The Soldier's Dark Secret

Chapter Three

Next day, Celeste set to work in the walled garden, the morning sunshine sending fingers of light creeping along the western border. She knew from the landscaper’s plans which Jack had shown her that the oldest of the succession houses and the pinery were to be demolished and replaced with modern structures which could be more efficiently heated. There was a charm to the original buildings which she had started to capture in charcoal, the paper pinned to a large board propped on a portable easel.

She had not seen Jack since he so abruptly left the Topiary Garden. He had not appeared at dinner, nor breakfast. According to Lady Eleanor, this was not unusual behaviour, as Jack often skipped meals. Sir Charles had reminded his wife that the remains of his late-night snacks were regularly found by the kitchen maids, so there was no need to worry that Jack had no appetite whatsoever. Which meant that they clearly were worried, and equally clearly set upon pretending to the source of their concern that they were not. Celeste was not, after all, alone in thinking Jack Trestain’s behaviour decidedly contrary.

She pinned a fresh sheet of paper on to her easel. She would not speculate as to the cause. She found him intriguing. She found him interesting. She found him very attractive. All of these, she took as positive signs of her own return to normality, but she would not allow herself to dwell on the subject any further. She had more than enough issues to occupy her thoughts without adding Jack Trestain to her list.

She picked up her charcoal, decided to adjust her perspective and set to work.

* * *

Half an hour later, deep in concentration, Celeste did not notice Jack’s arrival until he was behind her, making her jump, squiggle a line across her drawing, drop her charcoal and swear rather inappropriately in French. ‘You gave me such a fright. Look what you’ve made me do.’

‘I didn’t mean to startle you, but you were miles away.’

‘I was concentrating on my work.’

Jack was looking at her drawing, but Celeste got the impression he was thinking about something else. She had not misremembered how attractive he was. Nor the strength of her reaction to his physical proximity. Her skin was tingling as if the space between them was charged, like the atmosphere prior to a lightning strike. ‘What do you think?’ she asked, in an attempt to restore some semblance of normality. She was on sure ground discussing art.

He blinked. ‘I think I should apologise for my abrupt departure yesterday.’

Celeste too kept her eyes on her drawing. ‘I was actually referring to my sketch, but since we are on the subject, I fear we were at cross purposes yesterday. When I said— When I mentioned abstinence— I know nothing of your circumstances. I was speaking for myself.’

‘You may as well have been speaking for me,’ Jack admitted ruefully. ‘I have not— It has also been some time since I...’ Their eyes met briefly, then flickered away. ‘I was therefore rather taken aback.’

‘As was I.’ This time their gaze held. Celeste smiled faintly. ‘I am sure that was the reason for the— It explains why we allowed ourselves to become somewhat carried away.’

Jack touched his hand to the squiggle Celeste had drawn, tried to rub it out, then stared at the resultant smudge. ‘Stupid thing for me to get so aerated about. It was, as you pointed out, just a kiss. We’re adults, not flighty adolescents.’

‘Yes, exactly.’ She nodded determinedly to disguise her disappointment. She should not be disappointed. He was agreeing with her, after all. ‘Most likely we would be disappointed if we—if we repeated the experience.’

It came out sounding like a plea to be proved wrong, and for a moment, Jack looked as if he would comply. ‘Most likely,’ he said as he took a step towards her. She could feel his breath on her cheek. He smelled of grass and sunshine. Her heart was beating hard again, making it difficult to breathe. She stared into his eyes, mesmerised. The gap between them imperceptibly, tantalisingly narrowed. Their lips almost touched before they both leapt back as if they had been singed by a naked flame.

Celeste snatched her sketch from the easel and tore it in half. ‘I don’t know what is wrong with me today. I am struggling to find the correct perspective for what should be a simple sketch.’

Jack hesitated, then threw himself down on a wooden bench, his long legs sprawled in front of him. ‘I doubt either Charlie or Eleanor will care which angle you choose, provided you deliver something that closely matches reality. I’m sure the drawing you have just torn up would have proved perfectly satisfactory.’

‘Not to me,’ Celeste said indignantly. ‘I would have known I could have depicted the scene in a more accomplished manner. You may consider what I do to be a trivial endeavour. My paintings don’t save lives or win wars or—or whatever it was you did when you were a soldier, but they are still very important to me.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to patronise you.’

