The Soldier's Dark Secret

by Marguerite Kaye

  She went over to the window. The surface of the table was covered in tiny droplets of paint. She could make out every colour. She ran her fingers over a bump of muddy brown, her failed attempt to mix red, she remembered. ‘Henri was furious,’ she said to Jack, ‘though Maman made more of a mess than I ever did.’

  His chair was over there in the corner. Maman’s faced it. She had had a stool. It wasn’t here now. She’d never been back long enough to merit anything more comfortable. A few weeks ago, she would have sworn that this was because she was not welcomed. Now she recalled many times when she sought any excuse not to come.

  ‘You should start on your search while the light is still good,’ she said to Jack. ‘Let me show you the rest of the house.’ She led him quickly through the dining room to Henri’s study where the glass-fronted bookcases covered the walls. ‘I was never permitted in here,’ she told Jack. She led him down to the kitchen and scullery. Then back up to the top floor. The fifth stair creaked as it always had.

  ‘Henri’s bedchamber.’ Celeste threw the door open. ‘Maman’s bedchamber.’ Another door thrown wide. The bed was stripped, the mattress rolled. Her feet fixed themselves automatically on the very edge of the threshold, as if the invisible barrier was there still, even though her mother was no longer here to forbid her to enter. Celeste stepped boldly in and threw open the cupboard. Maman’s few remaining clothes were here. Thick woollen skirts and jackets. Her heavy black boots.

  She could not have described that very particular smell that was her mother. Wool, powder, roses, but there was something else. She closed her eyes. It was still there. Faint, but there. ‘Essence of Maman,’ she said softly to herself. A fleeting image of herself howling in pain, of two hands swooping down on her, and then that smell as she buried her face in her mother’s neck and was comforted.

  She blinked. Jack was watching her carefully. ‘Memories,’ she said, closing the cupboard. ‘Don’t look so concerned. They are not all of them bad.’

  But some of them were. The last room was her childhood bedchamber. Thinking only that this had been her sanctuary, Celeste opened the door almost without thinking. It swung wide, the panel slamming into the coffer which was positioned behind it. Positioned in that precise place to obscure the corner of the room, where a small girl could crouch down, hidden from the open doorway, and where that small girl could cry inconsolably because there was no one to care that she cried, or why.

  In a daze, Celeste entered the room, curling herself into the tiny space, wrapping her arms around her waist. ‘They never beat me. They never touched me. Neither cruelty nor love, but indifference is what they gave me, and forced me to give them in return. That was what was so hard.’

  * * *

  Jack lit the fire in the kitchen because it was the one room where there were no bad memories. They set out the picnic they’d brought with them from Marseilles. He had little appetite, though Celeste ate with her usual enthusiasm. The wine was rough and young. He drank only a little, contenting himself with watching her. She seemed different. Despite the tears she had shed, she seemed happier. He remembered the first time she’d broken down in front of him, how appalled and embarrassed she had been. She still hated to cry, but she no longer fought quite so hard not to. This afternoon, when she’d been curled up like a child in the corner of her bedchamber remembering God knows what misery, she hadn’t been embarrassed by his presence. She had shared her ghosts with him as she led him through this loveless place, not hidden them.

  An odd melancholy gripped him as he watched her carefully spreading tapenade on a piece of bread. As she always did, she studied the morsel carefully, as if she was thinking of painting it, before popping it into her mouth. She wiped her mouth with a napkin before taking a sip from her wine glass, something else he had observed was an ingrained habit.

  ‘You’re not hungry?’ she said, looking up from preparing another morsel. She inspected it carefully, gave a satisfied nod and smiled at him. ‘Try this.’

  The olives were rich and salty with anchovy. The bread was heavy with a thick crust. Jack nodded, smiled, because she was looking at him so anxiously. ‘Delicious,’ he said.

  ‘Tomorrow I will go to the church and put flowers on the graves,’ Celeste said. ‘Maman is buried beside Henri. They think she drowned, the people here. They don’t know that she— No one else knows about the letter.’ She handed him a thin slice of the blood sausage topped with a small square of hard goat’s cheese. ‘Try this.’

