The Soldier's Dark Secret

She curled her fingers into his hair. Their tongues touched. Jack moaned, a guttural sound that precisely echoed how she felt, filled with longing, and aching and heat. Their kiss became fierce. He bent her backwards on the bench, his body hovering over hers, blocking out the sunlight. He smelt of soap and sweet summer sweat. His legs were tangled in her skirts. Only his arms, planted either side of her, prevented her from falling.

She was also in danger of falling, metaphorically speaking, from a far greater height if she was not extremely careful. Celeste snapped to her senses. Jerking herself free, she sat up. Jack’s cheeks were flushed. His hair was in wild disarray. His shirt was falling open at the neck to reveal his tanned throat. The soft linen clung to his frame, revealing tantalising glimpses of the hard body underneath. She wanted more. It was good that she wanted more, but with this man! No, she must be out of her mind.

She edged a little way along the bench, shaking out her skirts. ‘I hope you are not expecting me to faint?’ she asked more sharply than she intended.

‘Despite our extremely brief acquaintance you do not strike me as someone much given to histrionics.’

‘You are perfectly correct, I am not. Even when kissing complete strangers.’

‘Not quite complete strangers, Mademoiselle. We have at least been formally introduced.’ Jack shook his head, as if trying to clear the dazed look from his eyes. ‘I apologise,’ he said tersely. ‘I have no idea what came over me. I’m not in the habit of mauling innocent women, especially not when they are my brother’s guests.’

‘Your brother’s landscape artist, not his guest, and I am neither innocent nor inclined to accept an apology for something that was as much my doing as yours,’ Celeste snapped, unduly irked by his assumption that it was all his responsibility. She was relieved to discover she could feel this way again, but she really wished it had not been this maddening man who had sparked her back to life. She picked up her sketch pad and charcoals, trying to regain her composure. ‘It was just a kiss, nothing more,’ she said, because that was all it was, after all.

‘Just a kiss?’ Jack repeated, still looking stunned. ‘Is that what you really think?’

She did not. She thought—not very clearly, admittedly—that it was the most extraordinary kiss she had ever experienced. She thought, looking at him now, that she would very much like to kiss him again, but she was not about to admit that. ‘Very well,’ Celeste conceded, ‘an excellent kiss, though I suspect that abstinence may have contributed to its intensity.’

He flushed dark red. ‘What the devil do you mean by that?’

Celeste took a step back. ‘Not that it is any of your business, but I have not been inclined to kiss anyone for—for some time.’

His expression softened a little. ‘Ah, you are referring to your own abstinence?’

‘What else would I have implied?’ Celeste said, thoroughly confused. He could not possibly have thought she referred to him? There could be no shortage of women eager and willing to kiss Jack Trestain. Then she remembered. ‘Oh, you mean you have been incapacitated by your recent poor health.’

A perfectly understandable explanation, and no reason whatsoever for him to flinch as if she had hit him. Yet that is exactly what he did, before abruptly turning on his heels and marching off. Utterly confounded now, she watched his long legs cover the ground quickly, back through the gate, along the grass walk to the rose garden. He did not look back.

Celeste slumped down on the stone bench. While her mind struggled to make sense of what had happened, her body was very clear in its response. What they had shared had been much more than just a kiss. It had been an awakening, a stirring of something that she hadn’t realised had been so utterly dormant.

Her last affaire had ended not long before she had received that letter. It had ended as her affaires always did, without tears or remorse, while it had still been mutually enjoyable, before it could degenerate into boredom, or worse still, the expectation of a future. Not that she’d ever allowed any of her few love affairs to reach that stage. Not that a single one of them had evoked an emotion even close to love in her.

Celeste began to turn the pages of her sketchbook. Love was a subject she knew little about. On the topic of being loveless however, she was something of an expert. It defined her upbringing. It defined her mother’s marriage. Or it had. She snapped the leather covers shut. Ever since she’d received that damned letter, she’d been losing control in all sorts of odd ways. She snapped at the stupidest of things. She couldn’t concentrate on her work. And now this! It was just a kiss, for heaven’s sake. She was overwrought. She had not kissed anyone for a long time. Jack was a very accomplished kisser. Jack, for whatever reason, seemed to find the whole process of kissing her even more unsettling than she had. She would very much like to repeat the process of kissing Jack, if only to prove that it was just a kiss, enhanced by abstinence, just as she’d suggested. Her own.