His smile was disarming. Celeste bit her own back, refusing to be so easily won over. ‘But you did none the less.’

‘I did,’ he conceded.

He dug his hands into his pockets. ‘You know, life in the military is not as exciting as you might think. There’s far more time spent marching and drilling than waging war. And in the winter, when the campaign season is over, there’s a deal more playing cards and making bets and drinking than doing drill.’

‘When I am between commissions, I still paint,’ Celeste said. ‘Not landscapes, but people. I am not so good at portraits, but they are mine, and so it is not like work, you know?’

‘Are you often between commissions?’

‘In the beginning, regularly.’ She chuckled. ‘As a result, I was much thinner and not so well dressed as I can now afford to be.’

‘No less pretty, though, I’d wager, if I may be so bold as to offer a compliment to compensate for demeaning your sense of professional pride. Did you always aspire to be an artist?’

‘I am never going to exhibit at the Académie des Beaux-Arts, and I have no ambition to do so. I am not the type to try to break all the rules and to starve in the process, spending my last sou on paint rather than a baguette. I have a modest talent. I was fortunate enough to study with some excellent teachers in Paris, and I needed to find a way of supporting myself, so...’ Celeste shrugged.

‘Your parents then, they are dead? You said you needed to support yourself,’ Jack explained when she raised her eyebrows at the question, ‘so I assumed...’

‘Yes. Both dead.’ Celeste stared down at her hands, frowning. Despite spending a good deal of time thinking about it, she had not the foggiest idea how to begin the search for answers which had brought her to England. She needed help, but her ingrained habit of trusting no one save herself inhibited her from seeking it. Not that, as a foreigner, she thought morosely, she had the first idea of where to start seeking.

‘Penny for them?’ Jack was looking at her quizzically. ‘Your thoughts,’ he said. ‘You were a hundred miles away again. I fear I’m boring you rather than distracting you.’

‘No, it’s not that.’ Perhaps she could ask him just one simple question to get her search underway? She really did have to make a start because there, tucked away at the back of her sketchbook, was a letter containing a puzzle she needed to solve in order to draw a line under the past and get on with her life.

‘Jack?’

He looked at her questioningly.

‘Jack, if you—if you needed to find something. Or someone. How would you go about it? I mean if you did not know where this person lived, or—or who they were, precisely. Are there people one can employ to discover such things?’

‘You mean to track down someone who has gone missing?’

She had his attention now. All of it. Though he was still lounging casually on the bench, though his expression was one of polite interest, his eyes were focused entirely on her. Celeste shifted uncomfortably. ‘Not missing precisely. Not anything at all, really. I’m speaking hypothetically.’

She risked looking up, and wished she had not. ‘Hypothetically,’ Jack said, openly sceptical. ‘Well, hypothetically, you could employ a Bow Street Runner.’

‘Is that what you would do?’

He smiled. ‘Good grief, no. Speaking hypothetically of course, I am more than equipped to solve the problem for myself, but we’re not talking hypothetically, are we?’

Realising that she was clenching her hands so tightly together that the knuckles showed white, Celeste hid them under her painter’s smock. She ought to look him in the eye, but she was sure if she did Jack would know she was lying. She was not a good liar. She was good at keeping silent. She was very good at hiding her feelings, but she was a terrible liar. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘Forget I asked.’

She could have bitten her tongue out, realising only at the last moment that telling Jack Trestain something didn’t matter was a sure-fire way of alerting him to the fact that it did, though he said nothing for so long that she began to hope he had done just as she asked. At least she was a step further forward. She had no idea what a Bow Street Runner was, but she could find out. She prepared to get to her feet. ‘I should...’

‘Sit down.’ His grip on her arm was light enough, but one look at Jack’s face, and Celeste thought the better of resisting him. ‘Who exactly is it you’re trying to trace? A lover? An errant husband, perhaps?’

‘I have no husband, errant or otherwise, and as to a lover— No, not since before— Since— It has nothing to do with affairs of the heart.’ She sounded defensive. She was getting upset. And Jack was not missing any of it. ‘It is nothing,’ Celeste said. ‘I regret raising it.’

