The Soldier's Dark Secret

Chapter Four

Jack’s blood stirred at the first touch of her lips on his. He pulled her tight against him and kissed her more deeply. She returned his kiss with equal fervour. He’d been half-expecting her to slap him. He had kissed her merely to turn the tables on her. Now she was turning the tables back on him, just by reciprocating.

He had been angry. Nay, furious. Now his temper had vanished, burst as easily as a bubble by her touch. A gust of longing twisted his gut. He had not felt desire for such a long time. He could not recall ever feeling desire like this. Nothing to do with abstinence. Everything to do with this woman.

His fingers were shaking as he flattened his hand over her shoulder. This was not what he had intended. She was looking at him, her eyes wide open, watching him. Not afraid of him, though there was something there in her eyes he recognised. Yearning. Yes, and fear of the intensity of that yearning. He ought to stop. She should insist that he stop. He slid his hand down to cup her bottom and kissed her again. He needed, wanted, more. His body demanded it.

Her breathing quickened with his. Her fingers strayed into his hair. Her mouth was on his cheek, her lips warm, soft, little flicks of her tongue on his jaw, the corner of his mouth, licking along his lower lip, nipping, licking, until he could no longer stifle a moan of desire, and she gave an answering sigh.

He abandoned himself to her kisses, to the heat of her touch, to the fever of passion which had him in its iron grip. Their mouths locked. Their tongues thrust and tangled greedily. His hands were on her back, her bottom. Her fingers roamed wildly over him, his back, shoulders, tugging at his coat, clutching at his flanks.

He was achingly hard. He cupped her breasts, frustrated by the layers of her clothing, the impediment of her corsets. He dipped his head to kiss the soft swell of her cleavage, inhaling the sweet smell of her, relishing the shudder of her breath, the rapid beat of her heart, knowing that he had done this to her, that she was doing the same to him.

Their kisses grew ragged. His thirst for her was not remotely quenched. His coat was hanging off by one arm. He shrugged himself free of it, pressing her against the wall of the studio. She moaned, tugging his shirt from his pantaloons, flattening her hands on his back. Her skin on his. He hadn’t thought he could get any harder. His erection throbbed. A long strand of her white-blonde hair had escaped its pins to lie against the biscuit-coloured skin of her bosom.

He had never wanted any woman this much. His erection pressed into her belly. He slid his hand inside the neckline of her gown to envelop the fullness of her breast. When he touched the hard peak of her nipple she cried out, the distinctive sound of a woman on the verge of a climax. He felt the answering tingling in the tip of his shaft that precluded his own. Shocked, he pulled himself free, hazily aware that she was pushing him away.

What the hell? It was no consolation at all to see his own question reflected in her face. He couldn’t think of a damned thing to say. He could, unfortunately, think of a hundred things he wanted to do. Needed to do. Urgently. Jack swore long and hard under his breath. Breathe. Don’t think about it. But he couldn’t take his eyes of her. She hadn’t moved. Head and shoulders against the wall. Eyes closed. Breathing slowly. Measured breaths like his. Hands curled into fists like his. Cheeks flushed with desire, no doubt as his were. That long tendril of hair lying across her breast. He reached for it, caught himself, took a step back and tumbled against the leg of a table.

Celeste opened her eyes. Jack pushed his hair back from his face. They stared at each other for a long moment. Then she stood up, tucked the strand of hair behind her ears, straightened her shoulders. ‘Bien, at least now we know that it was not a product of circumstances, that kiss in the Topiary Garden.’ Her voice was shaky, but she made no attempt to avoid his gaze.

‘The one you insisted was just a kiss,’ he said.

‘As I recall, you agreed with me.’

‘Because I thought I had exaggerated its effect on me.’

‘And what about this time?’

He shook his head. ‘No. It would not be possible to exaggerate how that just felt. Frankly, it was almost too much.’

‘For both of us,’ Celeste said wryly.

Would another woman have denied it? It didn’t matter. What mattered was that she did not. It made his own instinct to pretend nothing had happened, or to pretend nothing so—so— No, he would not try to quantify it, and he would not try to deny it. ‘Do you regret it?’ Jack asked as he self-consciously tucked his shirt back into his pantaloons.

She had been rearranging the neckline of her gown, but at that she looked up. ‘Why should I?’

There was an edge in her words that took him aback. He had asked her, he realised now, purely because it was the sort of thing he thought he ought to ask. He knew he ought to regret his actions, but he could not. He was too elated to have the proof that it had not been a fluke, his reaction to that first kiss. Elated to know that whatever was wrong with him, lack of desire was no longer an integral part of it. Frustrated—hell, yes, he was frustrated. But he was also— Yes, he was also still a little bit afraid of the reaction she had provoked in him. And more than a little afraid of the consequences if he had not stopped.