  He ate obediently, aware that she was feeding him as if he were a child or an invalid, but happy to indulge her for the sake of watching her. There would not be many opportunities to watch her in the future. A few more days. A few more weeks. Too many to endure, and not nearly enough. He had already decided he wouldn’t be going back to Trestain Manor while she finished Charlie’s commission. Seeing her like this, conquering her ghosts, he had the strangest feeling, as if she was walking away from him, disappearing into the distance while he stood rooted to the spot, watching her, unable to follow.

  Jack shook his head, mocking his own flight of fancy. Celeste handed him a neat quarter cut from a tart of roasted tomatoes and artichoke hearts. ‘I’m sorry I was so—so emotional today,’ she said. ‘It must have been embarrassing for you.’

  He pressed her hand abruptly, perilously close to breaking down. ‘It was— I am honoured that you allowed me to— I was just thinking how horrified you would have been, only a few weeks ago, by my witnessing— I am honoured.’

  ‘You look so sad, Jack.’

  ‘No.’ He cleared his throat, took a sip of wine, coughed. ‘I did not like seeing you so sad, that is all.’

  ‘I was sad here, when I was little. I had forgotten how much I cried. I thought I never cried. But I’m not sad now. Today I remembered that it was not all so very bad.’ Celeste gave one of her very French shrugs. ‘Not so very good, but not always so very bad. Thank you for making me come here.’

  ‘I had no idea, Celeste, that this house held so many terrible memories. I was fortunate enough to have had a very happy childhood.’

  ‘Though you were deprived of Hector the horse?’ she teased. ‘Don’t feel sorry for me, I’ve done enough of that myself over the years, and you know, I think I have been a little bit self-indulgent. I was never hungry or cold. I have never been in want of a roof over my head. I was never beaten, and I’ve never been reduced to selling myself for money. Selling my artistic soul a few times,’ Celeste said with a chuckle, ‘but nothing else.’ Her smile faded. ‘In Paris, you would not believe the poverty which is taken for granted. Sometimes, I wonder what on earth our so-famous Revolution was for. These people don’t see much evidence of égalité.’

  ‘These are the people that armies rely on in times of war, sad to say,’ Jack said. ‘I doubt France is much different from England. Or Scotland,’ he added with a nod to Finlay. ‘Napoleon said an army marches on its stomach. I reckon more than half our enlisted men signed up to fill their bellies. Skin and bone, some of them are when they join, and riddled with— Well, what you’d expect from men who have spent their lives in rookeries where they sleep ten to a room, and you have to haul water from a pump fifteen minutes’ walk away.’

  ‘You seem to know a deal about it.’

  ‘When you eat, sleep, march and fight with the same men for months on end, you tend to learn a lot about them,’ Jack said. ‘Besides the fact that I helped write hundreds of their letters, and paid the occasional visit to the families of some of the men who died in battle.’ He grimaced. ‘Once, to check on a man—a very good man—who had lost both legs.’ Jack pursed his lips. ‘I remember at the time he said it would have been better for his family if he had died. I told him he was wrong, that they would rather have him alive at any cost. I had no idea how patronising that was of me, until I saw— Well, I’ve not forgotten it.’

  ‘Since Water
loo, the streets of Paris have been filled with men who fought with Napoleon. I don’t know what will become of them.’

  ‘London is no different.’ Jack took a sip of wine. ‘Victors or vanquished, the soldier’s fate is often the same. That is the true price of peace. Something ought to be done.’

  ‘I will paint them, and you will have engravings made of my work, and you will use them to show all the people with money and influence—your Parliament, your brother, the Duke of Wellington—and they cannot fail to see that something must be done.’

  ‘It’s a good idea, though I doubt Wellington will wish to have anything to do with it. Too embarrassing for him to be faced with the evidence. I know,’ Jack said, amused by the indignant expression on Celeste’s face, ‘they were his army. Without them he would not have had his great victory.’

  ‘Nor his great ego,’ she interjected.