Jack gave her a neutral look. ‘You know, you’d be taking pot luck by employing a Runner. Some of them are excellent chaps, but some— Frankly, I wouldn’t trust my sister alone with them. Not that I have a sister. Have you? Or a brother? Is it a sibling you’re seeking?’

‘I am not so fortunate as to possess either,’ Celeste said repressively.

Jack nodded. ‘So, it’s not your parents or a husband or a sibling you’re trying to trace. Who then?’

He was not going to give up. Celeste shook her head and folded her lips.

Once again, Jack failed to get the message. ‘Now I come to think about it, you weren’t clear if it was a person or a thing. Is it stolen property then, jewellery? Or the family silver?’

‘Mon Dieu, Jack, I wish you would leave the matter alone!’

‘You ask me for advice but now won’t tell me why. Don’t you trust me, Celeste, is that it?’

‘I don’t trust anyone. I find it is safer that way.’

‘That, if I may say so, is a fairly bleak philosophy.’

‘You may, since I suspect it is also yours.’

He looked quite taken aback. ‘Irrespective of the veracity of that statement, you would admit it is a philosophy which makes finding your missing person or whatever the hell it is rather problematic.’

‘I told you, I was merely speculating.’

‘And I told you, I don’t believe you,’ Jack said, his tone conciliatory. ‘Look, it’s obviously important to you, whatever it is. It’s clear you need help, and I assure you, you can rely on my discretion.’

All of which was most likely true, but it was such a big step to take. Celeste wrapped her arms around herself. What should she do?

‘If it’s difficult for you to tell me, imagine yourself faced with a complete stranger.’

‘Why are you so keen to— Of what possible interest is it to you?’ Celeste cursed under her breath and jumped to her feet. ‘You wish to know? Vraiment? Very well then, I will tell the truth and shame the devil. I have come to England to find out why my mother killed herself! Are you happy now?’

Jack’s face was a picture of shock. Celeste, even more shocked than he at her impulsive admission, sucked in great breaths of air.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jack said after a brief silence. ‘Celeste, I’m so very sorry.’

He reached out, as if he would put his arms around her. For a brief moment, she was tempted to accept the comfort of his embrace, and that shocked her almost as much as her blurting out the shameful truth to a man she barely knew. She pushed him away, rather too roughly, though she was beyond caring about that. Then suddenly quite drained, she sank on to the bench beside him.

* * *

Suicide. Jack could think of no subject more guaranteed to engage his attention and his sympathy. He clenched his fists. He would try his damnedest to help this woman. That would, at least, be something.

Beside him Celeste was pale, angry and on the verge of tears, though she seemed absolutely determined not to cry. She was looking at him very warily too, most likely already resenting him for forcing her to blurt out something so private and shocking.

‘You can trust me,’ Jack said once more. ‘If I am able to help you, I will.’

‘Why would you?’ she demanded baldly. ‘You’re virtually a stranger.’

He pondered how to answer this without arousing her suspicions. It had cost her a good deal to ask for help, which made him wonder that someone so beautiful and so attractive and so talented should be so bereft of confidantes. ‘A stranger with too much time on his hands, and not enough to occupy his mind,’ he said, which had the benefit of being true. ‘A stranger who has had some experience in such matters,’ he added, which was, tragically, also true.

‘What experience? Jack? I said what experience?’

He realised some time had elapsed since Celeste had posed the question. He dragged his mind back, with some relief, to the present and managed a dismissive shrug, as if he had been merely assembling his thoughts. ‘When a man is battle-weary, an extreme melancholy can make him think death offers the only release. No one can persuade him that the melancholy will eventually pass. In extreme cases, the man becomes so desperate as to take matters into his own hands as your mother did. Soldiers are trained not to show their feelings, and very often in such cases, the outcome is totally unexpected and, to those left behind, wholly inexplicable. Like you, they are left with unanswered questions.’

‘And how do these bereaved families set about gaining answers?’

They didn’t, was the honest answer, in most cases. Jack could no more explain it than the poor unfortunates who took their own lives could. All he could offer was platitudes. He looked at Celeste, no longer distrustful but hanging on his words, the faintest trace of hope flickering in her eyes. He could not bear to douse it with a cold bucket of truth. If he could somehow help her, if he could find the answers for her that he had been unable to provide for others, then perhaps it would help atone. A little. Even a little atonement was better than none. ‘Perhaps it would help,’ he prevaricated, ‘if you could tell me the circumstances of your mother’s death first. It must have come as a terrible shock.’

