The Soldier's Dark Secret

‘And how do these bereaved families set about gaining answers?’

They didn’t, was the honest answer, in most cases. Jack could no more explain it than the poor unfortunates who took their own lives could. All he could offer was platitudes. He looked at Celeste, no longer distrustful but hanging on his words, the faintest trace of hope flickering in her eyes. He could not bear to douse it with a cold bucket of truth. If he could somehow help her, if he could find the answers for her that he had been unable to provide for others, then perhaps it would help atone. A little. Even a little atonement was better than none. ‘Perhaps it would help,’ he prevaricated, ‘if you could tell me the circumstances of your mother’s death first. It must have come as a terrible shock.’

‘We were not close.’ Perhaps recognising the defensive note in her voice, Celeste made a helpless gesture. ‘I live in Paris. My mother lived in Cassis, in the south. I received her letter in January this year. She was already— It was already— I—my mother was already dead. Drowned. She drowned herself.’

Celeste blinked rapidly. Though he could not see, for they were obscured by her smock, Jack was willing to bet that her hands were painfully clasped. Yet there was a defiant tilt to her head, as if she was daring herself to submit to whatever emotions ensnared her in their grasp.

As a soldier, he was well versed in the art of managing grief. An iron will and rigid self-control had vital roles to play in combat. In battle, you put the living before the dead. It was why other soldiers got so uproariously drunk afterwards. It was why they sought out brothels and taverns, to laugh and to lose themselves, because they could not cry, but they could counter death with a lust for life, and they could later blame their tears on an excess of gin.

But Celeste was not a soldier, and the dead woman was her mother, not a comrade. Though like a soldier, she seemed determined not to crack under the strain. Instinctively, he knew any attempt to comfort her would not be welcome. Jack sat up, putting a little distance between them. ‘This letter— You said her letter? Do you mean...?’

‘Yes, my mother wrote to me to inform me she was about to commit suicide. It was, in essence, a letter from beyond the grave.’

Unable to stop himself, Jack reached for her hands. As he had suspected, they were tightly clasped. He covered them with his own. She stiffened, but made no attempt to repel him. He felt a sharp pang of sympathy. It was not just grief she was holding on so tightly to, but a hefty dose of guilt. Anger at her mother’s act shook him. He bit back the words of blame, knowing full well they were irrational and undeserved, and unlikely to cause Celeste anything but pain. ‘Dear God. I am so sorry.’

‘There is no need. It was a shock. I admit it was a shock, but once I had recovered from that, I read the letter in the hope that it would at least provide some sort of explanation for what, to me, was an incomprehensible act.’ Now she did pull her hands free. ‘Mais non, nothing so straightforward from my mother. I should have known better than to have expected her to change the habits of a lifetime. It was more of a riddle than an explanation, sent in the full knowledge that by the time I received it, she would not be available to help solve it.’

Her anger simmered, the heat of it palpable. ‘Celeste, she would not have been thinking rationally. To take such drastic action, she must have been very desperate,’ Jack said, knowing the words were utterly inadequate, though none the less true.

‘I don’t doubt that. Though not desperate enough to ask for my help.’ Her lip quivered. The tension in her shoulders, the gaze fixed on her lap, made it clear that sympathy was the last thing she desired, but the raw pain was there, hidden under a mask of bitterness and anger. ‘That letter...’ She stopped to take a calming breath. ‘It is not only that there is no explanation. That letter raises a list of questions I wouldn’t even have known to ask.’

Questions. Such cases always raised more questions than answers. Answers which were so rarely found and which allowed guilt to flourish amid the uncertainty. Jack had written countless letters to the loved ones of his men who died in battle, emphasising the glory, and the valour and painlessness of death. Lies, all lies, but beneath the glossing over of reality lay one inalienable truth. They had died doing their duty for their country. Their death had a purpose.

The others, though, the families of those thankfully rare cases where death had been self-inflicted, they had no such truths to console them for what he had once, God forgive him, thought the most heinous of crimes. He searched for Celeste’s hands once more, gripping them tightly. ‘This letter, it’s a great deal more than most have in such circumstances. Will you tell me what she said, and then I will be able to see how I might be able to help you?’