‘I have never been one of those women who pretend they have no desires of their own.’ Celeste’s voice cut into his thoughts. ‘Nor am I the kind of woman who pretends that such physical desires represent anything more significant, Jack.’

‘You’re warning me off. There’s no need, I assure you. At this moment in time, my only ambition is to get myself through the day—’ He broke off, realising too late what he’d admitted, remembering, suddenly, why he had kissed her in the first place. And now he’d given her the perfect opening to start again.

But to his surprise, her expression softened. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That is how I have felt since—since.’ She blinked rapidly, and forced a smile. ‘It is a good thing, this—this—between us, because now I know that I am recovering myself— No, that is not the correct expression.’

‘Slowly getting back to normal?’

‘Yes. That is it. That is what this is, yes? We are both adults. We are obviously well suited as regards—kissing,’ Celeste said, flushing. ‘We need not pretend it is anything else, no?’

He was most likely imagining the pleading note in her voice. It was most likely his male ego that wanted to believe she was much more confused by what had happened between them than she appeared. As confused as he was? ‘You’re right,’ Jack said with a conviction he was far from feeling.

Celeste nodded. ‘Yes. It makes sense, what I said.’

It did. Perfect sense. So it was pointless wondering why she sounded as unconvinced as he. ‘So,’ Jack said in a bracing voice that made him cringe, ‘talking of getting back to normal, perhaps we should concentrate on these questions your mother has raised. Do you have any other clues, save the letter?’

If she noticed anything odd in his voice, she chose not to comment on it. ‘A couple of things. There is this, for what it’s worth, which is not a lot.’ Celeste unclasped the locket from her neck and handed it to him. ‘It came with the letter. My mother always wore it. I don’t think I ever saw her without it.’

Jack turned the oval locket over in his hand, examining it carefully. The metal was slightly tarnished so it was difficult to tell, but it looked like it might be gold or, more likely rose-gold, a cheaper alloy. It was embellished with a fleur-de-lis design. Around the rim were laurel leaves set with clear stones and in the centre was set a larger blue one.

‘It’s just a trinket,’ Celeste said dismissively, ‘though a pretty one.’

‘I’m no expert,’ Jack said, ‘but the design is very fine, most intricately worked. See these hinges? They are very high quality indeed and not at all commonplace. I think it may be more valuable than you think.’

In fact, he was pretty sure that the smaller stones were diamonds, and that the blue stone was a sapphire. As a consequence the locket was more than likely commissioned, and indeed, on the back he noted tiny symbols, probably the goldsmith’s mark. Which might make it, and the owner’s name, traceable. But he could not be certain, and so, as was his custom, he kept his own counsel rather than raise Celeste’s hopes prematurely. ‘Do you mind if I open it?’ he asked.

‘If you wish.’

She shrugged, but he was becoming attuned to her many permutations of shrug, and Jack knew this one for feigned indifference. When he eased open the catch, he could understand why. Inside were two miniature portraits, one on each side. The first, of a flaxen-haired child, was obviously Celeste. The second, facing it, was of an older woman, her pale hair pulled tightly back from her forehead. Aside from the eyes, which were blue, the resemblance between mother and daughter was very strong, but when he said so, Celeste frowned.

‘Do you think so?’

He was surprised by the uncertainty in her voice. ‘She is unmistakably your mother, and clearly the source of your own beauty.’

Celeste touched the miniature with the tip of her finger. ‘She was beautiful. I had forgotten.’

‘May I ask her name?’

Celeste snatched her hand away. ‘Blythe.’

‘They seem to me to have been painted as a pair,’ Jack said. ‘I’m no expert, but...’

‘No, you are right. Both are by my mother’s hand.’ She had herself firmly under control again, and spoke in that cool way of hers he’d initially mistaken for detachment. ‘Unusually, actually, for she mostly painted the landscapes around Cassis. The fishing boats, the calanques—the limestone cliffs and inlets which punctuate the coast. I have never seen another portrait painted by her.’

Which made this pair all the more touching, Jack thought. He was tempted to say so, but hesitated, remembering her reaction earlier, when he had pushed her on her feelings. And she had pushed him straight back. A salutary lesson, he reckoned, in how not to go about extracting information. ‘Cassis,’ he said instead. ‘The village where you grew up?’

Celeste treated him to one of her shrugs. The feigned indifference one again. ‘Paris has been my home for many years.’

‘I remember, you said you were sent there to school when you were—ten?’

‘Yes. And stayed on to study art.’

