The Soldier's Dark Secret

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.