She considered it, looking at him earnestly, but eventually shook her head. ‘Not yet. I can’t.’ She slipped from his grasp, getting to her feet with an apologetic look. ‘I appreciate you sharing your experience of what is a painful and delicate subject. And for being so careful of my feelings. I do not discount your offer to help—it is most generous, but I must consider it carefully. The emotions involved are intensely private. Do you understand?’

Much as he wished to, he resisted the temptation to press her, because he did understand that, only too well. Jack got wearily to his feet. ‘I have no other demands on my time or my services, so please take as much time as you need.’

* * *

Following a sleepless night, Celeste felt wrung out like one of her painting rags after washing. In the end, she had decided to trust Jack. She could not imagine having the conversation they’d had yesterday with a complete stranger, and she could not expect that a complete stranger would have demonstrated the tact or level of understanding Jack had of such matters.

It was not really such a leap of faith when she laid it out logically like that, to trust him. But it was not logic which ultimately convinced her. It was only after he had left her, when she had recovered from the dull ache precipitated by speaking of her mother’s death, that she realised how difficult it must have been for him to talk so sensitively on such a delicate matter. Soldiers were men of war. Soldiers were tough, and brave and bold. English soldiers were famous for their courage and their staunchness in the face of adversity. They did not cry. They did not fear. They most certainly did not have a conscience. Or so she’d thought. Assumed, she corrected herself, because until she met Jack, Celeste thought shamefully, she hadn’t actually thought about it much at all.

She remembered the reports in the newspapers after Waterloo. Death on the battlefield was neither clean nor quick. It was no wonder that the men who fought suffered from—what was it Jack had called it?—an extreme melancholy after witnessing all that horror and suffering. Was Jack suffering from that too? There had been moments yesterday when she thought he spoke from personal experience. But then he did, she reminded herself, thinking of the letters he’d mentioned having to write. The point was he understood and that was why she could trust him.

‘May I come in?’

As if she had summoned him, the man himself stood in the doorway of Celeste’s temporary studio. Dressed in a pair of tight-fitting pantaloons which showed off his long legs to good effect, and a coat which enhanced his broad shoulders, his cravat was neatly tied, and his jaw freshly shaved.

‘You look very—handsomely dressed,’ Celeste said, taken by surprise once more by the force of the attraction she felt for him. The clothes of an English gentleman not only accentuated his muscular physique, but they also, somehow, accentuated the fact that the man wearing them was not always a gentleman. In fact he was just a little bit dangerous. And, yes, a trifle intimidating too.

‘Which is a polite way of saying I look a lot less shoddy than normal,’ Jack said, closing the door behind him. ‘You, if I may say so, look as ravishing as usual. And believe me, I have seen my fair share of beauties. A perk of the job, working on Wellington’s staff.’

‘So his reputation, the French press did not exaggerate it?’

‘I doubt it possible.’

Celeste smiled, but the sight of the letter sitting where she had lain it in preparation made it a forced affair. She picked it up, but despite her resolve, found herself surprisingly reluctant to hand it over. ‘Are you still— Your offer to help, is it still open?’

‘Of course. I want very much to—’

‘Only I would not wish to presume,’ Celeste interrupted, ‘and it occurred to me that perhaps you offered only because you felt a little sorry for me.’

‘No. I understand what you are experiencing, that is all, and I wish to prevent you from— Is that the letter?’ Jack said, holding out his hand.

‘Yes.’ Celeste still kept a firm grip on it. ‘I don’t know what people commonly write in such missives...’

‘Most do not write anything,’ Jack said, ‘as far as I am aware. Or they merely reassure their families that they love them.’

‘Well, in that one regard my mother has followed the custom,’ Celeste said acerbically, ‘though it is the one thing I know for certain to be a lie.’ A brief silence met this remark. She flushed, annoyed at having betrayed herself. ‘It is more of a puzzle than it is a confession,’ she said, gazing down at the letter again. ‘I admit it has me baffled. What we need is someone to make sense of it—what on earth have I said to amuse you?’

