He kissed the skin between her stocking and her undergarments, undoing her garters. He kissed her slim calf, her ankle, before taking her stocking off. He could see the rise and fall of her breasts. He could hear her shallow breath. He took off her other stocking. He leaned over her to kiss her mouth again. Then slipped his hands under the delightful curve of her rear, and eased off her pantaloons.
When he covered her sex with his mouth, she cried out. He stilled her, laying a hand on her stomach to ease her back on to the bed. Then he licked into the hot, wet sweetness of her, and the cry she gave this time was guttural.
He took his time. Tasting. Licking. Sucking. Stroking. Kissing. He took his time because he wanted to show her how very much he wanted her. Her breathing was ragged, like his own. The taste of her, the scent of her, the softness of her, made him so hard. He felt her tighten, sensed the change in her breathing, fastened his mouth on her as she swelled, and held on to her as she came, her fingers clutching at his shoulders, her heels digging into the mattress, saying his name over and over.
* * *
Celeste lay shattered by a climax so intense she thought she might faint, and at the same time, she thought she might fragment into a thousand pieces. She could hear herself moaning, panting, pleading, and she could do nothing, wanted to do nothing, save yield. She was utterly sated, and yet at the same time, even as the pulsing eased, her body was already demanding a different, more primal satisfaction.
Instinctively she pulled at Jack’s shoulders, her back arching under him. He covered her body, rolling her on top of him and kissing her. He tasted of her. The solid ridge of his erection nudged between her legs. His hands tugged at the strings of her corsets. When they were loose enough, she flung them off. With a sigh of satisfaction, he pushed down the top of her shift to reveal her breasts, rolling her on to her back again to kiss them, lick them, taking her nipples into his mouth, sucking, nibbling, sucking.
She could barely think. She was aflame, burning with the need to have him inside her, wantonly, shamelessly egging him on with her hips and her hands and her mouth. The muscles of his back rippled under the flat of her palms. She slid her hands down, inside the waistband of his breeches. His buttocks tautened. He let her go only to rip the fastenings of his breeches open and cast them off. He sat astride her naked body, only for the second time, and for the first time—gloriously naked and thickly erect. She reached out to touch his silky hardness, forgetting all her doubts and all his too, in the need which consumed them.
His kiss changed. Deeper. Slower. He touched her slowly too, his hands on her shoulders, her back, feathering down her spine, then back to her breasts, cupping, stroking, slowly but surely making her tense, tighten, throb, on the brink of another climax, and also, rather curiously, on the brink of tears. She touched him. The hollow in his shoulder where the musket ball had hit him. The hard wall of his chest. His nipples. The curve of his rib cage. The dip of his belly. She curled her fingers around his shaft. One slow stroke. He inhaled sharply. Another.
His hand covered hers. He shook his head. ‘Need to— Not that. Too much.’ He kissed her again, and rolled her under him, masking her body with his. ‘Sure?’ he asked.
For answer she wrapped her legs around him and kissed him hard. ‘You will be careful, Jack?’
‘Of course. I promise. Of course.’
The first thrust was tentative, parting her carefully. The next was surer. She clenched around him, clinging on to her self-control, not wanting to let go yet, though it was already building. Jack’s breathing was laboured. The sinews on his arms stood out like ropes. He thrust again, more confidently, higher, deeper. A harsh groan escaped him. She clung to him as he lifted himself, then cried out as he thrust again, and she met him this time.
She sensed his straining for control. She clung desperately to hers. Not yet, not yet, not yet. But their bodies found a rhythm of their own that could not be resisted, thrusting and arching, harder and faster, higher, tighter. He slid his hands under her bottom, tilting her up, and she cried out as she opened up, as he pushed inside her, feeling the waves of her climax take her, digging her heels into his buttocks, her fingers into his back, saying his name urgently over and over as she surrendered, sensing him thicken as she came, another thrust, another that she met wildly, before he withdrew at the last second and his own climax took him, dragging a guttural cry from him as he shuddered, pulsed, shuddered.