‘You were very young to be sent so very far from home.’

‘It was a very good school.’

She would not meet his eyes. Another sensitive subject. ‘You mentioned there was another clue?’ Jack said, once more deciding that the best policy would be to bide his time.

She handed him a small packet of stitched muslin. Inside was a man’s signet ring. ‘I found it when I went to Cassis to close the house up after—after,’ Celeste said. ‘I was taking Maman’s paintings down. This was sewn to the back of her favourite canvas. It must have been there for years. I have no idea what it signifies. It clearly does not belong to my mother.’ She leaned across him to peer down at the ring. ‘The markings, I thought perhaps were a family crest. That might lead us somewhere,’ she said, looking at him hopefully.

‘It looks to me more likely to be a military crest. I’m not sure of the regiment. I would need to check.’

‘Military? Why on earth would my mother have such a thing in her possession?’

‘It’s a good question.’

‘As if we don’t have enough questions already. Do you think you can help, Jack?’

He studied the ring with an ominous sense of foreboding. ‘I can try.’

* * *

The next morning, a soft breeze blew up as Celeste walked with Jack along a path which led from the far end of the lake, over a gentle rise to an ancient oak, underneath the spread of which was a wooden bench. The view was prettily bucolic, bathed in the golden early-morning light. They stood on top of the hill while Jack pointed out the spire of St Mary’s Church some five miles away, where Lady Eleanor’s father was the vicar, and closer, the many-gabled rooftops of Trestain Manor. Golden fields of half-harvested wheat contrasted with the dark-green tunnels of hops, while the low, thatched roofs of the farm buildings and cottages contrasted with the distinctive, conical roofs of two oast houses where the hops were roasted.

Celeste was entranced, her charcoal flying over page after page of her sketchbook, while Jack, seated on the bench under the tree, filled her in on some of the history of what she was drawing. He was back to his usual garb of leather breeches and boots, a shirt without either waistcoat or coat. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up. The skin of his right arm was already turning golden-brown. She would like to draw him like this, his long, booted legs stretched out in front of him, his hair falling over his forehead, the curve of his mouth in a lazy smile. That mouth, the source of such intoxicating kisses.

Desire knotted in her belly. She had never before tumbled so perilously close to completion after a few kisses. The rapidity of her arousal had caught her completely unawares. When he had touched her nipple...

Celeste inhaled sharply. Even now, the memory of it was enough to heat her. And to frighten her. All very well to thank Jack for bringing her body back to life as she more or less had, rather embarrassingly, yesterday, but he had brought it to a place it had never been before. Her claim that abstinence had somehow attenuated what Jack’s kisses did to her felt faintly ridiculous now. In her whole life, she had taken four lovers, and there had been two years between the first and second, yet she knew with certainty that none had made her feel the way Jack did.

The natural conclusion, that it was not circumstances but this man, this very particular man, was what had kept her awake last night. Clearly there was something, some force, some element, some quirk of nature, which made their bodies so well matched. This explanation, she should have found comforting, but for some reason, she did not. If it had not been so reasonable, she would have been inclined to dismiss it as wrong.

‘Is Mademoiselle ready to partake of breakfast now?’

Celeste jumped, staring down at blankly her half-finished sketch. Her charcoal was on the grass beside her. How long had she been daydreaming? At least with her back turned to him, Jack would not have noticed. Or if he had, he had decided not to comment, she thought with relief. There was nothing worse than being asked what it was one was thinking, for it was inevitably something one did not wish to share. It had been unkind of her to mention those lost moments of Jack’s yesterday. Call it daydreaming, call it disappearing, as she had, wherever they were, they were private. His and his alone.

She gave him an apologetic smile as she joined him on the grass, leaning her back against the bench. ‘Thank you.’

He quirked his brow but said nothing, pulling the hamper they had brought with them out from beneath the shade of the tree before spreading a blanket out. There was fresh-baked bread, butter and cheese, a flask of coffee and some peaches. ‘Picked fresh this morning, and though they are ripe,’ he said, sniffing the soft fruit, ‘I don’t expect they’ll be anything like what you’re used to. Our English sun is just not strong enough.’

Celeste stretched her face up to the sky, closing her eyes and relishing the heat on her skin. ‘It is a good deal warmer than I expected. I don’t think I have seen a drop of English rain yet.’

‘You will. One merely has to wait a few days.’

Jack handed her a cup of coffee. Celeste tore off a piece of bread, burying her nose in the delicious, yeasty smell of it. ‘Another myth. I was told that the English cannot bake good bread, but this is most acceptable.’

‘A high compliment indeed from a Frenchwoman.’ He handed her a slice of cheese and laughed when she sniffed that too, wrinkling her nose. ‘Try it, you might be surprised.’