‘Not amused, so much as taken aback, I am sorry,’ Jack said, his expression once more serious. ‘It’s just that solving puzzles is—was—my stock in trade. I have a certain reputation as an expert in acrostics. My brother would be shocked at your ignorance, for he mistakenly delights in my minor fame.’ He took her hand. ‘Celeste, I was Wellington’s code-breaker.’

She looked at him in bewilderment. ‘I’m sorry, but I truly am ignorant of these things.’ She broke off, staring as the implications of what Jack had said finally dawned on her. ‘Code-breaker? Do you mean you were a spy?’

‘After a fashion, though not, I suspect, in quite the way you are imagining. Not so much cloak and dagger as pen and paper. Information,’ Jack clarified. ‘Contrary to what civilians believe, wars are not won on the battlefield. Obviously, the battlefield is where matters are finally resolved, but getting there at the right time, in the correct field positions, having the men and the horses and the artillery all lined up, and knowing your enemy—his strategies, his positions, his plans, his firepower—that’s what wins or loses a war. Having a retreat planned if required. And knowing what you’re going to do if you break through his ranks—those matter too. You’ve no idea how many battles are lost when a commander in the field gets too far ahead of himself, or finds himself in retreat when no organised withdrawal has been planned.’

‘You are right, I have absolutely no idea.’

Jack laughed. ‘Put simply, information is what an army thrives on. My role was to assimilate that information to allow the generals to plot their campaigns and I did that by cracking codes, by piecing together different snippets from different sources and assembling them in an order that made sense. Solving puzzles, in other words.’

‘And that, I am pleased to say, does make sense.’ Without giving herself the chance to rethink the decision again, Celeste handed Jack the letter.

‘Thank you. May I read it now?’

Her nerves jangling, she nodded. Jack sat down on the chaise longue which she had positioned in front of her easel. Unable to watch him, she busied herself, opening her precious box of paints and making an unnecessary inventory of the powders and pigments in their glass vials, of her brushes and oils. Behind her, she could hear the faintest rustle of paper worn thin by her many readings. A squeak, which must be Jack’s boots as he shifted in his seat. Another rustle. He was taking an age. He must have gone back to the beginning. She wondered if she should set about stretching a canvas, but immediately abandoned the idea. Her hands were shaking. She began to rearrange her paints again.

‘I’m finished.’

Celeste whirled around, dropping a vial of cadmium-yellow which, fortunately for her and the floor covering, landed softly on a rug without breaking. Cursing under her breath, she snatched it up and put it back in her box before joining Jack on the sofa. ‘What is your verdict?’

‘I think you must have been shocked to the core when you read this the first time.’

She gave a shaky laugh. ‘It was certainly unexpected.’

‘Unexpected!’ Jack swore. ‘You had no inkling of anything it contained?’

‘No. I told you we were not close. En effet, my mother and I were estranged.’ She was aware of Jack’s eyes on her, studying her carefully. It made her uncomfortable, for while she refused to become emotional, she suspected that emotional is precisely what anyone else would be under the circumstances. She gazed resolutely down at her hands. ‘As to the man I believed to be my father, he was always distant. From the beginning, I sensed he resented me. At least now I know why.’

‘You were not his child.’

‘So it would seem,’ she said with a shrug.

‘You’re very matter-of-fact about something so important.’

‘I have had eight months to become accustomed to it.’

Jack eyed her doubtfully. ‘But you’re not accustomed to it, are you? Despite your mother’s positively begging you not to pursue the questions she raises, here you are in England, doing exactly that. It obviously matters a great deal to you.’

Celeste’s hackles rose. ‘I am curious, that’s all,’ she said. Even to her, this sounded like far too much of an understatement. ‘Well, would not you be?’ She crossed her arms. ‘You said yourself only yesterday, people—the ones who are left behind—desire answers. Even when we are advised from beyond the grave not to pursue them. Do not tell me that you would have folded the letter up and forgotten all about it as my mother bids me, Jack Trestain, because I would not believe you.’

