Page 48 of A Night of Secret Surrender
‘By chance. It was not an easy meeting at all because Papa had just been murdered and I was...barely me.’
‘James McPherson said the French soldiers took you...?’
She frowned at that and felt bile rise in her throat, the burn of it making her want to be sick. ‘I don’t speak of my life much. It’s just now, do you understand me? Just here. This second. This moment. This day.’
She felt like striking out at him, hard and fast, a considered blow, a way of stopping more words. But he was turning from her even now, rising, stretching. The muscles on his back rippled with the exertion. Strong, straight and undamaged.
‘Men have the better side of war because they can fight back,’ she added suddenly, surprised by her own admission.
‘As opposed to a woman’s lot?’ The sound of his words was sharpened.
She made herself be quiet, biting down on the anger that hung beneath the shame.
‘It sometimes helps to talk,’ he continued and her restraint broke completely as she scrambled up.
‘About what, Major? You are only spoiling what is between us with your questions.’
‘You don’t wish me to know anything more?’
‘You know enough. You know more than anybody else in the whole world knows about me.’
At that he smiled, his eyes wrinkling into humour. Sometimes his beauty simply took her breath away.
‘When I married Anna I knew that I should not have.’
It was an enormous confession offered without question on her behalf.
‘I was lonely. She was kind and honest and good and, whether it was from years of soldiering in harsh conditions or whether it was simply some lack inside of me, these traits became stultifying and choking quite quickly and I could never find the essence of who she was. In the end I gave up looking.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Because no one is as heroic as you think they are and because some of your deepest secrets are probably less damning than my own.’
The gift of his truth floored her and she could only watch him as he gathered his things and dressed, too astonished to allow reply. He had not kept loving his wife in the fierce way that she had imagined he had and he felt guilty for it. There was a gift in his admission that was quietly put and it had been a long time since anyone had spoken to her in this way. She respected his honesty and knew that it couldn’t have been easy for him to say such things.
The fight left her in a rush and she grabbed at her own attire and pulled it on. She wished he would step towards her but he didn’t, his confession building a wall somehow, the disclosure shocking them both. Nothing was quite as it seemed, he was saying. Nothing was written in stone.
* * *
Two hours later, her horse threw a shoe so they had to make a detour into the town of Buc, a small settlement some miles off their route. Once there, the farrier told them he could not see to the animal’s foot until well into the afternoon and gave them directions to the public house where they could wait out the interim and get something to drink.
Summer looked ill at ease as they sat with an ale in the shade of a tree. The grey wig usually had the effect of lightening his eyes, but this afternoon they looked dark and bruised. Perhaps he still thought of his wife and was wishing he had not breathed a word about their relationship. Perhaps he was confused by her anger and wished himself away.
She liked the warmth of his thigh as it ran down the length of her own on the old wooden seat upon which they both perched.
When she had told Summer that he knew more about her than anybody else ever had it was true. Was this a good thing or a bad thing? Right now, in the shade of a thick, leafy horse chestnut, a kind of contentment stole across her.
I could do this for ever with him, she thought, and was shocked by the realisation.
If Anna’s sweetness had been a bane for him once upon a time, then just imagine what damage her own violent chequered past might wreak.
Finishing the last of her drink, she stood, excusing herself to use the outhouse that she could see at the very rear of the garden.
It was an old building with a rickety door and she checked for spiders before entering, seeing only a thick web without an occupant. There was no latch at all so she sat perched above the hole with one hand around the handle, keeping the door barred against any new person who might wish to use the amenity.
A moment later it was snatched away and a man stormed into the small space. With her trousers down she was at a definite disadvantage and as she scrambled up she whipped them back in place as best she could, the seconds needed taking away her own instinctive defence.
‘Troy here said he thought you might be a girl?’
