The Soldier's Dark Secret

by Marguerite Kaye

  ‘Did Charlie send you to check on me?’ he demanded as she sat down cautiously on the boulder beside him. ‘Not brave enough to come himself, I suppose.’

  ‘He thought you would be best left alone.’

  Jack threw another pebble into the water. ‘He was right.’

  Celeste forced herself to remain seated.

  Jack threw another pebble forcefully into the water. ‘I won’t harm myself, if that’s what you’re worried about. I would not inflict that on Charlie, on top of everything else, so you can leave with a clear conscience.’

  He was angry. He was embarrassed, no doubt. He was obviously much more hurt than he cared to let on. He didn’t mean it. Still, his barb hit painfully home. Celeste flinched.

  Jack swore. ‘I’m sorry. God, I’m sorry. That was a foul thing to say to you, of all people.’

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  Jack cast another pebble. ‘Is that why you’re here? Do you think I would...?’

  ‘No. And nor does Sir Charles, before you ask.’

  ‘Small compensation, when my own brother thinks I need to be locked up in Bedlam.’

  ‘Your brother is worried about you. He doesn’t know how best to help you.’

  Jack threw the small bundle of remaining pebbles he had into the lake and jumped to his feet. ‘Do you not think that if I knew of some cure for what ails me I’d have taken it by now? Do you think I enjoy being like this? Have you any idea what it’s like for me to be so—so at the whim of emotions I can’t control? Me! Discipline and order is what my life’s been about until now. Men and information, that’s what I deal in. I turn men into soldiers. I turn meaningless jumbles of letters and numbers into sequences and patterns. That’s what I do, Celeste—that’s what I did. Not any more. Now I can’t make sense of anything.’

  He turned away from her, pinching the bridge of his nose viciously between his thumb and forefinger. What he said resonated so strongly with her, she was tempted to tell him so, but what good would it do, to tell him that she too felt as if the world made no sense any more? ‘I think you do understand some things, though,’ she said. ‘Whatever it was at dinner that made you sick, you knew it would. That’s why you avoid dinner.’

  ‘And would have avoided it again last night were it not for you.’ He turned on her, his eyes flashing fury.

  ‘That’s not fair. I did not know you...’

  ‘No, you didn’t, but you smiled that winsome smile of yours, and you looked at me with those big brown eyes and you made it impossible for me to say no.’

  She knew he was simply trying to hurt her, lashing out like a wounded animal, but the injustice of this was too much. ‘I did no such thing!’ Celeste jumped to her feet. ‘I don’t have a winsome smile. I am not a fool. I look in the mirror, and I see I have the kind of face men find attractive, but I am not— I have never, ever, been one of those women who use a mere quirk of nature to manipulate people. Never.’

  Jack swore again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he snapped, sounding anything but. ‘Very well, you did not force me into that damned dinner, but if it had not been that, it would have been something else.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ Celeste folded her arms and glared at him.

  ‘You,’ Jack said. ‘From the moment I first saw you, you’ve tormented me. Spying on me. Kissing me. Goading me. Tempting me. As if I didn’t have enough to keep me awake at nights without torturing myself with visions of you, of us. I can barely keep my hands off you. I’ve never been that sort of man before. I’ve never lost my temper with Robert before. I’ve never come so near to spilling my guts on the dinner table before. And what is the common factor in all this? You.’

  ‘That is completely outrageous! I could say the exact same thing of you. You make me feel as if I am some sort of—of insatiable temptress,’ Celeste exclaimed. ‘And look at me now, screeching like a fishwife. I never shout. I never cry. I never have any difficulty whatsoever in keeping my hands and my lips and my body to myself. I am a calm person, I am a cold person, even, and yet with you...’ She threw her hands into the air.

  ‘You realise how ridiculous you sound,’ Jack said.

  Even through her temper, she did. Celeste bit her lip and tried to glower.

  He sighed. ‘How ridiculous we both sound.’

