The Soldier's Dark Secret. Marguerite Kaye

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ lost his hat. A scrawny chicken squawked loudly, running across his path, making him stumble. How had the mission turned into such a debacle? How could his information, his precious, carefully gathered knowledge of the enemy’s movements, have been so wrong?

       It was not possible. Not possible. Not possible. The words rang in his head over and over. He was aware of his comrades’ voices, of orders being barked, but he felt utterly alone.

       The cooking fires were still burning. From a large smoke-blackened cauldron the appetising aroma of a herb-filled stew rose in the still, unnaturally silent air. He had not eaten since yesterday. He was suddenly ravenous.

       As his stomach growled, he became aware of another, all-pervading smell. Ferrous. The unmistakable odour of dried blood. And another. The sickly-sweet stench of charred flesh.

       As the noxious combination seared the back of his throat, Jack retched violently, spilling his guts like a raw recruit in a nearby ditch. Spasm after spasm shook him, until he had to clutch at the scorched trunk of a splintered tree to support himself. Shivering, shaking, he had no idea how long the girl had been looming over him...

      It was the fall that woke him. He was on the floor of his bedchamber, clutching a pillow. He had banged his head on the nightstand. The ewer had toppled over and smashed. The chambermaid would think him one of the clumsiest guests she’d ever encountered. His nightshirt was drenched, the contents of the jug adding to his fevered sweat. His head was thumping, his jaw aching, and his wrists too, from clenching his fists. Wearily, Jack dragged himself to his feet and, opening the curtains, checking the hour on his pocket watch. It was just after five. He’d managed to sleep for a total of two hours.

      Outside, morning mist wreathed the formal lawns which bordered the carriageway. Opening the casement wide, he leaned out, taking ragged breaths of fresh air. Damp, sweetly herbaceous air, not the dusty dry air of far-off lands, that caught in your lungs and the back of your throat, that was so still all smells lingered, and you carried them with you on your clothes for days afterwards.

      Jack swallowed hard, squeezing his eyes tight shut in his effort to block out the unwelcome memory. Slow breaths. One. Two. Three. Four. Open your eyes. Moist air smelling of nothing but dew. More breaths. And more.

      Dammit! It had been two years. He should be over it by now. Or if not over it, he should have it under control. He’d been coping perfectly well in the army—more or less. He’d been dealing with it—mostly. Functioning—on the whole. He hadn’t fallen apart. He’d been able to control his temper. He’d even been able to sleep, albeit mainly as a result of exhaustion brought on by a punishing schedule of duties. Only now, when he was free of that life, the very life that was responsible for creating his coruscating guilt, it was haunting his every waking and sleeping moment.

      Dear God, he must not fall apart now, when it was finally all behind him. He had to get out of the house. He had to get that smell out of his head. Exercise, that’s what he needed. It had worked before. It would work again. He would make it work again.

      His forearm had finally been released just yesterday after weeks in a cumbersome splint. Jack flexed his fingers, relishing the pain which resulted, his toes curling on the rug. He deserved the pain. A damned stupid thing to do, to fall from his horse, even if his shoulder had just been torn open by a French musket. Quite literally adding insult to injury.

      Take it easy, the quack had advised yesterday, reminding him that he might never recover his full strength. As if he needed reminding. As if it mattered now. ‘As if anything matters,’ Jack muttered to himself, pulling off his nightshirt and throwing on a bare minimum of clothes before padding silently out of the house.

      The sun was beginning to burn the mist away, drying the dew into a fine sheen as he set off at a fast march through the formal gardens of his older brother’s estate. Jack had been on active service in Egypt when their father died, and Charlie inherited. In the intervening years, nearly all of which Jack had spent abroad on one military campaign or another, Charlie had added two wings to their childhood home, and his wife, Eleanor, had redecorated almost every single room. The grounds, though, had been left untouched until now. In a few weeks, the extensive new landscaping programme would begin, and the estate would be transformed. The lake, towards which he now made his way, through the overgrown and soon-to-be-uprooted Topiary Garden, would be drained, dredged, deepened and reshaped into something that would apparently look more natural.

      He stood on the reedy bank, inhaling the odours so resonant of childhood: the fresh smell of grass, the cloying scent of honeysuckle and the sweetness of rotting vegetation laced with mud coming from the lake bed. There was never anyone around at this time of day. It was just Jack, and the ducks and whatever fish survived in the brackish water of the lake.

      Divesting himself quickly of his few garments, he stretched his arms high above his head, took a deep breath, and plunged head first into the water. Though it was relatively warm on the surface, it was cold enough underneath to make him gasp. Opening his eyes, he could see little, only floating reeds and twigs, the mixture of dead leaves and sludge churned up by his splashy entry. He broke the surface, panting hard, then struck out towards the centre, his weakened right arm making his progress lopsided, forcing his left arm to compensate as he listed to one side like a sloop holed below the waterline by a cannon.

      Ignoring the stabbing pain in his newly healed fracture and the familiar throbbing ache in his wounded shoulder, Jack gritted his teeth and began to count the lengths. He would stop when he was too exhausted to continue, and not before.

      * * *

      Celeste Marmion had also been unable to sleep. Attracted by the soft light of the English morning, so very different from the bright blaze of the Côte d’Azur where she had been raised, she had dressed quickly and, grabbing her notebook and charcoals, decided to reconnoitre the grounds of Trestain Manor before facing her hosts at breakfast. Arriving late last night, the brief impression she had had of her new patrons, Sir Charles and Lady Eleanor Trestain, was pretty much as she had expected. He was the perfect gentleman, rather bluff, rather handsome, his smile kind, though his manner veered towards the pompous. His wife, a slender and very tall woman with a long nose and intelligent eyes, reminded Celeste of a highly-strung greyhound. Lady Eleanor was a good deal less welcoming than her husband, giving Celeste the distinct impression that she was placing her hostess in a social quandary, for although Sir Charles had welcomed his landscape painter as a valued guest, Lady Eleanor seemed more inclined to treat her as a tradesperson.

      ‘Which is perfectly fine by me. I am here for my own reasons, not to play the serf in order to placate a social snob. Lady Eleanor is really quite irrelevant in the grand scheme of things,’ Celeste muttered to herself as she made her way through a magnificent but dreadfully neglected Topiary Garden.

      She could hardly believe that she had finally made it to England. It had been her goal ever since January, when she had received that fateful letter. It had been a terrible shock, despite the fact that they had been estranged for years, to learn that she would never see her mother again. She had thought herself completely inured to Maman’s coldness, but for a few days after learning of her death, Celeste had been left reeling, assailed by a maelstrom of emotions which struck her with a force that was almost physical.

      She had, however, quickly regained her equilibrium. After all, her mother had been more of an absence than a presence in her life for as long as she could remember, even before Celeste had been callously packed off to boarding school at the age of ten. It should make no difference to Celeste that the house in Cassis was closed up, for she never visited. It should make no difference that there was now no possibility of any reconciliation. She had never understood her mother’s attitude towards her, the cause of their gradual and now final СКАЧАТЬ