She did, and was forced to admit that, like the bread, it was excellent. ‘Though it breaks my French heart to do so,’ she added, smiling over her coffee cup.

‘But you’re half-English, are you not?’

‘I suppose I am, though I don’t feel it. I think one has to be part of a country before one feels any sense of belonging. All this,’ Celeste said, spreading her arms wide at the sweeping view, ‘it feels so alien to me.’

‘Maybe that’s because you’re a Parisian.’

Celeste laughed. ‘When I first arrived in Paris, I felt such an outsider. It was as if everyone but me knew a secret and they were all whispering about it behind my back. Even after fifteen years, I’m still not considered a genuine Parisian. I don’t have that je ne sais quoi, that air about me. To the true Parisians, I will always be an incomer.’

‘I know exactly what you mean,’ Jack said. ‘Paris, it’s always seemed to me, is a city that only reveals itself at night, and even then, you have to know where to look. I always sense the best elements are just round the next corner, or along the next boulevard. In Paris, I always feel as if I’m on the outside looking in. It’s not like London at all.’

‘I have never visited London. I hope to go there before I return to France.’ Celeste broke off another piece of bread and accepted a second piece of cheese which Jack cut for her. ‘You have been away from England a long time,’ she said. ‘Does it still feel like home?’

He paused in the act of quartering a peach. ‘Charlie wants me to buy an estate and settle down. I never did share his love for country life, though he seems to have conveniently forgotten that.’

‘Perhaps it would be different if you had been the eldest son, if Trestain Manor belonged to you and not to your brother?’

Jack laughed. ‘Lord, no, I’d be bored senseless. It was always the army for me, so it’s as well I’m the second son and not the first.’ He handed her the peach. ‘What about you? Have you never thought of going back to live in your fishing village?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t you miss it? I used to miss all this,’ Jack said. ‘Even though I wouldn’t want to live here, it’s my childhood home.’

Celeste stared at the quarter of peach in her hand. ‘The house in Cassis was where I lived. It was never a home.’ Her voice sounded odd, even to her own ears. She was, yet again, on the brink of tears for no reason. It was Jack’s fault. All she wanted him to do was help her unravel the mystery of her mother’s past, but for some reason, he persisted in linking that past with her own. He seemed to have the knack of inflaming her emotions as well as her body. She set the peach down. ‘Paris is my home,’ she said, as if repeating it would make it more true. Not that it needed to be more true. It was true.

She thought of the house where she had grown up. The distinctive creak of the front door. The very different creak of the fifth stair which had a broken tread. The way the floors always seemed to echo when she walked, signalling her presence too loudly. She tried to close her mind to the memories, but they would not stop flowing. It was Jack’s fault. This was all Jack’s fault.

On her last visit, after receiving the letter, she had packed up every one of her mother’s paintings. They lay in crates now, stacked in a corner of her Paris studio. She couldn’t bear to look at them but nor could she bear to dispose of them. The rest of the house she had left as it was.

She shook her head. She was aware of Jack, sipping his coffee, pretending not to study her, but the ghosts of the past had too strong a claim on her. Her mother on the cliff top painting, her hair covered by a horrible cap, her body draped in shapeless brown. Her mother’s face, starkly beautiful in the miniature inside her locket, strained and sad. Her mother’s paintings were all of the coast and the sea which took her. The sea which she had abandoned herself to, without giving Celeste a chance to save her. The beautiful, cruel sea, which her mother had chosen to embrace, rather than her own daughter.

The pain was unexpected. Nothing so clichéd as a stab to the heart; it was duller, weightier, like a heavy blow to the stomach. At least this time I have the opportunity to say goodbye, her mother had written, so certain that Celeste cared so little she would not wish to do the same. With good cause, for Celeste had made it very clear, after Henri died...

A tear rolled down her cheek. Her throat was clogged. She couldn’t speak. She was filled with the most unbearable sadness. What was wrong with her! She never cried. Had never cried. Now, hardly a day went by where she teetered on the verge of stupid, stupid tears.

In the distance, the chime of St Mary’s heralded noon. She dabbed frantically at her eyes with her napkin. She never carried a handkerchief.

‘Celeste?’

Jack! It was his fault for dredging all this up. His fault for making her so on edge. She jumped to her feet and snatched up her sketchbook. ‘I have the headache,’ she said. ‘I have no more paper. I need to rest. I need more charcoal.’

She was fleeing, just as Jack had, after that first kiss, and she did not care. All that mattered was that he did not stop her. She barely noticed in her anxiety to escape that he made absolutely no attempt to do so.