And as for her suggestion regarding his? Why had he taken such umbrage at her perfectly reasonable assumption? Celeste rolled her eyes. Jack Trestain was an enigma, and one that she had no time to decipher.

* * *

‘There you are, my love. I have been looking for you all over.’

Jack, who had been sleeping on the recessed seat in the nook of the fireplace, woke with a start and looked around him, quite disoriented.

‘Charles,’ Eleanor was saying, ‘I am writing to my mother. We have such a glut of plums and damsons I thought it would be a good idea to pickle some rather than simply bottle them, and Mama has an excellent receipt. How went your meeting with the lawyer?’

Jack had quite forgotten the trick of acoustics between this room and the one below. His head, resting against the fireplace, was in the precise spot which amplified the voices. He and Charlie had discovered it as boys, and had spent hours talking to each other, one of them in each room. The Laird’s Lug, their Auntie Kirsty had told them it was known as in Scottish castles, a way for the master of the house to eavesdrop on his family and his servants, though Jack reckoned this one at Trestain Manor existed more by accident than design.

Charlie and Eleanor were discussing estate business now, in that domestic, familiar way Jack remembered his parents doing. His head was thumping. Serve him right for sleeping in the middle of the day, though when he slept so little at night, he had little option but to catnap when he could. While in the army, he used to pride himself on possessing a soldier’s ability to sleep whenever and whatever the circumstances. Standing, sitting, marching, he’d slept, and woken refreshed. No, not always refreshed, he thought ruefully, there had been times when he’d felt perpetually exhausted. But the fact remained, until he resigned his commission, sleep had never been a problem.

Was that true? Could his insomnia have been masked by his frenetic army career? He didn’t know. He did know that things had gone rapidly downhill after he left. The nightmare which had been sporadic now regularly invaded his dreams. He woke every morning feeling as if he’d been bludgeoned, his limbs weighted with stones. Precisely as he felt at the moment.

It was too much of an effort to move, so he settled back where he was, letting Charlie and Eleanor’s voices wash over him. Charlie was uncommonly happy with his estate and his wife and his family. Charlie thought that if Jack could settle down as he had, raise some sheep and cows and pigs, start his own nursery, that Jack would be every bit as contented as he was. Poor delusional Charlie. He meant well, but he had no idea, and his ignorance drove Jack to distraction, though he would never wish it otherwise. He envied Charlie. No, that was a lie. Charlie’s placid, uncomplicated life would drive Jack to an early grave, but he envied him the ability to love that placid, uncomplicated life.

Jack couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t wanted to be a soldier. He’d been an excellent soldier, and he’d been an exemplary officer. He’d loved being a military man, he’d taken such pride in doing his duty for king and country. There had been times when that duty had required him to see and do some terrible things. Unforgivable things. While he still wore his colours, he had managed to reconcile himself to that. Now, he no longer could. Now, he was being forced to question everything that he’d loved and all that he’d stood for. There were times when he felt as if he were being quite literally torn in two. Times when he raged at the injustice of what was happening to him, times when he was overwhelmed by guilt. There was no right and wrong any more, and his world, which had been one of clear-cut lines for so long, was now so blurred that he was careering around like a compass struggling to find true north. What the hell was happening to him?

Jack ran his fingers through his hair. He ought to have it cut. Just one of many things he ought to do, and had not the gumption to attempt. Every day he swore he would try to be normal. He would take an interest in mundane things like harvests and dressing for dinner and the weather and the king’s health. With increasing regularity, he failed. So many things important to Charlie and Eleanor seemed so trivial to him, and so trivial things tended to take on a disproportionate importance. Like that kiss.

Just a kiss,Celeste had said, though he could have sworn she was as unsettled as he had been by it. And then she’d made that comment about abstinence enhancing its intensity. Bloody stupid phrase. Presumptive. Though she had not been referring to him, as he’d assumed. She was no innocent, she claimed, and she certainly didn’t kiss like one. He’d never experienced a kiss like it. Was that due to enforced abstinence? It had come as a surprise, certainly. He’d assumed that aspect of his life, like sleeping soundly, was beyond him, at least for the time being.

Jack leant his head back against the hearth. It should be reassuring that it was not. Reassuring that he could still—what? Experience desire, lust? He swore. Most likely the woman was right, and it really had been just a kiss, blown out of all proportion by the circumstances. No mere kiss was that momentous. He wished he hadn’t run away now, like a raw recruit retreating under enemy fire. He wished he’d stayed and kissed her again, and proved to himself that it was not a one-off and that his body, unlike his mind, was not completely in limbo.

