Page 127 of The Captive Duke
She canvassed her physical state, and if anything, felt as if she’d purged herself of a toxin. “I need you to hold me, and tell Mr. Stoneleigh to retrieve his whip.”
Heat and cold shivered through her, weakness and wonder.
She could fight back. If she had to, if she ever again found herself endangered,she could fight back.
A woman who could fight back could manage to stand unassisted, though Christian only turned loose of her enough to dab at her cheeks with his white handkerchief.
“Apologies for the intrusion,” Girard said. “Mercia, I believe this is yours.” He tossed what looked like a blue-and-gold signet ring to St. Just. “And, my lady, you do not know the lengths I traveled to keep your duke alive when my superiors clamored to have him quietly executed or worse.
“I sent the horse to that one”—Girard gestured toward Marcus—“thinking the English would solve thepuzzle of how Mercia was taken, but the English did not make the attempt. I suspect the late colonel opined to his superiors that such diligence was unnecessary. I had a letter sent through the diplomatic channels, which I’m sure was dismissed at Easterbrook’s urging. I instigated rumor, I—”
Gilly glowered at Girard, for his litany had a pleading quality, as if he longed for Christian to absolve him of his trespasses, when Gilly longed to take a buggy whip to him.
She remained bundled against her duke, as a nasty insight wiggled past her ire: at no time had Christian described Girard as a man who delighted in violence for its own sake, while she, under certain circumstances, apparently possessed that trait.
And was not ashamed of it—just yet.
“Why keep me alive?” Christian asked.
Girard arranged the two silver foils in their case and closed the lid.
“For two reasons. First, I know what it is to be in dire circumstances, far from home, with no good options. I was a boy when the Peace of Amiens stranded me among my mother’s people in France. My choices were to join the English captives or, eventually, to join the French army—to kill my father’s people or be held prisoner by my mother’s. Delightful options,non? Your choices were no better—treason or torture—and yet you found a way to prevail with your honor intact. I respected your tenacity. I was inspired by it, in fact.”
Girard spoke softly, much as Christian had weeksago when Gilly had first barged into the ducal parlor, dreading the confrontation even as she handed a duke of the realm orders.
And while part of Gilly wanted to drag Christian away from the sunlit clearing, another part of her ached for a boy—not a cavalry officer, a boy—who’d fallen victim to the pervasive injustice of war.
Girard turned his face up to the sun slanting through the trees. Viewed objectively, he was a handsome man, and, Gilly also admitted—grudgingly—a man who bore the marks of a soul-deep exhaustion.
“You should also know Anduvoir caused significant awkwardness by capturing a duke who was quite obviously an officer in possession of a uniform,” Girard went on. “And he further humiliated himself by failing to extract any intelligence from you whatsoever. As a consequence, Anduvoir was denied every possible promotion, which prevented him from much foolishness. There is more to it, but your silence saved not only English lives, but French lives; therefore, on the peculiar abacus that passes for my moral reckoning, you were condemned to live.”
Girard’s manner was patience edged with a detachment that bore a tincture of madness—or perhaps the confessional zeal of a misguided, heathen saint.
And while Gilly could on an abstract level feel compassion for the wreck war had made of Girard, she had no wish to linger in the man’s presence.
“The other reason?” Christian asked.
Girard smiled faintly, a sad, tired caricature of whatmight have been a charming grin, and somewhere above, a songbird offered the day a silvery, sweet greeting. “You will have your confession of me, eh, Mercia?”
“I will have the truth.”
“You are owed that.” Girard regarded the body as he went on speaking, his accent becoming all but undetectable. “We are of an age, Your Grace. Had war not intervened, I would have started at Eton after spending time with my grandparents in France. You and I would have been in the same form, probably belonged to the same clubs, played on the same cricket team. We would have been nearly neighbors, for the St. Clair seat is less than a day’s ride from your own home. One could say your battle was my own, and you fought well enough for both of us.”
Girard looked away, but not before Gilly caught a hint of self-consciousness in his frown. Or perhaps he was bewildered to be making this confession without benefit of torture, bewildered that Christian would even listen to him.
As Gilly herself was bewildered to find a man—a flesh-and-blood man, with regrets and scars of his own—behind the beast who’d haunted Christian’s dreams.
As the bird paused in its serenade to the new day, Stoneleigh spoke up: “This Frenchman has committed murder in peacetime on English soil. Greendale’s gun was not trained on him, and Girard cannot claim he was defending his loved ones.”
Girard examined his fingernails, as if the threat of hanging was of no moment to him, and perhaps it wasn’t.
“Gilly?” Christian looped his arms around her, which was fortunate given that the state of her knees had become unreliable. “What shall be Girard’s fate?”
The big Frenchman—Englishman?—shot her a look. His green eyes were flint hard, but in them, Gilly saw…a plea, and not for freedom. For understanding, perhaps?
All she knew was that the man she loved was no longer driven by a need to do murder—andneither was she—and indirectly, she had Girard to thank for her own survival.
Also Christian’s. “His fate is up to you, Christian.”