‘We were not close.’ Perhaps recognising the defensive note in her voice, Celeste made a helpless gesture. ‘I live in Paris. My mother lived in Cassis, in the south. I received her letter in January this year. She was already— It was already— I—my mother was already dead. Drowned. She drowned herself.’

Celeste blinked rapidly. Though he could not see, for they were obscured by her smock, Jack was willing to bet that her hands were painfully clasped. Yet there was a defiant tilt to her head, as if she was daring herself to submit to whatever emotions ensnared her in their grasp.

As a soldier, he was well versed in the art of managing grief. An iron will and rigid self-control had vital roles to play in combat. In battle, you put the living before the dead. It was why other soldiers got so uproariously drunk afterwards. It was why they sought out brothels and taverns, to laugh and to lose themselves, because they could not cry, but they could counter death with a lust for life, and they could later blame their tears on an excess of gin.

But Celeste was not a soldier, and the dead woman was her mother, not a comrade. Though like a soldier, she seemed determined not to crack under the strain. Instinctively, he knew any attempt to comfort her would not be welcome. Jack sat up, putting a little distance between them. ‘This letter— You said her letter? Do you mean...?’

‘Yes, my mother wrote to me to inform me she was about to commit suicide. It was, in essence, a letter from beyond the grave.’

Unable to stop himself, Jack reached for her hands. As he had suspected, they were tightly clasped. He covered them with his own. She stiffened, but made no attempt to repel him. He felt a sharp pang of sympathy. It was not just grief she was holding on so tightly to, but a hefty dose of guilt. Anger at her mother’s act shook him. He bit back the words of blame, knowing full well they were irrational and undeserved, and unlikely to cause Celeste anything but pain. ‘Dear God. I am so sorry.’

‘There is no need. It was a shock. I admit it was a shock, but once I had recovered from that, I read the letter in the hope that it would at least provide some sort of explanation for what, to me, was an incomprehensible act.’ Now she did pull her hands free. ‘Mais non, nothing so straightforward from my mother. I should have known better than to have expected her to change the habits of a lifetime. It was more of a riddle than an explanation, sent in the full knowledge that by the time I received it, she would not be available to help solve it.’

Her anger simmered, the heat of it palpable. ‘Celeste, she would not have been thinking rationally. To take such drastic action, she must have been very desperate,’ Jack said, knowing the words were utterly inadequate, though none the less true.

‘I don’t doubt that. Though not desperate enough to ask for my help.’ Her lip quivered. The tension in her shoulders, the gaze fixed on her lap, made it clear that sympathy was the last thing she desired, but the raw pain was there, hidden under a mask of bitterness and anger. ‘That letter...’ She stopped to take a calming breath. ‘It is not only that there is no explanation. That letter raises a list of questions I wouldn’t even have known to ask.’

Questions. Such cases always raised more questions than answers. Answers which were so rarely found and which allowed guilt to flourish amid the uncertainty. Jack had written countless letters to the loved ones of his men who died in battle, emphasising the glory, and the valour and painlessness of death. Lies, all lies, but beneath the glossing over of reality lay one inalienable truth. They had died doing their duty for their country. Their death had a purpose.

The others, though, the families of those thankfully rare cases where death had been self-inflicted, they had no such truths to console them for what he had once, God forgive him, thought the most heinous of crimes. He searched for Celeste’s hands once more, gripping them tightly. ‘This letter, it’s a great deal more than most have in such circumstances. Will you tell me what she said, and then I will be able to see how I might be able to help you?’

She considered it, looking at him earnestly, but eventually shook her head. ‘Not yet. I can’t.’ She slipped from his grasp, getting to her feet with an apologetic look. ‘I appreciate you sharing your experience of what is a painful and delicate subject. And for being so careful of my feelings. I do not discount your offer to help—it is most generous, but I must consider it carefully. The emotions involved are intensely private. Do you understand?’

Much as he wished to, he resisted the temptation to press her, because he did understand that, only too well. Jack got wearily to his feet. ‘I have no other demands on my time or my services, so please take as much time as you need.’

