Page 99 of The Captive Duke
“Gracious, you are smitten. I’m impressed.”
“With the lady’s charms?”
“With your courage. You were broken too, and for you to care like this…” St. Just fell silent while his horse danced around some droppings in the road. “You have found the best revenge, my friend.”
“I was damaged. I was never broken. Girard reminded me of that frequently.” And he’d relished those incessant reminders, though he was sure they’d been intended as taunts. “Gilly has sorted me out and put me back to rights.”
St. Just looked pained and pointed off toward the village steeple. “Race you.”
Christian put his spurs to Chessie’s sides andthought he’d have an advantage because he knew the territory. St. Just had ridden dispatch though, and beat him by a length.
“Your heart wasn’t in the steeplechase,” St. Just said charitably. “And my mount is in better condition than yours. I was planning to head closer to Town before the sun sets, but invite me to spend the night.”
“So invited,” Christian said, relieved somebody would join him and Gilly for dinner—and St. Just’s mountwasa splendid beast. “We’ll dine informally and find you something of mine to wear, though I warn you, embroidery is showing up on my attire in unlikely places.”
St. Just looked intrigued, necessitating a change in topic. Christian stroked a gloved hand over Chessie’s neck, for the old boy was still heaving a bit. “We caught Lucy singing to her puppies.”
“Is there abutcoming?”
“But she’s still silent when she knows anybody can hear. Gilly thinks we ought to confront her. I cannot agree.”
“Why not?”
“She knows how to speak. She writes great convoluted stories using vocabulary far beyond her years. Her life is made lonely and awkward by her silence, therefore I conclude she does not speak because she cannot.”
“You didn’t speak. Perhaps she knows this.”
Why hadn’t this occurred to him? “Just so, I did not speak because it became the only means of remainingalive. Gilly kept a silence of her own, finding it the only refuge for her dignity and self-respect. Some silences we are compelled to keep.”
St. Just, who likely had a few silences to his name, didn’t argue the point. “She seems a happy child, your Lucy, but I asked Her Grace if she’d ever heard of such a thing, and she hadn’t.”
“Your stepmother?”
“She has raised ten children and was unfashionably involved in the process, as was Moreland.”
“If you learned your sister were married to an abusive old man, would you have left her to the situation?”
This time, St. Just’s gelding shied at a rabbit scampering across the path, though the rider barely took notice of the creature. “My sister would be on a boat for Denmark or Philadelphia before sunset, with substantial coin in her pocket and papers indicating she was the wife of some late yeoman.”
How quickly he answered. How blessed his sisters were. “What about the scriptural exhortations?”
“As far as I know, St. Paul had no wife, nor did the Lord himself.”
“Interesting viewpoint.”
“My father’s insight, oddly enough. I wanted to pass along some news to you, though.”
“We approach the stables, so say on.”
“I’ve heard rumors in Town regarding Girard.”
Abruptly, the moment stood out from all the moments of the day, all the moments since leavingthat wretched French mountainside. The angle of the afternoon sunlight on the lake, the chestnut draft team standing nose-to-tail in the nearest paddock, the tune some stableboy whistled as he ambled along a fencerow toward the far pastures—they dropped onto Christian’s awareness like ink onto a pure white sheet of vellum.
“You’ve heard rumors about Robert Girard?” He did not refer to the man as “my” Robert Girard, but with the entitlement of one bent on revenge, Girard belonged to no other.
“Yes, Robert Girard, late of the garrison at Château de Solvigny.” St. Just leaned over to pat his mount on the neck, fussing the beast’s mane rather than studying Christian’s expression. “He’s supposedly larking about London in anticipation of taking up the management of the St. Clair barony. Of all things, he’s come into an English title. The government’s official position is clemency for veterans of any nationality.”
Christian halted his horse, as St. Just’s words were growing dim over the roaring in his ears and the pounding in his chest.