The tears might have been sweat on his cheeks. She kissed them away. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her tight against him. Their skin clung, heat and sweat, rough and smooth. Her own tears tracked unnoticed. She was in another world, floating with bliss, mindless, and at the same time, every nerve was on fire.
But as the final waves of her climax ebbed, the fear was already making its insidious way to the front of her mind. Dare not, Jack had said, because he was afraid he would find it difficult to walk away. He had not considered that she might have the same difficulty, but she was already fairly certain that she would.
She had never been in love. She had always thought herself indifferent to love, or even incapable. But then, she’d thought herself indifferent to so many things that had subsequently proved not to be the case. She could see it, sense it, waiting to pounce on her. If she turned her back it would creep up on her. She felt as if she were standing on the top of one of Cassis’s white limestone calanques and looking down at the turquoise sparkle of the sea. Tempting. Glittering. Lethal.
The urge to flee was very strong. Whatever it was that propelled her to such dizzying heights would also be the end of her if she let it. She would be powerless in its sway. She would be incapable of doing other than its bidding. It might make her wildly happy, but she was pretty certain it would also eventually make her deeply miserable.
Celeste began to ease herself free of Jack’s embrace. His arms tightened around her. He opened his eyes. He smiled at her, a sated, satisfied smile that squeezed her heart and destroyed all her resolution. She smiled back. Then his smile faded. He let her go gently, but he let her go.
* * *
Jack sat up, pushing his hair back from his forehead. Ought he to feel guilty? He looked at the woman lying on the bed beside him, and felt nothing save this fierce need to hold her, keep her, always. She touched him to the core. The strength of his feelings almost overwhelmed him, but it was the sheer force of them that made him realise he had to make sure that it ended here. In another life, if he was another man, he could allow himself to care. In another life, she would love him back. In another life, he would deserve that love. But he had only this life, and he must endure its vagaries. He could never be happy, while Celeste deserved every happiness. He had to make sure that she understood now, before it was too late, how hopeless it was. He had to save them both from the pain of dashed hope, and there was one sure-fire way of doing that.
‘Celeste, there is something we must discuss.’
Her hair trailed over her shoulders, pale against the warmth of her skin. ‘There is no need,’ she said dully. ‘You were right. We should not have— It was a mistake.’
‘A mistake we can’t repeat,’ he said. ‘Must not. I need to explain why.’
But even though he knew he had to speak, he found it almost impossible. Nothing to do with the embargo which the army had placed on the subject, everything to do with what he was about to destroy. Jack closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the headboard. ‘It was my fault,’ he said. ‘That’s the most important point to understand.’ He opened his eyes. ‘It was my fault, and nothing I can do will ever change that.’
He sat up, pushing a pillow behind his back. Celeste curled her legs around her, angling herself in the bed to face him. She looked as grim as he felt. ‘You heard the gist of it from Carruthers.’ He frowned, forcing himself to think back, though he had gone over it so many times, there was really no need. ‘We were m
arching north, aiming for Burgos in Castile. Wellington—he was Wellesley then—wanted to move our supply base from Lisbon to Santander. I got wind that a band of elite French soldiers were hiding out in a small hilltop village. We had been monitoring them for a while. They were responsible for all sorts of surprise attacks on our flanks, a real thorn in our side. We suspected a leak from one of our own informants. There were a hundred very good reasons for us wanting to rid ourselves of them, and I was under a great deal of pressure—but that is no excuse.’
Jack pushed his hair back from his brow again. He was damp with sweat. ‘I shouldn’t have let on. I should have kept it to myself until it was verified, but I didn’t and once it was out, action followed quickly. They were like ghosts in the night. We’d lost them a few times. It was deemed too risky to wait. I should have protested more forcefully. I should have demanded that we wait so that I could check, cross-check, as I always did.’
‘Jack, you did protest though?’
‘Not enough. No one listened.’
‘But you did...’