* * *

Following a sleepless night, Celeste felt wrung out like one of her painting rags after washing. In the end, she had decided to trust Jack. She could not imagine having the conversation they’d had yesterday with a complete stranger, and she could not expect that a complete stranger would have demonstrated the tact or level of understanding Jack had of such matters.

It was not really such a leap of faith when she laid it out logically like that, to trust him. But it was not logic which ultimately convinced her. It was only after he had left her, when she had recovered from the dull ache precipitated by speaking of her mother’s death, that she realised how difficult it must have been for him to talk so sensitively on such a delicate matter. Soldiers were men of war. Soldiers were tough, and brave and bold. English soldiers were famous for their courage and their staunchness in the face of adversity. They did not cry. They did not fear. They most certainly did not have a conscience. Or so she’d thought. Assumed, she corrected herself, because until she met Jack, Celeste thought shamefully, she hadn’t actually thought about it much at all.

She remembered the reports in the newspapers after Waterloo. Death on the battlefield was neither clean nor quick. It was no wonder that the men who fought suffered from—what was it Jack had called it?—an extreme melancholy after witnessing all that horror and suffering. Was Jack suffering from that too? There had been moments yesterday when she thought he spoke from personal experience. But then he did, she reminded herself, thinking of the letters he’d mentioned having to write. The point was he understood and that was why she could trust him.

‘May I come in?’

As if she had summoned him, the man himself stood in the doorway of Celeste’s temporary studio. Dressed in a pair of tight-fitting pantaloons which showed off his long legs to good effect, and a coat which enhanced his broad shoulders, his cravat was neatly tied, and his jaw freshly shaved.

‘You look very—handsomely dressed,’ Celeste said, taken by surprise once more by the force of the attraction she felt for him. The clothes of an English gentleman not only accentuated his muscular physique, but they also, somehow, accentuated the fact that the man wearing them was not always a gentleman. In fact he was just a little bit dangerous. And, yes, a trifle intimidating too.

‘Which is a polite way of saying I look a lot less shoddy than normal,’ Jack said, closing the door behind him. ‘You, if I may say so, look as ravishing as usual. And believe me, I have seen my fair share of beauties. A perk of the job, working on Wellington’s staff.’

‘So his reputation, the French press did not exaggerate it?’

‘I doubt it possible.’

Celeste smiled, but the sight of the letter sitting where she had lain it in preparation made it a forced affair. She picked it up, but despite her resolve, found herself surprisingly reluctant to hand it over. ‘Are you still— Your offer to help, is it still open?’

‘Of course. I want very much to—’

‘Only I would not wish to presume,’ Celeste interrupted, ‘and it occurred to me that perhaps you offered only because you felt a little sorry for me.’

‘No. I understand what you are experiencing, that is all, and I wish to prevent you from— Is that the letter?’ Jack said, holding out his hand.

‘Yes.’ Celeste still kept a firm grip on it. ‘I don’t know what people commonly write in such missives...’

‘Most do not write anything,’ Jack said, ‘as far as I am aware. Or they merely reassure their families that they love them.’

‘Well, in that one regard my mother has followed the custom,’ Celeste said acerbically, ‘though it is the one thing I know for certain to be a lie.’ A brief silence met this remark. She flushed, annoyed at having betrayed herself. ‘It is more of a puzzle than it is a confession,’ she said, gazing down at the letter again. ‘I admit it has me baffled. What we need is someone to make sense of it—what on earth have I said to amuse you?’

‘Not amused, so much as taken aback, I am sorry,’ Jack said, his expression once more serious. ‘It’s just that solving puzzles is—was—my stock in trade. I have a certain reputation as an expert in acrostics. My brother would be shocked at your ignorance, for he mistakenly delights in my minor fame.’ He took her hand. ‘Celeste, I was Wellington’s code-breaker.’

She looked at him in bewilderment. ‘I’m sorry, but I truly am ignorant of these things.’ She broke off, staring as the implications of what Jack had said finally dawned on her. ‘Code-breaker? Do you mean you were a spy?’