‘No, I wouldn’t do that, but neither would I be sitting here pretending that it was merely a matter of satisfying my curiosity either. For God’s sake, Celeste, it’s your mother we’re talking about, not a distant aunt,’ Jack exclaimed. ‘She drowned herself. She made sure that this letter wouldn’t reach you until she was dead. She then alludes to some tragedy in her past being the reason, and caps it all with the revelation that the man you thought all your life was your father is not actually your father, and fails to inform you of the identity of the man who is.”

Jack held the letter out at arm’s length. ‘“Though I write this with the heaviest of hearts,”’ he read, ‘“knowing that I will never see you again, I am thankful that at least this time I have the opportunity to say goodbye.” Your mother’s opening words. What about the fact that she denied you the opportunity to say goodbye to her? Aren’t you upset about that?’

Celeste didn’t want him to be angry on her behalf. If anyone was entitled to be angry with her mother it was she, and she was not. In order to be angry she would need to care, and she did not. She didn’t want Jack to care either. She wanted him to treat this as an intellectual exercise, devoid of emotion. Like breaking a code. ‘You said yourself, she was most likely not in a rational frame of mind. At the end of her tether. Perhaps even a little bit out of her mind. There is no point in my becoming upset. It achieves nothing. Besides, I’ve told you, we were not remotely close.’

‘And if you say that it doesn’t trouble you often enough, you think I’ll eventually believe you.’

Celeste flinched. ‘I don’t care what you believe. Next, you will be telling me that my mother loved me despite a lifetime’s evidence to the contrary.’

‘That is exactly what she claims in her letter.’

‘Yes, from beyond the grave, safe from any challenge to the contrary. How am I to believe it when I have nothing, no evidence at all, to support it? All my life—all my life, Jack!—she pushed me away. And now this. I don’t believe her. How can I believe her? Of course I don’t believe her. C’est impossible!’

Celeste jumped to her feet, turning her back on him to stare out at the long, bland stretch of lawn, struggling desperately to get her unaccustomed flash of temper under control. ‘You have to understand,’ she continued in a more measured tone, ‘it was similar when I was growing up. Always, my mother managed to find a way of refusing to answer questions. Why have I no aunts or uncles? Why must we never speak English except when alone? Why have I no grandparents or even a cousin, as all the other children at school have? Why are you so sad, Maman? Why does Papa hate me? At least now I have the answer to that last question. Papa was not, in fact, my papa at all.’

Tears filled her eyes. Celeste swallowed hard on the jagged lump in her throat, staring determinedly out at the lawn. ‘I have endured a lifetime of silences and rejection, so really that letter was in essence one final example. Don’t tell me that she loved me, Jack. I know what she wrote, I don’t have to read that letter again to see the words dance in front of my eyes, but that’s all they are. Just words.’

‘If it doesn’t matter, if it truly doesn’t matter, then why then are you so intent on digging up the past?’ Jack put his hands on her shoulders, forcing her to turn and face him. ‘You do realise that what you discover might be hurtful.’

‘Not to me. My hurt is all in the past. All I am doing is filling in the blanks, the missing pieces of my mother’s history. I want to understand why she behaved as she did. I want to know who my real father is. I think I am entitled to know that, but I do not want to meet him, or indeed my mother’s family. I’m not expecting anyone to kill the fatted calf and welcome me into their home. I am aware that I am most likely a bastard. Knowing is sufficient for me.’

‘Your mother’s history is your history too, Celeste. You might be better off not knowing it. Sometimes it’s better to leave the past behind you.’

‘Or bury it so deeply that you can pretend it never happened, that it can no longer harm you?’ She pulled herself free of his hold. ‘But what if the ghosts refuse to stay buried, Jack? What if they continue to haunt you?’

His face paled. ‘What the devil are you implying?’

She had not meant anything in particular. Intent only on silencing his relentless probing, it seemed she had inadvertently struck a raw nerve. It would be dangerous to push him further but it was time to let him sample a little of his own medicine. ‘I have no idea why my mother went to such extremes to make me hate her, but I do know that I need to find out why. I need to understand. I need answers, Jack, while you—you seem so very determined to avoid asking the questions.’

‘What questions?’

There was no mistaking the icy tone in his voice, but she ignored it. She was becoming very interested indeed in how he would respond. ‘What is it that prevents you eating and sleeping? What is it that makes you stop in the middle of a conversation and—and disappear? As if you are no longer there. What is it that makes—?’

