The Soldier's Dark Secret Read online

  ‘No,’ Celeste said firmly, ‘I will keep my thoughts to myself, thank you.’

  Jack raised a quizzical brow, but turned his attention back to his notes. ‘I can’t help but feel that your mother’s marriage to Henri Marmion must be connected somehow with the Terror.’ He picked up the letter. ‘“Without Henri, I do honestly believe we would have perished. I doubt you will believe him capable of heroism, but back in those dark days, that is what he was. A hero.” She is convinced that both your lives were in danger. That’s too much of a coincidence, don’t you think?’

  It was hard to disagree with Jack’s logic, though difficult to conceive of it being true. Celeste nodded, this time reluctantly.

  ‘Good, then that is our starting premise.’ Jack pulled out another sheet of paper. ‘So, what else do we know? First, your mother was English. Second, she gave birth to you in France in 1790, so she must have gone there at some point before. I don’t suppose you know your place of birth?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Or your mother’s maiden name? Is there a certificate of her marriage to Henri Marmion?’

  She shook her head again. ‘The number of things I don’t know are considerably greater than the number that I do. I don’t even know where they were married, so church records aren’t available as a source of information.’

  ‘Then you won’t know if she was married previously?’

  ‘You need not spare my blushes. I have already said I must assume that I am illegitimate,’ Celeste said brusquely. ‘That is the only explanation for my mother’s insistence that she had no family—everyone has family, hers obviously disowned her, and since she was a woman—’ She broke off, struck by a sudden flash of memory. ‘My mother once said to me that a woman’s reputation was all she had. In her letter she wrote that the love she had for the man who sired me was the source of her downfall. The implications are clear enough.’

  ‘Sired? You speak of your father as if he means nothing to you?’

  ‘I obviously meant nothing to him. I am merely reciprocating his indifference.’

  Jack picked up the letter again. ‘“Your father would have loved you, of that I am sure,”’ he read. “‘He too would have been proud of you.”’

  Celeste crossed her arms. ‘That is the kind of soft soap a mother would write to console a bastard child, don’t you think?’

  Jack made no reply.

  ‘You think that I am callous.’

  ‘I think,’ he said carefully, ‘that perhaps your father never knew of your existence. “Your father would have loved you” is what your mother writes. Would have, implying he was for some reason prevented from having the opportunity to do so.’

  It had not occurred to her to interpret her mother’s words thus. A veteran of parental rejection, she had assumed that this was yet another case in point. Would her father have loved her? It didn’t bear thinking about. ‘It is hardly relevant,’ Celeste said, steeling herself, ‘since he is in all likelihood dead.’

  Jack consulted the letter again. ‘Your mother mentions “tragic consequences” resulting from the “impossible choice” she had to make?’

  ‘Tragic can only mean a death. I think we must assume it refers to my natural father.’ Saying it aloud brought a lump to Celeste’s throat.

  ‘Talking of fathers, tell me what you know of Henri Marmion.’

  ‘I don’t see what Henri has to do with anything.’

  Jack sighed. ‘Then it’s as well you asked me to read this letter, because it’s perfectly plain to me that he must have loved your mother a great deal. Think about the circumstances for a moment, Celeste. Your mother is in dire straits of some sort. She’s alone, with an infant child and no family, in a strange country. By 1794, simply the fact that she was English would have put her on a list of suspicious characters, and it would have been impossible for her to escape France. To marry her was to take an enormous personal risk, and Marmion not only married her, but it sounds as though he cut himself off from his own friends and family in order to keep you both safe. A man doesn’t do that unless he’s deep in love or perhaps deep in debt.’

  ‘He was a schoolteacher. He was a very educated man, but he taught at the village school. He could read and write Greek and Latin, he could quote so many of the Classics, but he—he hid his erudition. I could never understand it. One of the many things I could never fathom.’

  ‘Did he ever mention his family?’

