Marguerite Kaye
England—August 1815
The small huddle of women and the bedraggled children who clung to their skirts stared at him as one, wide-eyed and unblinking, struck dumb and motionless with fear. Only the compulsive clutching of their mother’s protective fingers around the children’s shoulders betrayed the full extent of their terror. He was accustomed to death in combat, but this was a village, not a battlefield. He was accustomed to seeing enemy causalities, but these were civilians, women and young children...
Jack Trestain’s breathing became rapid and shallow as he tossed and turned in the throes of his recurring nightmare. He thrashed around on the sweat-soaked sheets. He knew he was dreaming, but he couldn’t wake from it. He knew what was coming next, but he couldn’t prevent it unfolding in all its horror.
His boots crunched on the rough sun-dried track as he walked, stunned, around the small village, his brain numb, unable to make sense of what his eyes were telling him. The sun burned the back of his neck. He had lost his hat. A scrawny chicken squawked loudly, running across his path, making him stumble. How had the mission turned into such a debacle? How could his information, his precious, carefully gathered knowledge of the enemy’s movements, have been so wrong?
It was not possible. Not possible. Not possible. The words rang in his head over and over. He was aware of his comrades’ voices, of orders being barked, but he felt utterly alone.
The cooking fires were still burning. From a large smoke-blackened cauldron the appetising aroma of a herb-filled stew rose in the still, unnaturally silent air. He had not eaten since yesterday. He was suddenly ravenous.
As his stomach growled, he became aware of another, all-pervading smell. Ferrous. The unmistakable odour of dried blood. And another. The sickly-sweet stench of charred flesh.
As the noxious combination seared the back of his throat, Jack retched violently, spilling his guts like a raw recruit in a nearby ditch. Spasm after spasm shook him, until he had to clutch at the scorched trunk of a splintered tree to support himself. Shivering, shaking, he had no idea how long the girl had been looming over him...
It was the fall that woke him. He was on the floor of his bedchamber, clutching a pillow. He had banged his head on the nightstand. The ewer had toppled over and smashed. The chambermaid would think him one of the clumsiest guests she’d ever encountered. His nightshirt was drenched, the contents of the jug adding to his fevered sweat. His head was thumping, his jaw aching, and his wrists too, from clenching his fists. Wearily, Jack dragged himself to his feet and, opening the curtains, checking the hour on his pocket watch. It was just after five. He’d managed to sleep for a total of two hours.
Outside, morning mist wreathed the formal lawns which bordered the carriageway. Opening the casement wide, he leaned out, taking ragged breaths of fresh air. Damp, sweetly herbaceous air, not the dusty dry air of far-off lands, that caught in your lungs and the back of your throat, that was so still all smells lingered, and you carried them with you on your clothes for days afterwards.
Jack swallowed hard, squeezing his eyes tight shut in his effort to block out the unwelcome memory. Slow breaths. One. Two. Three. Four. Open your eyes. Moist air smelling of nothing but dew. More breaths. And more.
Dammit! It had been two years. He should be over it by now. Or if not over it, he should have it under control. He’d been coping perfectly well in the army—more or less. He’d been dealing with it—mostly. Functioning—on the whole. He hadn’t fallen apart. He’d been able to control his temper. He’d even been able to sleep, albeit mainly as a result of exhaustion brought on by a punishing schedule of duties. Only now, when he was free of that life, the very life that was responsible for creating his coruscating guilt, it was haunting his every waking and sleeping moment.
Dear God, he must not fall apart now, when it was finally all behind him. He had to get out of the house. He had to get that smell out of his head. Exercise, that’s what he needed. It had worked before. It would work again. He would make it work again.
His forearm had finally been released just yesterday after weeks in a cumbersome splint. Jack flexed his fingers, relishing the pain which resulted, his toes curling on the rug. He deserved the pain. A damned stupid thing to do, to fall from his horse, even if his shoulder had just been torn open by a French musket. Quite literally adding insult to injury.
Take it easy, the quack had advised yesterday, reminding him that he might never recover his full strength. As if he needed reminding. As if it mattered now. ‘As if anything matters,’ Jack muttered to himself, pulling off his nightshirt and throwing on a bare minimum of clothes before padding silently out of the house.
The sun was beginning to burn the mist away, drying the dew into a fine sheen as he set off at a fast march through the formal gardens of his older brother’s estate. Jack had been on active service in Egypt when their father died, and Charlie inherited. In the intervening years, nearly all of which Jack had spent abroad on one military campaign or another, Charlie had added two wings to their childhood home, and his wife, Eleanor, had redecorated almost every single room. The grounds, though, had been left untouched until now. In a few weeks, the extensive new landscaping programme would begin, and the estate would be transformed. The lake, towards which he now made his way, through the overgrown and soon-to-be-uprooted Topiary Garden, would be drained, dredged, deepened and reshaped into something that would apparently look more natural.
He stood on the reedy bank, inhaling the odours so resonant of childhood: the fresh smell of grass, the cloying scent of honeysuckle and the sweetness of rotting vegetation laced with mud coming from the lake bed. There was never anyone around at this time of day. It was just Jack, and the ducks and whatever fish survived in the brackish water of the lake.
Divesting himself quickly of his few garments, he stretched his arms high above his head, took a deep breath, and plunged head first into the water. Though it was relatively warm on the surface, it was cold enough underneath to make him gasp. Opening his eyes, he could see little, only floating reeds and twigs, the mixture of dead leaves and sludge churned up by his