‘After a fashion, though not, I suspect, in quite the way you are imagining. Not so much cloak and dagger as pen and paper. Information,’ Jack clarified. ‘Contrary to what civilians believe, wars are not won on the battlefield. Obviously, the battlefield is where matters are finally resolved, but getting there at the right time, in the correct field positions, having the men and the horses and the artillery all lined up, and knowing your enemy—his strategies, his positions, his plans, his firepower—that’s what wins or loses a war. Having a retreat planned if required. And knowing what you’re going to do if you break through his ranks—those matter too. You’ve no idea how many battles are lost when a commander in the field gets too far ahead of himself, or finds himself in retreat when no organised withdrawal has been planned.’

‘You are right, I have absolutely no idea.’

Jack laughed. ‘Put simply, information is what an army thrives on. My role was to assimilate that information to allow the generals to plot their campaigns and I did that by cracking codes, by piecing together different snippets from different sources and assembling them in an order that made sense. Solving puzzles, in other words.’

‘And that, I am pleased to say, does make sense.’ Without giving herself the chance to rethink the decision again, Celeste handed Jack the letter.

‘Thank you. May I read it now?’

Her nerves jangling, she nodded. Jack sat down on the chaise longue which she had positioned in front of her easel. Unable to watch him, she busied herself, opening her precious box of paints and making an unnecessary inventory of the powders and pigments in their glass vials, of her brushes and oils. Behind her, she could hear the faintest rustle of paper worn thin by her many readings. A squeak, which must be Jack’s boots as he shifted in his seat. Another rustle. He was taking an age. He must have gone back to the beginning. She wondered if she should set about stretching a canvas, but immediately abandoned the idea. Her hands were shaking. She began to rearrange her paints again.

‘I’m finished.’

Celeste whirled around, dropping a vial of cadmium-yellow which, fortunately for her and the floor covering, landed softly on a rug without breaking. Cursing under her breath, she snatched it up and put it back in her box before joining Jack on the sofa. ‘What is your verdict?’

‘I think you must have been shocked to the core when you read this the first time.’

She gave a shaky laugh. ‘It was certainly unexpected.’

‘Unexpected!’ Jack swore. ‘You had no inkling of anything it contained?’

‘No. I told you we were not close. En effet, my mother and I were estranged.’ She was aware of Jack’s eyes on her, studying her carefully. It made her uncomfortable, for while she refused to become emotional, she suspected that emotional is precisely what anyone else would be under the circumstances. She gazed resolutely down at her hands. ‘As to the man I believed to be my father, he was always distant. From the beginning, I sensed he resented me. At least now I know why.’

‘You were not his child.’

‘So it would seem,’ she said with a shrug.

‘You’re very matter-of-fact about something so important.’

‘I have had eight months to become accustomed to it.’

Jack eyed her doubtfully. ‘But you’re not accustomed to it, are you? Despite your mother’s positively begging you not to pursue the questions she raises, here you are in England, doing exactly that. It obviously matters a great deal to you.’

Celeste’s hackles rose. ‘I am curious, that’s all,’ she said. Even to her, this sounded like far too much of an understatement. ‘Well, would not you be?’ She crossed her arms. ‘You said yourself only yesterday, people—the ones who are left behind—desire answers. Even when we are advised from beyond the grave not to pursue them. Do not tell me that you would have folded the letter up and forgotten all about it as my mother bids me, Jack Trestain, because I would not believe you.’

‘No, I wouldn’t do that, but neither would I be sitting here pretending that it was merely a matter of satisfying my curiosity either. For God’s sake, Celeste, it’s your mother we’re talking about, not a distant aunt,’ Jack exclaimed. ‘She drowned herself. She made sure that this letter wouldn’t reach you until she was dead. She then alludes to some tragedy in her past being the reason, and caps it all with the revelation that the man you thought all your life was your father is not actually your father, and fails to inform you of the identity of the man who is.”

Jack held the letter out at arm’s length. ‘“Though I write this with the heaviest of hearts,”’ he read, ‘“knowing that I will never see you again, I am thankful that at least this time I have the opportunity to say goodbye.” Your mother’s opening words. What about the fact that she denied you the opportunity to say goodbye to her? Aren’t you upset about that?’