‘Celeste, it doesn’t matter what I tried to do, what matters is what happened. We sent our men into that village thinking it was a fortress, based on information I provided. Carruthers was the commanding officer. He took no chances. He went in hard, all guns blazing.’ He was cold now. He clenched his teeth together to stop himself shivering, clenched every muscle in his body to stop himself shaking.
‘Jack, this is too painful for you. Please stop.’ Concern was etched on Celeste’s face.
He managed a weak smile. ‘Not so long ago, you’d have been prodding me in the chest and demanding that I go on.’
She took his hand. ‘I couldn’t imagine then what ailed you. I didn’t know then quite how much pain you were in.’
‘My pain is nothing. I need to tell you. I need you to know what no one else does. I owe you that much.’
* * *
I owe you that much. And then it would be over, whether she wanted it or not—and she was a good deal more ambivalent about that than she’d realised. But what she felt didn’t matter at the moment. What mattered was Jack. She was terrified of what he would tell her, and terrified of what his telling her would do to him, but she knew, with utter certainty, that he had to get it off his chest. Celeste felt for his hand. Her own was icy. ‘Very well. Go on.’
He gave a little nod. ‘I knew in my gut that something wasn’t quite right. That was why I insisted on being allowed to accompany Carruthers. I wasn’t part of the attack, but I went into the village immediately afterwards.’ He faced her determinedly. ‘Women and children, Celeste. Spanish women and children, whose men fought on the same side as us. But there were no men. Not a sign of the French. Not a trace that they’d been there. We will never know if they were forced to co-operate, to keep silent, or whether we were entirely mistaken. They were dumb with fear, the few that had survived the onslaught. Carruthers’s men had attacked the village with all the firepower at their disposal. It took them a while to realise their fire wasn’t being returned.’
Goose bumps rose on Celeste’s skin. She could see it in her mind’s eye. The village. The women. The children. The dead.
‘It’s what I dream,’ Jack continued. ‘It’s so vivid. My boots crunching on the track. The sun burning the back of my neck. I lost my hat. There was a chicken. It ran right in front of me. I nearly tripped over it. I could hear Carruthers shouting orders, I could hear his men sifting through the carnage, but it was as if I was walking alone through a montage. So quiet. So still. There really is such a thing as deathly silence.’
He was still looking at her, but his eyes were blank. It filled her with horror, and a pity that was gut-wrenching, the more so because she knew she could do nothing to help him.
‘After a battle, what you smell is smoke and gunpowder. There was a pall of it so thick on the battlefield of Waterloo, that you could hardly see a yard in front of you. In the village, I know it must have been the same, but I remember it as clear blue skies. The smell—the smell—’ Jack broke off, dropping his head on to his hands, pinching the bridge of his nose hard. ‘I was ravenous, I hadn’t eaten properly for days. There was a stew cooking on a fire. Peasant stuff. Broth. Herbes de Provence. It made my mouth water. And then I—then I—that’s when I became aware of the smell of the blood and the—the charred flesh. That’s when I was sick. And that’s when—when—when I—that’s when I saw her.’
Jack’s shoulders shook again. He dropped his head on to his hands again and scrubbed viciously at his eyes. Celeste could hear him taking huge, ragged breaths, counting them in a low, muttering, monotonous tone. She wanted to hold him, comfort him, but he was rigid with his own efforts to regain self-control. She felt helpless again, and more desperate than ever to help him. She scrabbled in her mind, through the morass of horror that he’d told her, trying to think of something, anything that would help, but her brain was frozen with the shock of it, unable to conceive of what it must have been like for Jack—what it must still be like.
She tugged his hands away from his face. ‘I can’t imagine,’ she said pathetically, ‘I can’t even begin to imagine.’
‘I don’t want you to. I wouldn’t wish what is in my head on anyone.’
‘The smell. The venison, that broth, that was what happened at dinner that night at Trestain Manor?’
‘Yes.’ Jack gave a ragged sigh.
‘But there is more, is there not?’ Celeste forced herself to ask. ‘You said that Colonel Carruthers did not know the worst.’