  ‘Not that I remember, but then Henri rarely talked to me. I think he came from Cahors, in the south-west. I don’t know how I remember that. His accent, perhaps.’ Celeste shook her head, as if doing so would clear the tangled web that her past seemed to have become. ‘He was so distant. I can’t imagine that he was capable of love. I never saw any sign of affection between them. Besides, my mother claims to have loved my natural father. She made her choice for love, according to her letter.’

  ‘Celeste, do you not think that makes Henri Marmion’s behaviour more understandable rather than less so? To love, and never to have that love returned, would that not make a man distant? To see the evidence of his wife’s true love in the form of her child—her only child—would that not eventually turn a loving husband into an embittered one?’

  Celeste dropped her head on to her hands. ‘Stop it! You are turning everything upside down. I don’t know! Dammit, I am not going to cry again.’

  She jumped to her feet, thumping her fist into her open palm, and paced over to the window. ‘You know, I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I cried before I came to England. Even before boarding school, I learnt that tears were futile, and at school—well, you learn very quickly that it is better not to show weakness. And now I seem to be weeping constantly. Eight months since my mother died, and only now am I beginning to appreciate that she really is gone. It doesn’t make sense.

  ‘You can never understand, you with your idyllic childhood here, growing up knowing how much you were loved, you can have no idea what it was like for me. Those miserable days at school, those cold little notes Maman wrote to me there about the weather, and the fishing, and—and nothing about her. Nothing about missing me. She didn’t love me, I have known that for a long time.’

  ‘I think she did.’

  She jerked her head round to look at him. ‘How can you possibly say that?’

  ‘The locket. Worn round her neck every day of her life. Her only possession treasured enough to leave to you. Containing portraits of you and her, so close they are almost touching when the clasp is closed. A mother and her only daughter. Just because she never demonstrated her love doesn’t mean it wasn’t real. That locket tells me it was very real.’

  Celeste dropped her head on to the cool of the window glass. When Jack put his arms around her waist, she resisted the urge to lean back into the comfort of his arms. She did not deserve comfort. This time the urge to confess outweighed the shame of what she must say. ‘I had not seen her for a year before she died. The last time—the last time...’

  She kept her eyes on the garden through the window glass which was misting over with her breath. ‘Yesterday, when I said that she didn’t give me a chance, it was a lie. Just after Henri died, Maman came to Paris. She told me that now she had done her duty by Henri, she wanted to heal the rift between us. I—I—I was angry with her. I told her that she had made her choice when she sent me off to boarding school at his behest. She did not protest very much. I presumed that the offer was more of a token than— No, I won’t make excuses.’

  Celeste turned around, facing Jack unflinchingly. ‘I sent her packing. I could not forgive her for choosing Henri over me. When I was ten years old, I begged Maman not to send me away, but she chose to do what Henri wanted. Because she owed him our lives, she did as he asked, the letter says. Perhaps if I’d given her a chance that day in Paris, she would h
ave explained it to me, but I did not. We were estranged for a long time but that last year, our estrangement was my fault alone. I feel such guilt. You would not understand such guilt. There is a part of me, you know, that thinks I deserve to suffer now. A part of me that thinks I do not deserve answers. Jack, I don’t want you to be under the misapprehension that I’m an innocent victim.’

  ‘Celeste, for God’s sake, you had a lifetime’s experience of her not explaining. You can’t be thinking that what she did is your fault.’

  ‘Can’t I?’

  ‘No.’ Jack gave her a gentle shake. ‘No. You don’t know if it would have made any difference. You cannot know for certain if she would ever have trusted you enough.’

  ‘Yes, I have tried to tell myself that. I am not a martyr. I have tried.’ Celeste shook her head wearily. ‘For months, trying, pretending, and until I came here it was working—I thought. But now I can’t pretend.’

  ‘Celeste, I repeat, it’s not your fault.’

  ‘Jack, you can’t know that any more than I can. You don’t understand...’

  ‘I understand a damn sight more than you think.’