  She took a tentative step towards him. ‘I didn’t come here to harangue you. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I deserved it.’ Jack managed a wry smile. ‘You are most definitely not the kind of woman who uses her charms to get her own way. I went to dinner last night of my own accord. It was a sort of test. Which I failed rather spectacularly.’

  Celeste took another step towards him. ‘What happened, Jack?’

  He stared out over the lake. He picked up a stone, then let if fall. ‘It’s just— There are smells. Certain smells.’

  ‘The blood! You mean the blood from the meat?’

  ‘No. No, it’s not the blood. I’ve seen too much blood for it to be— Not on its own.’ He picked up another stone and began to turn it over and over in his hands. ‘I thought it might be. Eleanor is very fond of serving up roast beef, charred and bloody in the English tradition, so I do tend to avoid that, just in case...’ He closed his eyes momentarily. ‘But I would have been fine last night, I think, if it hadn’t been for the stew she had specially made for you.’

  ‘The Provençal dish?’ Celeste’s face fell. ‘So it was my fault?’

  ‘No. I did blame you, but I wasn’t exactly rational. Don’t ask me, I can’t explain. Given my spectacular outburst back there. I’m not surprised Charlie thinks I’m mad.’

  Celeste caught his hand. ‘Jack, you know you are not.’

  ‘I do know that much, actually.’ He gently disengaged himself. ‘You know, if Robert is hoping to catch a trout here, I reckon he’ll be disappointed. I saw a heron take one this morning. If it’s been here awhile, there will be precious little left.’

  ‘I think they will be draining it very soon. You will have to find somewhere else to swim.’

  ‘I’m thinking of going to London.’

  Celeste swallowed hard. ‘London?’

  ‘I’m sick of kicking my heels here, and I’m becoming an embarrassment to Charlie and Eleanor—they didn’t even feel they could risk inviting their friends to dinner, for God’s sake. And as it turns out, they were right.’

  ‘Jack...’

  ‘Celeste, I need to get away from here. And from you. You are far too much of a distraction—as I fear I am, for you. You need to concentrate on your painting, and I need to be doing something. I will take your locket and ring with me, if I may, do some digging, lean on my contacts a bit,’ Jack said with a tight smile, ‘I do still have some.’

  ‘But you will be coming back?’ she could not stop herself from asking.

  ‘In a week or so. I promised I’d do my best to help you find answers. I have no intention of breaking that promise.’

  ‘And I will be here. My commission will take me several more weeks.’ Unless Sir Charles had her bags packed. Or more likely his wife had, Celeste thought, wearily contemplating the necessity for an apology.

  ‘Good. That’s settled then. So, if you could hand it over—the locket? I’ve still got the signet ring.’

  ‘You mean right now?’

  ‘I’m heading off first thing in the morning,’ he said briskly. ‘Turn around.’

  She did as he asked. It was a good thing, Jack’s wanting to go to London, she told herself. She did need to work. And he was right, he was too much of a distraction. She still, more than ever, wanted to resolve the issue of her mother’s letter. She would not miss him at all. Not a bit.

  His fingers were cool on the nape of her neck as he undid the clasp. If she leaned back only a fraction, she would feel his chest on her back, his legs against hers
.

  He turned her around, tucking the necklace into his waistcoat pocket.

  ‘I am very grateful for all your help.’

  ‘There’s no need. I am glad to have a purpose again.’

  ‘Still, I am grateful.’

  Jack nodded. ‘I should go.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Early start.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He leaned forward to brush her cheek with his lips just as she stepped towards him to do the same. He caught her as she stumbled, his arms tight around her waist, her body pressed firmly to his chest. He looked down into her eyes, and she raised her mouth to his. Their lips brushed for the merest second. Enough for her to close her eyes. Enough for the attraction between them to spark to life and send them jumping awkwardly apart. For the second time in the space of a few days, they walked back together from the lake in silence.

