Page 37 of The Captive
Except the fingers of his left hand no longer accommodated their boyhood competence. What came out was an odd huff that would in no wise get the attention of the stableboys. His right hand did no better, and he wanted to kick something—Anduvoir’s privy parts would do for a start. He took no consolation from the stray thought that Girard alone might understand why.
“We need a groom?” her ladyship guessed. “I’ll try.”
She put her fingers to her lips and got off a stout, shrill peal, which had the stable lads looking up from across the sprawling back garden and Chessie standing quite tall in his gear. A groom scampered over, swung up on Chessie, and took the horse off toward the stables.
The sight of the groom trotting Chessie away to the stables tickled recollections Christian couldn’t quite retrieve, though the moment of déjà vu passed as quickly as it had arisen.
“What a good soul,” the countess said as Chessie obligingly decamped in the direction of his oats. “With a good memory too.”
“Very good,” Christian replied. “If Chessie hadn’t recognized me, I’m not sure I could have survived more stumbling about the French countryside, trying to prove my patrimony to the authorities.”
For some starving French farm wife would doubtless have killed the bearded scarecrow who’d forgotten how to talk.
“I’m glad Chesterton’s memory did not fail him.” Her ladyship slipped her arm through Christian’s again, then slid her hand down to encircle his left wrist. “What exactly befell your hand?”
War. Pain. Evil in the form of drunken corporals who likely could not have understood his English if hehadbroken his silence. “The French.”
They strolled along without further words, the lovely summer morning making the memory of the torture obscene, but less real too. Without him willing it, Christian’s mouth formed more sounds.
“The guards sought to wring a confession of treason from me, so even if I did escape, my own people would put me to death. The idea was not to cause physical pain for its own sake—though a certain variety of soldier enjoys torturing prisoners for that reason—but to destroy my sanity. A dream of escape often sustains a prisoner, and Girard wanted me to have that dream, probably to torment me as much as comfort me. Girard was livid when he realized what the guards had done with his pet duke.”
“The torture was merely a means to an end?” She spoke the word so casually, and her fingers laced through his.
Gently, but unapologetically. The way Girard had handled him after Anduvoir had departed to terrorize the camp whores.
“The goal of my captors was to rob me of my reason, to reduce a proud little dukeling to a puling, begging cipher. Breaking me became a game for them, and to some extent for me, too.”
As best he could figure. Why else would Girard have alternated inhuman treatment whenever Anduvoir came around with punctilious care and feeding?
“A game, like a duel to the death.”
“My death, or the death of my reason.”
She brought his hand up, holding the back of it against the extraordinary softness of her cheek. Until he’d taken liberties with her in the library, he’d forgotten how wonderfully, startlingly soft a woman’s cheek could be. As soft as sunshine and summer rain, as soft as the quiet of the English countryside.
“Shall we sit?” he asked, though she’d likely release his hand if they sat. He was a widower, though, and she ought not to begrudge him simple human contact when he’d been so recently bereaved.
She let him lead her to a shaded bench near the roses, the morning air faintly redolent of their perfume. When Christian seated her, the countess kept his damaged hand in hers.
“I was not allowed to garden at Greendale,” she said, fingers drifting over his knuckles. “The estate had gardens, because his lordship would not be seen to neglect his acres, but I was forbidden to walk them, or to dig about in the good English soil, or to consult with the gardeners regarding the designs and plantings.”
Based on the studied casualness of her tone, this prohibition had been irksome.
“You are free to garden here all you like. I ask only that you not disturb my mother’s roses.”
“They are lovely.”
“She was lovely.”
Another silence, while Christian became aware of his surroundings beyond the small hand holding his. The roses were in their early summer glory, and why Polite Society insisted on staying in Town through most of June was incomprehensible, when the alternative was the English countryside. The sunshine was a perfectly weighted beneficence on his cheek, the scent of the gardens heavenly, and the entire morning aurally gilded with the fluting chorus of songbirds.
He wanted to kiss the lady beside him again, not in thanks, not as a good-night benediction, but for the sheer pleasure of the undertaking.
“You were right about Severn,” Christian said. “I rode a few of the home-farm fields, and those are in good repair, but the bordering tenant farms are not as spruce.”
“You’ll soon put matters to rights.” She patted his hand, didn’t squeeze it. “My goal this morning was to inspect the family plot and the chapel grounds.”
“You wanted to tend the graves?” He didn’t like this idea, instinctively loathed it.