  Jack laughed. ‘You have his measure very well. It has to be said though, it was his great ego that won us the battle. He never once faltered in his belief that we would triumph, and there were times, believe me, when many other of his officers did.’

  ‘Not you?’

  ‘No, not me. The man is a pompous, conceited, philandering egotist, but as a soldier, as a commanding officer, he is second to none. Not even Napoleon.’

  Celeste’s brows shot up. ‘You admire the man you spent all those years at war with?’

  ‘As a soldier.’

  Jack looked down at his plate and discovered he’d eaten the tomato tart. His glass was empty. Celeste had folded her napkin neatly on her own empty plate. He got to his feet and moved the shabby settle closer to the fire, stoking the embers with more of the wood which he’d found neatly stacked in one of the small outbuildings. They sat together, watching the flames and sipping the last of the wine. ‘I don’t think I’d make a very good politician,’ Jack said. ‘I am a man of action. Or I used to be.’

  Celeste’s hand found his. ‘You still are. If it were not for you, I would still have been trying to work up the courage to enlist the help of one of those Bow Street running men. You have solved the mystery of Maman’s locket and discovered the names of her parents. You have traced this Arthur Derwent, and you persuaded the great Duke of Wellington to tell you top-secret information that I would never have known existed, never mind obtained permission to read. Which puts me in mind of something I have been meaning to ask. Has he called in his favour and asked you to return to his service? Could you do so without returning to the army?’

  ‘Half of his staff have done so in diplomatic roles. The embassy in Paris is full of my former comrades. This most likely sounds paradoxical, given my former role, but I never practised or approved of deception. I may be wrong, but my impression is that deception, flattery and downright lies are at the heart of the diplomatic service.’

  Celeste laughed softly. ‘In that case, I can think of no one less suited.’

  ‘I wish that were true, but you know it’s not.’

  ‘Jack, you could not be more wrong. It is the fact that you are honest, and that you have a conscience, and that you will not accept the lies of the army and of Wellington that makes you different from that Colonel Carruthers and all the others.’ Celeste turned sideways on, gently forcing him to look at her. ‘You are the one who is right, not them. What you saw, regardless of how it happened, it was a terrible thing, and it will always be with you. As it should be. But that is a very different thing from taking on the burden of blame.’

  ‘It was my fault, Celeste. I thought I’d made it plain.’

  ‘It may have been. It may not have been. I might have saved my mother from drowning herself if I’d listened to her. I may not have. You are so very set on proving that I could not have, so very set on sparing me the guilt that you are so very determined to keep to yourself. Are the cases really so very different?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied automatically, ‘of course they are. You know they are.’

  ‘I know you think they are. Just as I know you think this—us—is hopeless.’

  ‘Don’t. Please don’t. I can’t bear it.’

  ‘Jack.’ She touched his cheek. ‘Jack, you don’t have to.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Then I must bear it too.’

  Only then did he realise that she had hoped. Only then did he realise that it was already too late. He loved her. There was nothing that could be said, and so without access to words Jack did the only thing he could do to tell her, just this once, how he felt. He kissed her.

  * * *

  Celeste melted into his kiss without a thought of denying him, her lips clinging to his, her arms twining around his neck. It had been there for days, weeks, ever since that night they had made love, that knowledge. It had been growing more insistent throughout this day. This house and its ghosts had stripped her of the last of her armour, leaving her defenceless. Tonight, in the domestic intimacy of the one room not populated by ghosts, by the flickering light of the fire as they ate and talked, it had taken hold of her. She loved him. She was in love with him. She was in love with Jack Trestain.

  She kissed him to stop the words babbling out. She was in love. ‘Jack,’ she said, because it was all she could trust herself to say. ‘Jack.’ She loved him. She kissed his eyelids. She loved him. ‘Jack.’ She loved him.

  ‘Celeste.’ He kissed her again. ‘Celeste.’ His voice was ragged. ‘Oh, God, Celeste, I want you so much.’

  He caught her face between his hands and kissed her passionately. Then he groaned. ‘We shouldn’t.’

  Panicking, she kissed him again. ‘We can. We must.’

