The Soldier's Dark Secret

She pursed her lips, shaking her head firmly. ‘I thought I’d made myself plain, I have no ambition to claim any family, legitimate or not, if that is what you mean. Clearly, my mother’s family disowned her. Equally clearly, my father’s family disowned both my mother and me. Frankly, being the unwanted child of one man means I have no wish to repeat the experience as far as my father is concerned, and as to my mother—again, no. Her family rejected her. My mother rejected me. You see the pattern, Jack. Whatever we find will allow me to regain my life, not destroy it.’

She spoke carefully, but coolly. The barriers were well and truly in place once more, but still Jack felt uneasy. She was fragile, she had admitted that much yesterday. He wanted to spare her pain, but he had not that right. All he could do was help her, and hope that the price she paid was worth it.

Jack opened the folder. ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘let us set to work on getting you the answers you need. First things first. Let’s take stock of where we are and what we know.’

Chapter Six

Jack took out her mother’s letter from his folder, and laid it out alongside a sheet of notes he had made following a detailed analysis of the contents. ‘Are you ready for this?’ he said.

Celeste nodded, ignoring the fluttering of nerves in her stomach.

‘So, to the beginning—or the beginning as we know it. Your mother married Henri Marmion in 1794.’

Again, she nodded.

‘At the height of the Terror then, when the bloodletting in the aftermath of the Revolution was at its peak,’ Jack said. ‘I think that must be significant.’

Celeste frowned. ‘I cannot see how. My father—Henri—he was not a member of the aristocracy. He was not a politician, or indeed a man of any influence. Besides, we lived in a tiny fishing village, not Paris, or any other important city. We were just an ordinary family.’

Jack tapped his finger on his notes. ‘You were four when this marriage took place. Do you remember anything from the time before? Anything at all,’ he asked. ‘Sometimes the most insignificant details are the ones that matter most.’

Celeste shook her head. ‘I was thinking only this morning, just before you arrived, how little I can recall of my childhood. An English storybook. Painting lessons. Setting the stitches on a sampler. Maman telling me the etiquette for polite conversation at a dinner party, though why she should think it important to instruct me in that I cannot imagine.’

‘What’s your earliest memory?’ Jack asked.

‘That is easy,’ Celeste said with a smile. ‘I found a shell on the beach one day, a huge pink shell, the kind that you put to your ear and can hear the rush of the sea. I remember it was too big for me to hold with one hand. I must have been five, perhaps six. What is yours?’

‘That’s easy too. Charlie had a toy horse, a wooden one on wheels. He called it Hector. I was forbidden from riding it because I was too little, which Charlie delighted in reminding me, so of course that made me all the more determined. I managed to climb up on Hector, and Charlie caught me and pushed me off, and I split my forehead open on the marble floor. I still have the scar. Here,’ Jack said, taking her hand.

It was very faint, right in the middle of his forehead. She ran her finger along it, feeling the tiny notches where it had been stitched, and could not resist pushing back his hair from his brow. It was silky-soft. She snatched her hand away. ‘Your first battle scar,’ she said. ‘Sadly, not your last. How is your arm today?’

Jack shrugged. ‘That wound is healing.’

And so he edged a tiny step closer to admitting there was another, deeper wound. Celeste bit her tongue. Trust, she was learning, was a skittish beast, so she turned the subject to a different sort of animal. ‘Hector is a peculiar name for a horse. What age were you when you stole it?’

She was rewarded with a small smile. ‘I didn’t steal it, I borrowed it. I had to use a stool to climb up on to the saddle, and my legs didn’t touch the ground. Three, perhaps?’

‘Is it odd, do you think, that I can remember nothing from such a young age?’

‘I don’t know, but in my experience, people actually take in a great deal more than they can recount. Memory works in different ways for different people. For some, smell is the most evocative sense. I tend to remember things in the form of patterns. As an artist, for you it might be colour. There are tricks that can help flesh out a memory that I used in my days of gathering information professionally,’ Jack said.

‘You mean when you were interrogating enemy agents?’

‘Lord, no, I mean when I was debriefing our chaps after a reconnaissance. No thumbscrews or rack, in case that’s what you’re imagining either. Simply a case of relaxing the subjects’ minds before gently directing their thoughts. We can try it later if you like.’

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