Celeste didn’t want him to be angry on her behalf. If anyone was entitled to be angry with her mother it was she, and she was not. In order to be angry she would need to care, and she did not. She didn’t want Jack to care either. She wanted him to treat this as an intellectual exercise, devoid of emotion. Like breaking a code. ‘You said yourself, she was most likely not in a rational frame of mind. At the end of her tether. Perhaps even a little bit out of her mind. There is no point in my becoming upset. It achieves nothing. Besides, I’ve told you, we were not remotely close.’

‘And if you say that it doesn’t trouble you often enough, you think I’ll eventually believe you.’

Celeste flinched. ‘I don’t care what you believe. Next, you will be telling me that my mother loved me despite a lifetime’s evidence to the contrary.’

‘That is exactly what she claims in her letter.’

‘Yes, from beyond the grave, safe from any challenge to the contrary. How am I to believe it when I have nothing, no evidence at all, to support it? All my life—all my life, Jack!—she pushed me away. And now this. I don’t believe her. How can I believe her? Of course I don’t believe her. C’est impossible!’

Celeste jumped to her feet, turning her back on him to stare out at the long, bland stretch of lawn, struggling desperately to get her unaccustomed flash of temper under control. ‘You have to understand,’ she continued in a more measured tone, ‘it was similar when I was growing up. Always, my mother managed to find a way of refusing to answer questions. Why have I no aunts or uncles? Why must we never speak English except when alone? Why have I no grandparents or even a cousin, as all the other children at school have? Why are you so sad, Maman? Why does Papa hate me? At least now I have the answer to that last question. Papa was not, in fact, my papa at all.’

Tears filled her eyes. Celeste swallowed hard on the jagged lump in her throat, staring determinedly out at the lawn. ‘I have endured a lifetime of silences and rejection, so really that letter was in essence one final example. Don’t tell me that she loved me, Jack. I know what she wrote, I don’t have to read that letter again to see the words dance in front of my eyes, but that’s all they are. Just words.’

‘If it doesn’t matter, if it truly doesn’t matter, then why then are you so intent on digging up the past?’ Jack put his hands on her shoulders, forcing her to turn and face him. ‘You do realise that what you discover might be hurtful.’

‘Not to me. My hurt is all in the past. All I am doing is filling in the blanks, the missing pieces of my mother’s history. I want to understand why she behaved as she did. I want to know who my real father is. I think I am entitled to know that, but I do not want to meet him, or indeed my mother’s family. I’m not expecting anyone to kill the fatted calf and welcome me into their home. I am aware that I am most likely a bastard. Knowing is sufficient for me.’

‘Your mother’s history is your history too, Celeste. You might be better off not knowing it. Sometimes it’s better to leave the past behind you.’

‘Or bury it so deeply that you can pretend it never happened, that it can no longer harm you?’ She pulled herself free of his hold. ‘But what if the ghosts refuse to stay buried, Jack? What if they continue to haunt you?’

His face paled. ‘What the devil are you implying?’

She had not meant anything in particular. Intent only on silencing his relentless probing, it seemed she had inadvertently struck a raw nerve. It would be dangerous to push him further but it was time to let him sample a little of his own medicine. ‘I have no idea why my mother went to such extremes to make me hate her, but I do know that I need to find out why. I need to understand. I need answers, Jack, while you—you seem so very determined to avoid asking the questions.’

‘What questions?’

There was no mistaking the icy tone in his voice, but she ignored it. She was becoming very interested indeed in how he would respond. ‘What is it that prevents you eating and sleeping? What is it that makes you stop in the middle of a conversation and—and disappear? As if you are no longer there. What is it that makes—?’

‘What is it that stops you from crying, Celeste? What is it that prevents you from admitting that your mother’s death affected you? Ask yourself those, more pertinent questions.’

Jack turned towards the door. Furious, uncaring that she had now achieved her objective, Celeste grabbed his arm. ‘You see, you are running away from the truth. Why won’t you talk about it?’

‘Take your hands off me. Now.’

She had gone too far. She knew it would be insane to push him further, but she knew with certainty that was exactly what she was going to do. Celeste tilted her chin and met his stormy eyes. ‘No.’

She half-expected him to strike her, but he made no such move. Instead, he pulled her towards him until they stood thigh to thigh, chest to chest. She was still angry, but her body responded immediately to the contact with a shiver of delight. ‘I am not afraid of you,’ Celeste said, tilting her head at him.

‘I know,’ Jack said. ‘It’s part of your appeal.’