not landscapes, but people. I am not so good at portraits, but they are mine, and so it is not like work, you know?’

  ‘Are you often between commissions?’

  ‘In the beginning, regularly.’ She chuckled. ‘As a result, I was much thinner and not so well dressed as I can now afford to be.’

  ‘No less pretty, though, I’d wager, if I may be so bold as to offer a compliment to compensate for demeaning your sense of professional pride. Did you always aspire to be an artist?’

  ‘I am never going to exhibit at the Académie des Beaux-Arts, and I have no ambition to do so. I am not the type to try to break all the rules and to starve in the process, spending my last sou on paint rather than a baguette. I have a modest talent. I was fortunate enough to study with some excellent teachers in Paris, and I needed to find a way of supporting myself, so...’ Celeste shrugged.

  ‘Your parents then, they are dead? You said you needed to support yourself,’ Jack explained when she raised her eyebrows at the question, ‘so I assumed...’

  ‘Yes. Both dead.’ Celeste stared down at her hands, frowning. Despite spending a good deal of time thinking about it, she had not the foggiest idea how to begin the search for answers which had brought her to England. She needed help, but her ingrained habit of trusting no one save herself inhibited her from seeking it. Not that, as a foreigner, she thought morosely, she had the first idea of where to start seeking.

  ‘Penny for them?’ Jack was looking at her quizzically. ‘Your thoughts,’ he said. ‘You were a hundred miles away again. I fear I’m boring you rather than distracting you.’

  ‘No, it’s not that.’ Perhaps she could ask him just one simple question to get her search underway? She really did have to make a start because there, tucked away at the back of her sketchbook, was a letter containing a puzzle she needed to solve in order to draw a line under the past and get on with her life.

  ‘Jack?’

  He looked at her questioningly.

  ‘Jack, if you—if you needed to find something. Or someone. How would you go about it? I mean if you did not know where this person lived, or—or who they were, precisely. Are there people one can employ to discover such things?’

  ‘You mean to track down someone who has gone missing?’

  She had his attention now. All of it. Though he was still lounging casually on the bench, though his expression was one of polite interest, his eyes were focused entirely on her. Celeste shifted uncomfortably. ‘Not missing precisely. Not anything at all, really. I’m speaking hypothetically.’

  She risked looking up, and wished she had not. ‘Hypothetically,’ Jack said, openly sceptical. ‘Well, hypothetically, you could employ a Bow Street Runner.’

  ‘Is that what you would do?’

  He smiled. ‘Good grief, no. Speaking hypothetically of course, I am more than equipped to solve the problem for myself, but we’re not talking hypothetically, are we?’

  Realising that she was clenching her hands so tightly together that the knuckles showed white, Celeste hid them under her painter’s smock. She ought to look him in the eye, but she was sure if she did Jack would know she was lying. She was not a good liar. She was good at keeping silent. She was very good at hiding her feelings, but she was a terrible liar. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘Forget I asked.’

  She could have bitten her tongue out, realising only at the last moment that telling Jack Trestain something didn’t matter was a sure-fire way of alerting him to the fact that it did, though he said nothing for so long that she began to hope he had done just as she asked. At least she was a step further forward. She had no idea what a Bow Street Runner was, but she could find out. She prepared to get to her feet. ‘I should...’

  ‘Sit down.’ His grip on her arm was light enough, but one look at Jack’s face, and Celeste thought the better of resisting him. ‘Who exactly is it you’re trying to trace? A lover? An errant husband, perhaps?’

  ‘I have no husband, errant or otherwise, and as to a lover— No, not since before— Since— It has nothing to do with affairs of the heart.’ She sounded defensive. She was getting upset. And Jack was not missing any of it. ‘It is nothing,’ Celeste said. ‘I regret raising it.’

  Jack gave her a neutral look. ‘You know, you’d be taking pot luck by employing a Runner. Some of them are excellent chaps, but some— Frankly, I wouldn’t trust my sister alone with them. Not that I have a sister. Have you? Or a brother? Is it a sibling you’re seeking?’

  ‘I am not so fortunate as to possess either,’ Celeste said repressively.

  Jack nodded. ‘So, it’s not your parents or a husband or a sibling you’re trying to trace. Who then?’

  He was not going to give up. Celeste shook her head and folded her lips.

  Once again, Jack failed to get the message. ‘Now I come to think about it, you weren’t clear if it was a person or a thing. Is it stolen property then, jewellery? Or the family silver?’

  ‘Mon Dieu, Jack, I wish you would leave the matter alone!’

  ‘You ask me for advice but now won’t tell me why. Don’t you trust me, Celeste, is that it?’

  ‘I don’t trust anyone. I find it is safer that way.’

  ‘That, if I may say so, is a fairly bleak philosophy.’

  ‘You may, since I suspect it is also yours.’

  He looked quite taken aback. ‘Irrespective of the veracity of that statement, you would admit it is a philosophy which makes finding your missing person or whatever the hell it is rather problematic.’

  ‘I told you, I was merely s
peculating.’

  ‘And I told you, I don’t believe you,’ Jack said, his tone conciliatory. ‘Look, it’s obviously important to you, whatever it is. It’s clear you need help, and I assure you, you can rely on my discretion.’

  All of which was most likely true, but it was such a big step to take. Celeste wrapped her arms around herself. What should she do?

  ‘If it’s difficult for you to tell me, imagine yourself faced with a complete stranger.’

  ‘Why are you so keen to— Of what possible interest is it to you?’ Celeste cursed under her breath and jumped to her feet. ‘You wish to know? Vraiment? Very well then, I will tell the truth and shame the devil. I have come to England to find out why my mother killed herself! Are you happy now?’

  Jack’s face was a picture of shock. Celeste, even more shocked than he at her impulsive admission, sucked in great breaths of air.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jack said after a brief silence. ‘Celeste, I’m so very sorry.’

  He reached out, as if he would put his arms around her. For a brief moment, she was tempted to accept the comfort of his embrace, and that shocked her almost as much as her blurting out the shameful truth to a man she barely knew. She pushed him away, rather too roughly, though she was beyond caring about that. Then suddenly quite drained, she sank on to the bench beside him.

  * * *

  Suicide. Jack could think of no subject more guaranteed to engage his attention and his sympathy. He clenched his fists. He would try his damnedest to help this woman. That would, at least, be something.

  Beside him Celeste was pale, angry and on the verge of tears, though she seemed absolutely determined not to cry. She was looking at him very warily too, most likely already resenting him for forcing her to blurt out something so private and shocking.

  ‘You can trust me,’ Jack said once more. ‘If I am able to help you, I will.’

  ‘Why would you?’ she demanded baldly. ‘You’re virtually a stranger.’