He closed his eyes and allowed himself to remember the taste of her and the feel of her and the smell of her. She was quite lovely. She was altogether ravishing. She would set any man’s blood on fire. He shouldn’t have kissed her. As it was, his self-control hung by a fragile thread. He was confused about many thing but the one thing he knew for certain was that maintaining his self-control was crucial. So he could not risk kissing her again. Definitely not picture her lips pressed to his, her hands...

‘I wonder how Mademoiselle Marmion is faring?’

Jack’s eyes flew open. The name leapt out at him, bringing the background buzz of conversation in the room below to the fore.

Charlie was speaking now. ‘I’m sure she fares perfectly well. She seemed to me an uncommonly confident woman for one of her years. Perhaps it comes from being French. And she is a successful artist too. No, my love, we need have no fear for Mademoiselle. Jack may be— He has developed something of a temper, but he would never behave with impropriety, I am certain of that.’

‘It is not only his temper, Charles. He has a look in his eyes sometimes that frightens me.’

‘The things he has experienced on the battlefield would frighten anyone.’

‘Yes, but—Charles, you must have noticed, there are times when one may address any number of remarks to him, and it is as if he were deaf or asleep. I thought he was simply being rude the first time, but—it is very odd.’

What was it they said about never overhearing good of oneself? Snooping and listening in to private conversations had been the tools of the trade of his carefully cultivated informants, but this was different. Jack cringed.

‘We can be sure of nothing with regard to your brother these days, Charles,’ Eleanor continued after a leaden silence. ‘He is so very changed.’

‘Indeed.’ Charlie’s voice was wooden, a sure sign that his stiff upper lip was being called into action. No doubt he was wringing his hands.

‘He rebuffed poor little Robert again yesterday. I have told the child time and again not to plague his uncle for war stories, but...’

‘He is only five years old, and his uncle is a hero to him. Indeed, Jack is a hero to us all, if only he could see it. If only he could talk to me, but I fear...’

Jack leapt to his feet. So much for his naive belief that he had been covering his tracks. It was mortifyingly clear that Charlie and Eleanor had merely been pretending not to notice his odd behaviour.

I’m sparing you,he wanted to roar at Charlie. I’m preserving all your sad, pathetic illusions about me, he wanted to tell him. He wanted to shake his brother into silence. He wanted to be sick, because he loved Charlie, and he even cared about Eleanor, dammit, because Eleanor loved Charlie too. He wished to hell, for Charlie’s sake, that he could sit down with Robert and tell him tales of derring-do. He wished that it was true, that he really was the hero mentioned by Wellington in despatches, but it was not the case. Heroes didn’t have stains on their soul.

Jack crept from the room. He might not be a hero but he had survived. He would continue to survive. To live, to be truly alive though, that was quite another matter. An aspiration for the future, perhaps. In the meantime, it was a question of enduring.

Chapter Three (#ulink_4bcad217-fa3e-5d40-b0de-d8cf44fabb97)

Next day, Celeste set to work in the walled garden, the morning sunshine sending fingers of light creeping along the western border. She knew from the landscaper’s plans which Jack had shown her that the oldest of the succession houses and the pinery were to be demolished and replaced with modern structures which could be more efficiently heated. There was a charm to the original buildings which she had started to capture in charcoal, the paper pinned to a large board propped on a portable easel.

She had not seen Jack since he so abruptly left the Topiary Garden. He had not appeared at dinner, nor breakfast. According to Lady Eleanor, this was not unusual behaviour, as Jack often skipped meals. Sir Charles had reminded his wife that the remains of his late-night snacks were regularly found by the kitchen maids, so there was no need to worry that Jack had no appetite whatsoever. Which meant that they clearly were worried, and equally clearly set upon pretending to the source of their concern that they were not. Celeste was not, after all, alone in thinking Jack Trestain’s behaviour decidedly contrary.

She pinned a fresh sheet of paper on to her easel. She would not speculate as to the cause. She found him intriguing. She found him interesting. She found him very attractive. All of these, she took as positive signs of her own return to normality, but she would not allow herself to dwell on the subject any further. She had more than enough issues to occupy her thoughts without adding Jack Trestain to her list.

She picked up her charcoal, decided to adjust her perspective and set to work.