Regency Surrender: Notorious Secrets: The Soldier's Dark Secret / The Soldier's Rebel Lover

She would not meet his eyes. Another sensitive subject. ‘You mentioned there was another clue?’ Jack said, once more deciding that the best policy would be to bide his time.

She handed him a small packet of stitched muslin. Inside was a man’s signet ring. ‘I found it when I went to Cassis to close the house up after—after,’ Celeste said. ‘I was taking Maman’spaintings down. This was sewn to the back of her favourite canvas. It must have been there for years. I have no idea what it signifies. It clearly does not belong to my mother.’ She leaned across him to peer down at the ring. ‘The markings, I thought perhaps were a family crest. That might lead us somewhere,’ she said, looking at him hopefully.

‘It looks to me more likely to be a military crest. I’m not sure of the regiment. I would need to check.’

‘Military? Why on earth would my mother have such a thing in her possession?’

‘It’s a good question.’

‘As if we don’t have enough questions already. Do you think you can help, Jack?’

He studied the ring with an ominous sense of foreboding. ‘I can try.’

* * *

The next morning, a soft breeze blew up as Celeste walked with Jack along a path which led from the far end of the lake, over a gentle rise to an ancient oak, underneath the spread of which was a wooden bench. The view was prettily bucolic, bathed in the golden early-morning light. They stood on top of the hill while Jack pointed out the spire of St Mary’s Church some five miles away, where Lady Eleanor’s father was the vicar, and closer, the many-gabled rooftops of Trestain Manor. Golden fields of half-harvested wheat contrasted with the dark-green tunnels of hops, while the low, thatched roofs of the farm buildings and cottages contrasted with the distinctive, conical roofs of two oast houses where the hops were roasted.

Celeste was entranced, her charcoal flying over page after page of her sketchbook, while Jack, seated on the bench under the tree, filled her in on some of the history of what she was drawing. He was back to his usual garb of leather breeches and boots, a shirt without either waistcoat or coat. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up. The skin of his right arm was already turning golden-brown. She would like to draw him like this, his long, booted legs stretched out in front of him, his hair falling over his forehead, the curve of his mouth in a lazy smile. That mouth, the source of such intoxicating kisses.

Desire knotted in her belly. She had never before tumbled so perilously close to completion after a few kisses. The rapidity of her arousal had caught her completely unawares. When he had touched her nipple...

Celeste inhaled sharply. Even now, the memory of it was enough to heat her. And to frighten her. All very well to thank Jack for bringing her body back to life as she more or less had, rather embarrassingly, yesterday, but he had brought it to a place it had never been before. Her claim that abstinence had somehow attenuated what Jack’s kisses did to her felt faintly ridiculous now. In her whole life, she had taken four lovers, and there had been two years between the first and second, yet she knew with certainty that none had made her feel the way Jack did.

The natural conclusion, that it was not circumstances but this man, this very particular man, was what had kept her awake last night. Clearly there was something, some force, some element, some quirk of nature, which made their bodies so well matched. This explanation, she should have found comforting, but for some reason, she did not. If it had not been so reasonable, she would have been inclined to dismiss it as wrong.

‘Is Mademoiselle ready to partake of breakfast now?’

Celeste jumped, staring down at blankly her half-finished sketch. Her charcoal was on the grass beside her. How long had she been daydreaming? At least with her back turned to him, Jack would not have noticed. Or if he had, he had decided not to comment, she thought with relief. There was nothing worse than being asked what it was one was thinking, for it was inevitably something one did not wish to share. It had been unkind of her to mention those lost moments of Jack’s yesterday. Call it daydreaming, call it disappearing, as she had, wherever they were, they were private. His and his alone.

She gave him an apologetic smile as she joined him on the grass, leaning her back against the bench. ‘Thank you.’

He quirked his brow but said nothing, pulling the hamper they had brought with them out from beneath the shade of the tree before spreading a blanket out. There was fresh-baked bread, butter and cheese, a flask of coffee and some peaches. ‘Picked fresh this morning, and though they are ripe,’ he said, sniffing the soft fruit, ‘I don’t expect they’ll be anything like what you’re used to. Our English sun is just not strong enough.’

Celeste stretched her face up to the sky, closing her eyes and relishing the heat on her skin. ‘It is a good deal warmer than I expected. I don’t think I have seen a drop of English rain yet.’

‘You will. One merely has to wait a few days.’

Jack handed her a cup of coffee. Celeste tore off a piece of bread, burying her nose in the delicious, yeasty smell of it. ‘Another myth. I was told that the English cannot bake good bread, but this is most acceptable.’

‘A high compliment indeed from a Frenchwoman.’ He handed her a slice of cheese and laughed when she sniffed that too, wrinkling her nose. ‘Try it, you might be surprised.’

She did, and was forced to admit that, like the bread, it was excellent. ‘Though it breaks my French heart to do so,’ she added, smiling over her coffee cup.

‘But you’re half-English, are you not?’

‘I suppose I am, though I don’t feel it. I think one has to be part of a country before one feels any sense of belonging. All this,’ Celeste said, spreading her arms wide at the sweeping view, ‘it feels so alien to me.’

‘Maybe that’s because you’re a Parisian.’