  London—two weeks later

  Jack completed what had become his daily circuit of Hyde Park, then decided on impulse to walk through Green Park to St James’s. He found a bench at the opposite end from Horse Guards, and sat back, closing his eyes and enjoying the early-evening sunshine on his face. The change of scene seemed to be having a positive effect on his melancholia. Only three times had he woken in the last two weeks after enduring the nightmare, though a good many of the other nights had been spent awake, his brain churning in an endless circle of questions.

  Here in London, Jack could have easily stayed out on the town, but he’d never been a carouser, not even when he was a young colt. Instead, he took the opportunity to catch up on his reading. There was a German mathematician called Gauss who had published several fascinating papers, which Jack was methodically working his way through. Complex stuff, and much of it in Latin, which kept him occupied through the long hours of darkness. He was having to pay extra for candles at his lodgings, and the piles of paper covered in scribbled equations were most likely interpreted by his landlord as evidence he dabbled in the black arts.

  A barked order issued from the direction of Horse Guards shattered the silence of the park. Jack smiled wryly to himself. Someone was getting a rollicking. One thing he did not miss, the army’s obsession with spit and polish. His slapdash approach to his own appearance, after all those years of having to appear immaculate, surprised him. He’d had his hair cut here in London, but he had felt no temptation to blow any of the considerable wealth he had amassed over the years on anything other than a couple of pairs of boots and some new breeches. To be bang up to the mark interested him not one jot.

  Nor had he felt any urge to blow his cash on wine, women or any other vice for that matter. London, even out of Season, offered many opportunities to do so. He’d attended far too many parties and balls in Wellington’s entourage to find them anything other than a duty call. And women—Jack had always liked women, but for that reason, he’d never been interested in bawdy houses. Not that he condemned them, or judged the men and women who frequented them—a combination of war and absence made such places necessary to an army. But for Jack, the notion of sexual congress with a woman he did not know was repugnant.

  Until he met Celeste, in the two years since that fateful day, all thoughts of intimacy were repugnant. His celibacy hadn’t been a conscious decision at first. He had barely noticed the complete absence of desire, because he had at the time been between affairs. It was only later, when the opportunity arose and he—literally—did not. He’d dismissed it on that occasion as exhaustion. It was only now, thinking back, that he could see he’d simply—and without any regrets—taken to avoiding any social occasions where he would be confronted with his apathy.

  He sat up on the bench, rubbing his eyes. Away from Trestain Manor, alone in the city, awake during the long night hours, he had had plenty of time to think. He had no name for it, his condition, he doubted that any medical doctor would recognise it, but he could no longer deny its existence. Army life had kept it at bay. The pressure, especially after Napoleon escaped from Elba, to find ever more clever ways to keep one step ahead of the French, had forced him to work ever longer hours, deep into the night, not sleeping so much as passing out from exhaustion. It had been there, catching him unawares in his rare moments of inactivity, but only then.

  Finding a new occupation was surely the key to containing his melancholia again. This mystery of Celeste’s was merely a stop-gap, though it was a useful one, if only because it had been the kick up the backside he needed to stop putting up and start getting on with life.

  Though it had been Celeste, rather than her unanswered questions, who had done the kicking, Jack thought ruefully. Celeste, with her sharp mind and her determination not to be cowed, as Charlie and Eleanor had been, by Jack’s inexplicable behaviour. She was the reason he’d finally admitted to the problem. She was the reason the admission had led to action. She was the reason he was determined to find a way out of the morass he’d been sinking in.

  He was grateful to Celeste. He was missing her like hell. He wanted her more than ever. Absence, instead of dulling his desire, had made it impossible to ignore. Well then, he must do the impossible.

  Jack checked his watch and got to his feet. He was due to meet Finlay in an hour at a tavern over near Covent Garden for a spot of dinner. He wondered how she was faring with her painting. He pictured her in her studio, in that paint-stained smock, gazing critically at her day’s work. Her hair would be coming out of its chignon by now. He pictured her, putting a hand to her throat, missing her mother’s locket, and perhaps thinking about him.