  ‘Those soldiers you told me about, yes, but they were not your family. You were not directly responsible.’ She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. ‘Perhaps this dark secret of Maman’s would have sent her to her grave regardless of what I did. But there is the possibility that she might have confided in me if I had given her one last opportunity. It’s possible that she might still be alive today as a result.’

  ‘Speculation is pointless, it changes nothing.’ Jack’s tone was harsh. His fists were clenched. ‘You can dig up the skeletons of your mother’s past. They might be gruesome, or they might be nothing at all, but whatever they are, they cannot alter what happened. It was her act, not yours. You can’t let the guilt destroy you.’ His eyes went quite blank. ‘You can never know if it would have made a difference. There are so many imponderables. If you had kept your mouth shut. If you had not been so determined to see for yourself. If you had not spilled your guts. If you had not—’

  He broke off, staring at her as if she were a spectre. His expression frightened her in its intensity. ‘You will never know, but if you keep asking, one thing is for certain. You will tear yourself apart. That much, I most certainly understand.’

  Celeste stared at the door as it slammed shut behind him. She sank down on to the sofa. She felt as if she were seeing her life through a shattered mirror. Everything she thought she knew about herself had become distorted. The barrier which her mother had erected between them was bizarrely, in death, beginning to break down. In doing so, it was not only destroying Celeste’s idea of her mother, it was destroying her notion of herself.

  She curled up, squeezing her eyes closed, but the tears leaked out regardless. Was she tearing herself apart for no purpose? No, she had a purpose. She had to know. And when she did, she would be healed, not broken.

  And as for Jack? If you had kept your mouth shut. If you had not been so determined to see for yourself. If you had not spilled your guts. He had clearly been talking about himself. What had he been so determined to see? What did it mean, to spill his guts? Had he been ill? Or did he mean he had talked? Given away secrets?

  ‘Non,’ Celeste muttered. Jack was no traitor, on that she would stake her own life. Then what was Jack? ‘I could as well ask, what is Celeste,’ she muttered as exhaustion overtook her.

  * * *

  Jack sat at the window of his bedchamber, watching the grey light of dawn appear in the night sky and replaying his conversation with Celeste in his head for the hundredth time.

  Guilt. From the moment she had told him that her mother had taken her own life, Jack had known that guilt would eventually overwhelm her. He’d hoped that by helping her quest for answers, he’d postpone its onset but it was already too late. After yesterday’s confession, she wouldn’t be able to ignore it.

  Jack was something of a connoisseur of guilt and all its insidious manifestations. Eating away at you. Keeping you awake. Torturing your dreams. Turning you inside out. He couldn’t bear thinking of Celeste suffering the same fate. Celeste, who had worked so hard to escape her miserable childhood and make her own world. Celeste who was so confident, and so independent and so strong.

  And now so vulnerable. He couldn’t bear to think of what it would do to her, if she did not find the answers she sought. But then he already knew. Guilt would consume her. As it was consuming him?

  Feeling his chest tightening, Jack pushed open the window and gulped in the fresh air. Outside, the sky had turned from grey to a hazy pink. It was time for his early-morning swim. Pulling off his nightshirt, Jack grabbed his breeches and shirt. As he pulled the window closed, he noticed a flutter of white in the garden below. Celeste, hatless as usual. Her hair was piled carelessly on top of her head, long tendrils of it hanging down, as if she had not even bothered to look in the mirror. Her gown was cream coloured, with short puffs of sleeves and a scooped neck, accentuating the golden glow of her skin.

  She was barefoot. He could see tantalising glimpses of her toes as she walked. The deep flounce of her gown was already wet with dew. She paused, lifting her face to the pale sun, closing her eyes. Had she slept? What was she thinking? She was so very lovely, and she looked so very fragile.

  She made for the path which would lead her to the lake. Jack watched as she reached the gate, hesitated, then turned away. Giving way to a sudden impulse, he headed out of his bedchamber, descending the stairs three at a time, and ran out into the garden.

  * * *

  ‘Celeste!’