Celeste laughed. ‘When I first arrived in Paris, I felt such an outsider. It was as if everyone but me knew a secret and they were all whispering about it behind my back. Even after fifteen years, I’m still not considered a genuine Parisian. I don’t have that je ne sais quoi,that air about me. To the true Parisians, I will always be an incomer.’

‘I know exactly what you mean,’ Jack said. ‘Paris, it’s always seemed to me, is a city that only reveals itself at night, and even then, you have to know where to look. I always sense the best elements are just round the next corner, or along the next boulevard. In Paris, I always feel as if I’m on the outside looking in. It’s not like London at all.’

‘I have never visited London. I hope to go there before I return to France.’ Celeste broke off another piece of bread and accepted a second piece of cheese which Jack cut for her. ‘You have been away from England a long time,’ she said. ‘Does it still feel like home?’

He paused in the act of quartering a peach. ‘Charlie wants me to buy an estate and settle down. I never did share his love for country life, though he seems to have conveniently forgotten that.’

‘Perhaps it would be different if you had been the eldest son, if Trestain Manor belonged to you and not to your brother?’

Jack laughed. ‘Lord, no, I’d be bored senseless. It was always the army for me, so it’s as well I’m the second son and not the first.’ He handed her the peach. ‘What about you? Have you never thought of going back to live in your fishing village?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t you miss it? I used to miss all this,’ Jack said. ‘Even though I wouldn’t want to live here, it’s my childhood home.’

Celeste stared at the quarter of peach in her hand. ‘The house in Cassis was where I lived. It was never a home.’ Her voice sounded odd, even to her own ears. She was, yet again, on the brink of tears for no reason. It was Jack’s fault. All she wanted him to do was help her unravel the mystery of her mother’s past, but for some reason, he persisted in linking that past with her own. He seemed to have the knack of inflaming her emotions as well as her body. She set the peach down. ‘Paris is my home,’ she said, as if repeating it would make it more true. Not that it needed to be more true. It was true.

She thought of the house where she had grown up. The distinctive creak of the front door. The very different creak of the fifth stair which had a broken tread. The way the floors always seemed to echo when she walked, signalling her presence too loudly. She tried to close her mind to the memories, but they would not stop flowing. It was Jack’s fault. This was all Jack’s fault.

On her last visit, after receiving the letter, she had packed up every one of her mother’s paintings. They lay in crates now, stacked in a corner of her Paris studio. She couldn’t bear to look at them but nor could she bear to dispose of them. The rest of the house she had left as it was.

She shook her head. She was aware of Jack, sipping his coffee, pretending not to study her, but the ghosts of the past had too strong a claim on her. Her mother on the cliff top painting, her hair covered by a horrible cap, her body draped in shapeless brown. Her mother’s face, starkly beautiful in the miniature inside her locket, strained and sad. Her mother’s paintings were all of the coast and the sea which took her. The sea which she had abandoned herself to, without giving Celeste a chance to save her. The beautiful, cruel sea, which her mother had chosen to embrace, rather than her own daughter.

The pain was unexpected. Nothing so clichéd as a stab to the heart; it was duller, weightier, like a heavy blow to the stomach. At least this time I have the opportunity to say goodbye,her mother had written, so certain that Celeste cared so little she would not wish to do the same. With good cause, for Celeste had made it very clear, after Henri died...

A tear rolled down her cheek. Her throat was clogged. She couldn’t speak. She was filled with the most unbearable sadness. What was wrong with her! She never cried. Had never cried. Now, hardly a day went by where she teetered on the verge of stupid, stupid tears.

In the distance, the chime of St Mary’s heralded noon. She dabbed frantically at her eyes with her napkin. She never carried a handkerchief.

‘Celeste?’

Jack! It was his fault for dredging all this up. His fault for making her so on edge. She jumped to her feet and snatched up her sketchbook. ‘I have the headache,’ she said. ‘I have no more paper. I need to rest. I need more charcoal.’

She was fleeing, just as Jack had, after that first kiss, and she did not care. All that mattered was that he did not stop her. She barely noticed in her anxiety to escape that he made absolutely no attempt to do so.

Chapter Five (#u85934387-f165-5e3f-aa83-267e9fbd9a74)

‘So this is where you’re hiding.’

Celeste forced herself to turn around slowly. Jack stood hesitantly in the doorway, dressed in his customary breeches and boots. She willed the flush of embarrassment she could feel creeping up her neck not to show on her face. ‘It is safe to come in,’ she said. ‘I am not going to descend into a fit of hysterics or stamp my feet or even run away again.’

He strode over to her, his relief obvious. ‘I’m sorry, Celeste,’ he said. ‘It was not my intention to cause you upset yesterday.’

‘Cassis was not a happy place for me when I was growing up,’ she said carefully. ‘I don’t like to talk of it or even think of those days. En effet,I never do. It is in the past where it belongs.’

And she would make sure it remained there. It sounded contrary, considering the accusations she had flung at Jack yesterday, but their cases were not the same, she had decided after another sleepless night. She had come to terms with her past, he had not. What she needed to concentrate on now was dealing with her mother’s past. Which was a separate issue.

Slanting a look at Jack, she was not surprised to catch him studying her, but she was relieved when he nodded his acceptance, albeit reluctantly. ‘Charlie,’ he said, turning his attention to the portrait she had been examining. ‘Aged about five, I think. What brings you to the portrait gallery?’