‘What is it that stops you from crying, Celeste? What is it that prevents you from admitting that your mother’s death affected you? Ask yourself those, more pertinent questions.’

Jack turned towards the door. Furious, uncaring that she had now achieved her objective, Celeste grabbed his arm. ‘You see, you are running away from the truth. Why won’t you talk about it?’

‘Take your hands off me. Now.’

She had gone too far. She knew it would be insane to push him further, but she knew with certainty that was exactly what she was going to do. Celeste tilted her chin and met his stormy eyes. ‘No.’

She half-expected him to strike her, but he made no such move. Instead, he pulled her towards him until they stood thigh to thigh, chest to chest. She was still angry, but her body responded immediately to the contact with a shiver of delight. ‘I am not afraid of you,’ Celeste said, tilting her head at him.

‘I know,’ Jack said. ‘It’s part of your appeal.’

Chapter Four

Jack’s blood stirred at the first touch of her lips on his. He pulled her tight against him and kissed her more deeply. She returned his kiss with equal fervour. He’d been half-expecting her to slap him. He had kissed her merely to turn the tables on her. Now she was turning the tables back on him, just by reciprocating.

He had been angry. Nay, furious. Now his temper had vanished, burst as easily as a bubble by her touch. A gust of longing twisted his gut. He had not felt desire for such a long time. He could not recall ever feeling desire like this. Nothing to do with abstinence. Everything to do with this woman.

His fingers were shaking as he flattened his hand over her shoulder. This was not what he had intended. She was looking at him, her eyes wide open, watching him. Not afraid of him, though there was something there in her eyes he recognised. Yearning. Yes, and fear of the intensity of that yearning. He ought to stop. She should insist that he stop. He slid his hand down to cup her bottom and kissed her again. He needed, wanted, more. His body demanded it.

Her breathing quickened with his. Her fingers strayed into his hair. Her mouth was on his cheek, her lips warm, soft, little flicks of her tongue on his jaw, the corner of his mouth, licking along his lower lip, nipping, licking, until he could no longer stifle a moan of desire, and she gave an answering sigh.

He abandoned himself to her kisses, to the heat of her touch, to the fever of passion which had him in its iron grip. Their mouths locked. Their tongues thrust and tangled greedily. His hands were on her back, her bottom. Her fingers roamed wildly over him, his back, shoulders, tugging at his coat, clutching at his flanks.

He was achingly hard. He cupped her breasts, frustrated by the layers of her clothing, the impediment of her corsets. He dipped his head to kiss the soft swell of her cleavage, inhaling the sweet smell of her, relishing the shudder of her breath, the rapid beat of her heart, knowing that he had done this to her, that she was doing the same to him.

Their kisses grew ragged. His thirst for her was not remotely quenched. His coat was hanging off by one arm. He shrugged himself free of it, pressing her against the wall of the studio. She moaned, tugging his shirt from his pantaloons, flattening her hands on his back. Her skin on his. He hadn’t thought he could get any harder. His erection throbbed. A long strand of her white-blonde hair had escaped its pins to lie against the biscuit-coloured skin of her bosom.

He had never wanted any woman this much. His erection pressed into her belly. He slid his hand inside the neckline of her gown to envelop the fullness of her breast. When he touched the hard peak of her nipple she cried out, the distinctive sound of a woman on the verge of a climax. He felt the answering tingling in the tip of his shaft that precluded his own. Shocked, he pulled himself free, hazily aware that she was pushing him away.

What the hell? It was no consolation at all to see his own question reflected in her face. He couldn’t think of a damned thing to say. He could, unfortunately, think of a hundred things he wanted to do. Needed to do. Urgently. Jack swore long and hard under his breath. Breathe. Don’t think about it. But he couldn’t take his eyes of her. She hadn’t moved. Head and shoulders against the wall. Eyes closed. Breathing slowly. Measured breaths like his. Hands curled into fists like his. Cheeks flushed with desire, no doubt as his were. That long tendril of hair lying across her breast. He reached for it, caught himself, took a step back and tumbled against the leg of a table.