Page 62 of The Soldier
“My little heart was none too pleased with the situation either,” he murmured. “I just wish…”
“Yes?”
“I wish I’d known she still… maintained an interest,” he said. “I feel petulant and stupid for it, but why wouldn’t a mother want a child to know she loved him?”
“Hard to understand, isn’t it? Imagine what it would have taken were Douglas to walk away from Rose.”
“I don’t understand.” St. Just frowned. “He would never abandon that child. He committed hanging felonies to protect her, come to think of it.”
“Consider your mother carried you under her heart for nine months,” the duchess replied. “She delivered you into this world at risk to her own life, prostituted herself to keep a roof over your head, and raised you every day for five years. How on earth could she have survived giving you up?”
St. Just shrugged. “I figured I wasn’t much fun to have underfoot. Small boys can be a big nuisance when a woman depends on her social life for her livelihood.”
“For God’s sake, Devlin.” The duchess stood and glared at him. “Would you have tossed one of your younger sisters to the press gang because she wasn’t much fun to have underfoot?”
“Of course not.” He got to his feet, using the advantage of his height to glare back at her. “My sisters are my family.”
“No woman tosses her own child aside for mere convenience,” Her Grace said, abruptly every inch the duchess despite being in nightclothes and wooden clogs. “You would not treat a horse that way; what makes you think Kathleen St. Just would treat her child thus?”
“It made sense.” St. Just stalked off a few paces, and for the first time in his life, raised his voice—not to a shout, but to an emphasis—at the duchess. “I was five years old. I thought my mother left me because she didn’t want me. I never saw her again, never got a letter, a Christmas present, or a glimpse of the damned woman. How was I supposed to know that added up to a heroic sacrifice?She left me, and in the care of a man who never spoke when he could yell, and never showed affection. She left me in the care of a woman I was told to address as Her Grace. I never knew your name until I was off at school, for God’s sake. How is that love to a little boy?”
He stood there, glaring down at a woman who had shown him nothing but kindness, who was still trying to show him nothing but kindness.
“You wait right here,” Esther said to him sternly, as if he were quite small, “and do not depart until I have returned. We’ve done you a disservice, St. Just, by assuming the past should stay buried, but you do us a disservice, as well, by thinking we’d toss you to the rag and bone man were you anything less than a perfect little soldier. Your brother was rash and vainglorious and suited to the soldier’s life, but I should never have let your father buy you a commission. I have regretted it every day for more than ten years, young man, and I will not stand by, heaping up more regrets, while you torment yourself with a fiction that your mother willingly orphaned you.”
She stomped off, putting St. Just in mind of the Greek goddesses of old. Her green eyes had spit fire, her words had cut like a lash, and she’d been magnificent.
“What on earth was that about?” Val asked, strolling down the path from the manor. “Her Grace just whipped by me as if His Grace was in very serious trouble.”
“Not His Grace.” St. Just shook his head. “Me. Am I a perfect little soldier, Val?”
Val looked him up and down. “A perfect, somewhat largish soldier.”
St. Just winced. “Perfect?”
“You were never injured, and yet you fought in every major battle on the Peninsula, as well as at Waterloo,” Val said. “You were mentioned regularly in the dispatches, decorated like a German Christmas tree, and any horse you touch now sells for a small fortune based in part on your reputation among your fellow officers. You were perfect enough we can now hang an earldom around your neck—and those aren’t dispensed like candy. I gather, though, you’ve acquired a little bit of tarnish around the edges?”
“The patina of age,” St. Just murmured. “Are you ready to depart?”
“I am. You’re not?”
“I am under orders to wait for Her Grace’s return. I find myself reluctant to disobey.”
“One can understand this, as the woman reduces Percival Windham toblancmange. And here she comes, albeit looking a little more the thing.”
“Valentine.” Her Grace nodded at her youngest son. “Did you eat breakfast?”
“I did. St. Just is my witness.”
“St. Just.” Her Grace shoved a packet of letters at his chest. “These should have been given to you a lifetime ago, but the moment was never right. Read them.”
He took the letters from her but did not even glance down at the papers in his hand. “They’re from my mother?”
She nodded, holding his gaze. “The last one was written about a week before her death, when she knew she would not recover. I still cannot read it without losing my composure. Now the both of you get on your horses and go before I start to cry.”
“Good-bye, Mother.” Val wrapped his arms around her and suffered kisses to both of his cheeks. “I will practice every day, mostly, and I will use my tooth powder, and I will keep St. Just out of trouble, mostly, and I will write, sometimes. I love you. Don’t tell my sisters where I’ve gone.”
“You naughty, honest boy,” his mother said. “Safe journey, and I love you.”
