Page 22 of The Captive
“Fuck you, St. Just.”
“So many wish they could.” He heaved a theatrical sigh and went about polishing his sword as if Christian weren’t kneeling on his blankets, feeling like a complete buffoon. The legacy of his tenure among the French would accrue usurious interest—if he allowed it to. Christian pulled his shirt over his head, shucked out of his breeches, and took his damned bath.
And to be clean again, really truly clean, had been worth the humiliation.
Except St. Just hadn’t said a thing about the scars, the eccentricity of a titled officer being afraid to bathe, or the need for a grown man to be reassured of his own safety in the bucolic surrounds of the French countryside.
Christian’s heart had still been thundering against his ribs when he emerged from the pond and toweled off.
“Shall I trim your beard?”
“Are you trying to provoke me?”
“I’m trying to tidy you up. You look like a wild man from darkest Africa in your off moments.”
Of which there was an abundance. “Perhaps I always looked like something escaped from the jungles.”
“Not you.” St. Just tucked his pistols away, and Christian was sorry to lose sight of them. “I was two years ahead of you at university. You were as vain as a peacock ten years ago.”
“We all were.”
“We were boys; it was our turn to be vain.”
Except Christian abruptly recalled St. Just as a much-younger man, a duke’s by-blow who was cursed with a stutter. He hadn’t been vain in the least, and when the situation had called for it, he’d let his fists do the talking.
“So you either give me permission to trim you up now,” St. Just said, “or I’ll have a go at you while you sleep.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Nighty-night then.” He ran his thumb across the blade of yet another knife—this one likely resided in the man’s boot—and his teeth gleamed in the fading light. “Or we could go best out of three falls.” He tucked the knife away. “I’m a decent wrestler, growing up with four brothers. For a while I had a slight advantage, being the oldest, but they’d come at me in twos and threes.”
“Get out your kit, then, and shut up.”
“Wise choice. You wouldn’t want my death or dismemberment on your conscience.”
He pulled a shaving kit from his saddlebag—Aladdin’s cave of wonders for the traveling cavalryman—and produced a pair of grooming scissors.
“Don’t think,” he said. “Just sit there and hate me for doing this, hmm?”
“What hatreds keep you going?” Christian asked the question mostly to keep St. Just talking.
“I am haunted by the abuse I see of good animals,” St. Just said. “They never asked to go to war. They never asked to attempt a goddamned winter march on Moscow. They never asked for the artillery barrages to frighten them out of their feeble little horsey wits. Hold the hell still.”
For all his irascibility, St. Just’s hand was steady and deft. Snip, snip, snip, while Christian wondered if he’d ever allow another to shave him again. To be assigned a valet when he’d come down from university had been a comfortable and pleasant rite of maturation, to start each day with the cheerful, careful ministrations of a man dedicated to the proper care and grooming of the young duke.
“Your cousin took good care of your horse while you were unable to,” St. Just said. “You’re done, and I expect a solid recommendation from you as a barber when I muster out.”
Christian rubbed his hand along his jaw, finding the beard much closer to his skin, much tidier.
“My thanks.” Because by insisting on this concession to proper turnout, St. Just had scrubbed away another layer of captivity.
“You’ll set all the ladies’ hearts to fluttering.” St. Just tossed him a towel, using, of course, too much force.
And Christian couldn’t catch it, not with either hand. “As if I give a hearty goddamn for the ladies’ opinions.”
“You will,” St. Just said, getting comfortable on his blankets. “God willing, we all will again, someday soon.”
Christian wanted to argue with St. Just, wanted to ask what that last comment meant, wanted an excuse to keep the man awake, really, because bathing and letting his beard be trimmed had left Christian’s nerves shorn too. These mundane aspects of hygiene were accomplishments for him, reasons to be a little less worried for his sanity.