  He gave himself a mental shake, as he strode out of the park and made his way on to the Mall. Aside from the fact that Celeste had made it very clear she was not interested in any future but an independent one without ties and aside from the fact that admitting he had a problem did not necessarily mean there was a cure, there was one basic and fundamental reason why Jack had no right at all to dream of happiness. He might be able to manage his symptoms, but he could never rid himself of their cause, and he had no right to try. Like Blythe Marmion, he would carry his burden of guilt to the grave. And like Blythe Marmion, Jack believed her daughter deserved a lot better. Celeste was better off without either of them. What he needed to focus on was proving that.

  * * *

  Finlay had reserved a private room in the tavern, and was waiting for Jack when he arrived. ‘Claret,’ he said, pouring them each a glass. ‘Not a particularly fine vintage, but not the worst we’ve had either. Dear God, man, we’ve drunk some awful gut-rot in our time.’

  ‘Most of it that illicit whisky you insist on bringing back after every visit home to Scotland,’ Jack said with a broad smile.

  ‘I’ll have you know my father is very proud of his wee home-made still,’ Finley replied with mock indignation. ‘Although I’m not so sure the excise man is quite so enamoured.’

  ‘Still no uniform, I see,’ Jack said.

  Finlay laughed. ‘Do you have any idea how curious these Sassenachs are about what a good Scot wears under the kilt? And to add to it, this mane of mine,’ he said, referring to his distinctive auburn hair, ‘makes them stare at me like I’m a specimen in the menagerie at the Tower.’

  ‘More likely they’re wondering how best to get you home and into their bed, if you’re talking about the females of this city. And every other city we’ve visited, come to think of it.’

  ‘Spare my blushes, man. You draw them in and I pick up the scraps is the truth of it. Used be, at any rate.’ Finlay’s smile faded. ‘If only it was still that easy, to lose yourself in a lass—any lass. But we’ve both of us always been picky. A mite too picky, in my case.’

  ‘Good God, don’t tell me that you’ve finally met the one woman on this earth who isn’t taken in by that Gaelic charm of yours?’

  Finlay shook his head, the teasing glint gone from his dark-blue eyes. ‘I know, it’s unbelievable. And
it is also of no consequence.’

  Obviously, it mattered a good deal, but Jack knew his friend of old and forbore from questioning him. They were alike in that way, the pair of them, preferring always to keep what mattered most close to their chests.

  ‘Any road,’ Finlay said, picking up his glass, ‘I’m on leave, and unlike some, I prefer to walk the streets of London without being accosted by all and sundry begging me to tell them what it was really like, the great triumph of Waterloo, and whether this was true or that, and have I ever met the great Duke. I leave the swaggering to the man himself. Though Wellington will need to get a bigger hat if his head swells any more.’

  ‘You realise you’re mocking England’s saviour.’

  ‘You realise that we fought at Waterloo for Scotland and Wales as well as England,’ Finlay retorted.

  Jack raised his glass. ‘As you never fail to remind him at every opportunity.’

  ‘The more he dislikes it the more I am minded to do it.’ Finlay grimaced. ‘Strictly speaking, my next opportunity should arise next Saturday. He’s hosting some grand dinner before he goes back to Paris, and I’m expected along with a lady friend, and I’ve other much more important plans. I’ve tried excusing myself on the grounds I’ve no lady friend—or at least none fit for that company—but I’m getting pelters for not attending, let me tell you.’

  ‘What are these other plans of yours, then?’

  Finlay looked uncomfortable. ‘They’ll likely come to nought.’

  But they were clearly very important, for Finlay, much as he might mock the pomp and ceremony of regimental life, was also very much aware of its importance to a career he’d worked bloody hard to forge. The parlour maid arrived with a loaded tray, before Jack had the chance to pursue this interesting train of thought.