He took a sip of the brandy, felt it burn in his throat. He was drinking too much lately and he knew it—a slow, dangerous slide back into the self-destructive hell that had nearly consumed him in the months after he’d first returned to London.
The clock on the hearth chimed two and then fell silent. In its wake, the stillness of the night felt like a heavy presence, oppressive and soul sucking, and he was aware of the long, grueling hours of darkness stretching out ahead of him. He’d gone to bed with his wife; made slow, desperate love to her, then held her in his arms as she eased peacefully into sleep. He loved her with a tenderness and a passion that humbled, awed, and frightened him; he was closer to her than he had ever been to anyone. Yet in some vital, inexplicable way he found himself feeling more alone and disconnected than ever. And so he’d slipped from her side to draw on his breeches and dressing gown and come here.
He took another sip of the brandy, his unnaturally acute hearing picking up the sound of her door opening far above, her light footsteps on the stairs. He held himself very still. He did not want her to find him like this. Didn’t want her to see his weakness and his fear and his uncertainty.
She came up behind him and leaned over the chair to slip her arms around his neck and rest her linked hands against his chest. “You’re thinking about them, again, aren’t you?” she said. “The women and children of Santa Iria.”
“Yes.”
“You need to stop blaming yourself. You’ve dedicated years to making amends for a wrong that others did. But the past is past, and nothing you can do will ever change that. You can’t keep torturing yourself like this.”
He tipped back his head to look up at her. Her face was golden in the firelight, the strength of her features accentuated by the shadows and framed by the heavy fall of her dark hair.
He said, “I didn’t tell you everything.”
She brought up a hand to run the backs of her fingers down his cheek. “I know.”
In the silence that followed, he heard the fall of ash on the hearth and the endless tick of the clock. Then she came around to sit on the rug beside him and rest the side of her head against his leg.
He touched her hair, felt it slide soft and silky smooth through his fingers, and expelled his breath in a long, painful rush. “I watched the French kill them.”
“You don’t need to tell me.”
He shook his head, kept his gaze on the fire. “I knew the French captain and his men had left their camp a good half an hour before I managed to escape. But I rode to the convent anyway. It was as if I couldn’t believe that I was too late to warn them. To save them.”
He felt an ache pull across his chest. “Some of the children had been playing in an orange grove at the end of the valley when the soldiers came up. The French must have galloped at them with sabers drawn, because the earth around them was trampled by the hooves of the horses. And the children . . .”
She touched his hand. “Sebastian . . .”
He swallowed, remembering how he’d stopped and knelt beside each slashed, bloodied little body. “Two of the littlest ones—a boy and a girl—couldn’t have been more than five or six; big brown eyes, baby-soft light brown hair. They looked enough alike that they were probably brother and sister—maybe even twins. They were still holding hands. They must have held on to each other when the soldiers rode down on them.”
“They were dead?”
“All of them.”
“And the French?”
“I could hear horses neighing, men shouting, children screaming, women praying to God to save them. So I rode on. The convent was ancient, surrounded by a high sandstone wall. But the French had left the gates open. I could have ridden inside. I almost did. But at the last moment, I turned into a copse of trees at the edge of the road. I stayed there and watched them kill everything and everyone inside that convent. Babies in their cradles. Cattle. Chickens. Dogs. Everything.”
“And if you had ridden in? What do you think you could have done? You’d have been killed in an instant.”
“Yes. But it seemed right that I should die with them. I wanted to die with them.”
“Oh, God, Sebastian; no.”
He shook his head. “The only reason I didn’t was because I knew that if I stayed alive, I could avenge them. I planned to start with Sinclair Oliphant, but by the time I made it back to headquarters, he was gone—recalled to England on the death of his brother. So I set out after the French soldiers instead. I went back to the convent and tracked the troop that had done it until they were in a vulnerable position. And then I betrayed them to the Spanish partisans. The Spaniards knew what those men had done at Santa Iria. The soldiers’ deaths were not easy or quick.”