  He hesitated for only a second before his mouth claimed hers once more. His kiss was hot and hard and all she had craved since the last kiss, and all she would crave when this became the last kiss. She closed her mind to this and concentrated on remembering. She loved him. The silkiness of his hair. The way he let it grow too long over his collar. She loved him. The hollow in his throat. The peculiar gouge in his shoulder where the musket ball had been cut out.

  She pushed him gently back and got to her feet. She loved him. She turned to allow him to unfasten her gown and her corsets. She slid both to the ground, standing before him in her shift and her stockings. She loved him. She slipped her shift from her shoulders. She loved the way his skin tightened when he was aroused. She loved the feel of his hands, gentle on her breasts, and that circling thing he did, and the soft pluck of his lips on her nipples that made her blood tingle.

  She undid his waistcoat. She pulled his shirt over his head. She knelt at his feet and took off his boots. She loved him. She leaned over him to kiss him again, grazing her nipples on the rough smattering of hair on his chest.

  She loved the way he looked at her. She loved the way his hands were always drawn to cup her bottom the way he did. She undid the fastenings of his breeches and helped him to kick them away. The firelight danced on their skin. She loved him. She kissed him. He tried to pull her on top of him, but she shook her head. She loved him. She knelt between his legs, licking and kissing her way down his chest, his belly. She felt the sharp inhale of his chest as she brushed the tip of his shaft with her mouth.

  She looked up, willing all that she felt to be there in her eyes, and then she began to make love to him with her mouth and her tongue and her hands, trusting her instincts to teach her what she had never done before, nor desired to do.

  She loved him. His hands were on her shoulders. In her hair. He was saying her name urgently. His chest was heaving. She licked and she kissed and she stroked. Satin skin sheathing hard muscle. He jerked against her. Swore. ‘Not yet,’ he said, ‘not that, Celeste. Delightful—dear God, delightful as it is. Please.’

  Please. She let him pull her to her feet. He spread the blanket from the settle on the hearth, pulling her down with him. He kissed her. Firelight danced on
her skin. Heat pooled between her legs. He rolled under her, lifting her on to him, and she sank down on to the thick length of him.

  She was slick. She was tight. She tilted her body to take him in higher. Jack moaned, his hands on either side of her waist. She circled her hips, pulling him deeper. He shuddered. He cursed. His fingers curled around her breasts. She loved him. Celeste tilted back her head, and began a slow lift and slide, lift and slide, lift and slide, until she could hold back no longer, crying out as her climax shook her, the pulsing of her muscles triggering the same pulsing in his as he lifted her free. ‘Jack,’ Celeste said with a sigh, ‘oh, Jack.’

  * * *

  Afterwards, they lay entwined in front of the fire, watching the flames turn to embers, the embers to ashes. Celeste dozed fitfully. As dawn broke, she rose, carefully, reluctantly, with aching sadness, disentangling herself from the man she had given her heart to. He was sleeping. She stood for a moment, looking down at his beloved face, his tousled hair, in the grey light of dawn, before quietly gathering up her clothes and creeping up the stairs to her childhood bedchamber to ready herself for a visit to Maman’s and Henri’s graves.

  The sky was overcast, the sea a froth of white. Clutching her cloak around her, the hood pulled over her face, Celeste made her way down the main street of the village to the churchyard. She sat by the graves for a long time, closing her eyes and allowing the memories, good and bad, to wash over her. There were still many more painful than pleasant, but she made no attempt to filter them. They were all hers, every one of them. She allowed herself to cry for the first time for the simple loss of her mother. Looking at Henri’s stark grave, she felt no sorrow, only pity for the very unhappy man she saw now he had been, and anger too that he had taken whatever ailed him out on the innocent child she had been.

  ‘As you did too, Maman,’ she said, kneeling down and spreading her fingers wide on the stone. ‘I love you,’ she whispered. ‘I can tell you that now that you are not here to prevent me. I love you and I wish—I am still angry, a little, with you for not allowing me to. So I do want very much to be able to understand, because I do want, very, very much to be able to forgive you. And myself.’