‘He doesn’t.’ Jack began to shake again. ‘I’ve never spoken of it. I don’t know if I— No, I can. I can. I can do it.’ His knuckles gleamed white. A pulse beat in his throat. ‘There was a girl,’ he said. ‘A young girl. I don’t know, twenty, no more. She was standing over me—when I was being sick— I don’t know, I didn’t hear her, but when I looked up, she was there. Dear God.’ Sweat beaded his brow. He mopped it with the sheet. ‘She had a pistol in one hand. She was pointing it straight at my head. There was a bundle in her other. Clutched to her chest. A bundle. I thought—I thought it was rags. I don’t know what I thought. I was— It was— I was— It was her eyes. Blank and empty. Staring at me. Through me. I was sure she was going to shoot me. I had no doubt she was going to shoot me. She had that look—of having absolutely nothing left to lose. I didn’t move. I didn’t speak. I felt this—this strange calm. It wasn’t that I didn’t care. I didn’t feel anything except, this is it. This is it. And I waited.’ Jack turned to her, his eyes wet with tears. ‘I waited. And she turned the pistol to her own head, and she pulled the trigger. And it happened so slowly, so very, very slowly, and I did nothing, until I heard the crack, and I saw her crumple, and the bundle of rags fell, and it was her dead child.’ Jack dropped his head on to his hands. ‘Dead. Both of them, And it should have been me. It should have been me.’
Sobs racked his body. Celeste held him, rocking him, her own eyes dry, too shocked for tears, numb with horror, wordless with pity. She held him until his sobs stopped, until he pushed himself free and turned his back on her to throw water over his face from the bowl, pull a dressing gown over his damp body. He sat down in the chair at the window. ‘So you see,’ he said slowly, ‘I know all about the torment of futile questions. What if I had kept the information to myself? What if I had checked it more thoroughly? What if I had not insisted on going along? What if I had remained with Carruthers? What if I’d not been sick? What if I’d tried to take the gun from her? What if I’d tried to reason with her? I know what it’s like, Celeste, to have the possibilities tear at you until you can’t sleep and you can’t eat. But the difference between us is that my guilt is entirely justified. That poor, bereft young girl took her own life and it’s my fault. Tonight, with your help, I’ve proved I can manage the symptoms. But I can never be rid of the guilt. And that’s the price I will pay for ever. You
see, don’t you?’
What he said felt quite wrong. She saw a man torturing himself, determined to go on torturing himself because he thought he deserved no better. She saw a brave man, fighting to control his demons, while at the same time determined to carry that burden with him. She could see what he was trying to spare her, but she couldn’t see that their cases were so very different. What if this? What if that? Why was he so set on relieving her of guilt, and so determined to cling on to his own?
Celeste stared at him helplessly. One thing was clear. Whether she wanted it or not, there was no future for her and Jack because he would not allow it. That was what he was telling her. Let me go, and spare us both the pain. She could do that. Jack had more than enough to bear already, and she— No, she could not allow herself to want a man who would not permit himself to want her. Not even Jack. Sadly, exhausted, defeated, she nodded, and began to pick up her clothing.
‘Celeste,’ Jack said as she made for the door. ‘Celeste, I need you to know that tonight— I can imagine ever wanting...’
‘Do not say that.’ She turned on him, suddenly angry. ‘Don’t tell me how wonderful it has been, and how unique, and perfect and—and—do not tell me. You think I want to be always thinking of that, in the future, when you are not there and I am taking comfort in some other man’s body?’ She couldn’t imagine it, but she forced herself to say it, because what did he expect! ‘I am sorry,’ she said gruffly. ‘I know how much it cost you to tell me that. I can’t begin to imagine what you are going through. I am sorry if it is selfish of me to be thinking—and I wish I could help you as you have helped me—are helping me—but I can’t. I can’t tell you what was going through that poor girl’s mind, any more than you can tell me what was going on in my mother’s. But you are set on absolving me, Jack.’
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