The Soldier's Dark Secret

‘Jack loves Robert, Madame—Lady Eleanor. That is precisely why he doesn’t want to fill his head with the barbarity of war. You asked me how I found Jack. Well, I will tell you, for what it is worth. I think he is a deeply unhappy man, and also a very brave one. I think that he has seen and done things that none of us can even imagine. Things so horrific he cannot sleep for thinking of it. All this, he has done unquestioningly in the name of you and your country and your little boy. I think he deserves better than to be told by his own flesh and blood that he is mad. That is what I think. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to find him.’

‘But, Mademoiselle, Jack made it very clear he wanted to be left alone, I don’t think...’

Ignoring Sir Charles, Celeste made her way out of the French window, and quickly across the stretch of lawn. She wondered if she had managed for the first time ever to get herself dismissed from a commission, but she could not, at this moment, bring herself to care. She did not know where Jack had gone but she had a pretty good idea where to start looking.

* * *

He was sitting on a rock, casting pebbles into the lake, his expression forbidding. Celeste was tempted, for a moment, to turn tail. Perhaps Sir Charles was right, and it would be best to leave him alone. She had no idea what to say. She had no idea what was wrong with Jack, but she had missed the chance once before, to try to comfort a person in torment, and she was not going to repeat the mistake by running away from a similar situation.

‘Did Charlie send you to check on me?’ he demanded as she sat down cautiously on the boulder beside him. ‘Not brave enough to come himself, I suppose.’

‘He thought you would be best left alone.’

Jack threw another pebble into the water. ‘He was right.’

Celeste forced herself to remain seated.

Jack threw another pebble forcefully into the water. ‘I won’t harm myself, if that’s what you’re worried about. I would not inflict that on Charlie, on top of everything else, so you can leave with a clear conscience.’

He was angry. He was embarrassed, no doubt. He was obviously much more hurt than he cared to let on. He didn’t mean it. Still, his barb hit painfully home. Celeste flinched.

Jack swore. ‘I’m sorry. God, I’m sorry. That was a foul thing to say to you, of all people.’

‘Yes, it was.’

Jack cast another pebble. ‘Is that why you’re here? Do you think I would...?’

‘No. And nor does Sir Charles, before you ask.’

‘Small compensation, when my own brother thinks I need to be locked up in Bedlam.’

‘Your brother is worried about you. He doesn’t know how best to help you.’

Jack threw the small bundle of remaining pebbles he had into the lake and jumped to his feet. ‘Do you not think that if I knew of some cure for what ails me I’d have taken it by now? Do you think I enjoy being like this? Have you any idea what it’s like for me to be so—so at the whim of emotions I can’t control? Me! Discipline and order is what my life’s been about until now. Men and information, that’s what I deal in. I turn men into soldiers. I turn meaningless jumbles of letters and numbers into sequences and patterns. That’s what I do, Celeste—that’s what I did. Not any more. Now I can’t make sense of anything.’

He turned away from her, pinching the bridge of his nose viciously between his thumb and forefinger. What he said resonated so strongly with her, she was tempted to tell him so, but what good would it do, to tell him that she too felt as if the world made no sense any more? ‘I think you do understand some things, though,’ she said. ‘Whatever it was at dinner that made you sick, you knew it would. That’s why you avoid dinner.’

‘And would have avoided it again last night were it not for you.’ He turned on her, his eyes flashing fury.

‘That’s not fair. I did not know you...’

‘No, you didn’t, but you smiled that winsome smile of yours, and you looked at me with those big brown eyes and you made it impossible for me to say no.’

She knew he was simply trying to hurt her, lashing out like a wounded animal, but the injustice of this was too much. ‘I did no such thing!’ Celeste jumped to her feet. ‘I don’t have a winsome smile. I am not a fool. I look in the mirror, and I see I have the kind of face men find attractive, but I am not— I have never, ever, been one of those women who use a mere quirk of nature to manipulate people. Never.’

Jack swore again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he snapped, sounding anything but. ‘Very well, you did not force me into that damned dinner, but if it had not been that, it would have been something else.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ Celeste folded her arms and glared at him.