  ‘Jack.’ His bare feet left a line of footprints in the damp grass behind him. He was dressed in only his leather breeches and his shirt. His hair was in disarray and he hadn’t shaved.

  ‘I’m going for my swim.’

  ‘Then that is the signal for me to make myself scarce.’

  He smiled, pushing his hair back from his face. ‘Actually, I wondered if you would care to join me?’

  He looked tired. He looked devastatingly dishevelled. He looked as if he had just risen from bed. He made her think of rumpled sheets and tangled limbs. Their tangled limbs. ‘Join you?’ Celeste repeated, dragging her eyes away from the tantalising glimpse of chest she could see at the opening of his shirt.

  ‘At the lake. To swim. Assuming you can swim, that is?’

  ‘I was brought up on the coast. Of course I can swim,’ Celeste said, and then the significance of his offer struck home. The lake at this time of the morning was Jack’s private domain, his sanctuary. For him to offer to share it with her was hugely significant. ‘No, I would be intruding. After the last time...’

  ‘This is different. I am inviting you as my guest.’

  He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. His smile made her insides flutter. She was weary of questioning and analysing her thoughts and motives. The urge to just be, to surrender to a whim was irresistible. ‘Then I accept your kind invitation,’ Celeste said. ‘I am extremely flattered, since I know how important your privacy is to you. I would very much like to join you for a swim. I should warn you though, I am rather good.’

  Jack laughed. ‘I am not so very shabby myself,’ he said, opening the gate for her. ‘I’ve come on a bit since you last saw me in action.’

  ‘I remember thinking that you swam like a fish that had drunk too much wine.’

  ‘Not so much now. Perhaps one small glass of Madeira.’

  The path to the lake was narrow and dark. The earth was cool against her bare feet. She had not swum for so long. She loved the water. She had not allowed herself to miss it. Now, seeing the glint of the lake in the early morning sunshine, Celeste felt her spirits rise in anticipation. The water was a strange colour, nothing like the sea. Golden and greenish, with a hint of brown. She stretched her arms high ab
ove her head, lifting her face to the warm English sun, and laughed with delight.

  Jack pulled his shirt over his head. His muscles rippled. She caught her breath. He really was magnificent to look at. ‘I think I’d best retain these,’ he said, indicating his breeches.

  Celeste had been so intent upon the swim, she hadn’t considered the delicate matter of attire. In Cassis, she had always swum naked. She loved the feel of the ocean on her skin. But in Cassis, she had always swum alone. She had never swum in the company of a man, and this man— She dragged her eyes away again.

  ‘Changed your mind?’

  Celeste shook her head. ‘Go in. I will follow you but don’t look.’

  Jack laughed. ‘I never make promises I can’t keep,’ he said, turning his back and beginning to wade into the water.

  She watched him dive, and then swim strongly towards the far side. He barely laboured at all. His strength had all but returned. Celeste went behind the very hawthorn bush where she’d hidden that first day, and began to undress, quickly removing her gown, her corset and her petticoats. She was left wearing only her pantaloons and camisole. It was not an ideal outfit for bathing but she could not countenance the alternative.

  She picked her way across the pebbles into the shallows of the lake. Jack was at the far side again, swimming steadily. The water felt warm on her toes, the mud oozed around her feet in a not unpleasant manner. She waded in and gasped as the cool water soaked through her thin camisole and met her skin. Jack turned and began to head back towards her. Hurriedly, Celeste waded out, until the water was waist high, and then she dived into the cool water with relish and began to swim. It was not at all like the waters of Cassis, this English lake, but there was still that marvellous feeling of freedom. She struck out more strongly, heading for the opposite bank, kicking her legs behind her, and just before it became too shallow, she turned and began to swim back, passing Jack on the way.

  She swam until her muscles protested, and then she turned over and floated, her eyes closed, careless of the mud and twigs and leaves tangling in her hair. For the first time since Maman had died, she felt relaxed, weightless, free. It was all still there, but it could wait. It could all wait. Rolling over to make her way back to shore, she saw Jack standing waist deep in the water, watching her.