Page 28 of The Rebellious Countess (The Ruined Duchess #2)

“We were sitting under this tree drinking and laughing, not paying attention to anything but our stories, and then suddenly we were surrounded by the fiercest soldiers I’d ever seen in my life.

Before then we’d seen soldiers and sailors in Le Conquet.

Even privateers were known to eat at The Happy Hag.

We’d been in a few scrapes even, and had come out with little to no injury to our pride.

“But…”

She waited patiently for him to continue. If he wanted her to trust him, he must do the same with her.

“But those soldiers were the fiercest men we had ever encountered, and their leader was an imposing man. Tall and broad, he cut a fine figure in his uniform, yet he had the coldest eyes I had ever seen. Even now, I can’t say as I’ve ever faced a more malevolent man.

I had no doubt he would cut down anyone who got in his way.

He was much different than the man who taught me to fish. ”

“Wait.” She leaned to the side, and he felt her eyes searching his face for the answer to her unspoken question. “The man who taught you to fish?” she asked. “You knew the soldier you speak of?”

He nodded in response, still unable to look her in the eyes, but her compassion touched him even if her hands did not.

“He was mon grand-père .”

“Your grandfather?” The incredulity in her voice matched his at fifteen.

There was no way the man on that giant horse had laughed and ruffled his hair. “I’d only met my mother’s father a couple of times before that, but he wasn’t the type of man you could soon forget.”

“Why? What was so different about him?”

“For one, he’s a general in Napoleon’s army.”

She shifted in the saddle so she could look at him more comfortably, but if he was going to make this confession, he needed to talk without establishing eye contact. Even now, the events that occurred after that meeting were difficult to fathom.

“And he was a bastard through and through. If he were still alive, I would kill him.” The venom in his voice was unmistakable. He despised his grandfather with every fiber of his being.

Her next question was filled with caution. “I would like to know why…that is, if you would like to tell me. What did your grandfather do to cause such hatred?”

Telling the story, however, would only make it fester in his gut, but he’d gotten this far, he had to finish the story. If she didn’t open up with her own painful memory after this, she never would.

“My grandfather didn’t recognize me. I had grown two feet since the last time he’d laid eyes on me, and my body had filled out from the scraggly kid he’d tossed up in the air.

I tried to tell him who I was, but he refused to listen.

Instead, he backhanded me for my insubordination.

We were boys of fifteen, playing at being men, and he felt we should be serving our country. He conscripted us on the spot.”

She swallowed audibly but remained silent.

“Claude, my friend, resisted at first and received a rifle butt to the head. He lost consciousness and I wondered if he was dead. I changed into the uniform I was given, and when Claude came to, I helped him dress as well. I have never felt so helpless in all of my life. We were to walk behind them, but I argued that Claude could not walk, said that if they had not been so stupid and hit him, he could have. For my insubordination I was once again beaten, only this time mon grand-père couldn’t be bothered with the act of knocking me into submission.

He left that to his captain-of-arms, who proceeded to beat the hell out of me.

That’s when my father came out of nowhere.

He beat the man and two others until three more joined the fight. ”

It was his turn to swallow audibly. The next part of his story he’d told only once before and that was to his mother, or rather Hag, the very last time he called her Mother . The very last time she had shown emotion. Since then, she had been almost as cold as her father—almost.

“They were able to subdue him when two more soldiers joined the fight. By this time, I had figured out my arm was broken, it was of no use to me. Claude was shaking his head, trying to see what was happening, but it was obvious he couldn’t focus, let alone stand on his own.

“Then he spoke. He recognized my father, in fact he seemed happy to see him. For a moment, I thought the world that had turned upside-down would right itself again.”

He felt her hand on his cheek, her touch tentative and gentle.

It was only then that he realized a tear trailed down his face.

It was the only one he’d shed for his father since that day.

He let her wipe it away and gave her a grateful smile, meeting her gaze for the first time since he began to describe his nightmare.

“You don’t have to tell me the rest if it’s too painful.”

“You need to know the type of men we are up against, because that general may be dead, but his successor is the man who has Astley.”

Her eyes widened, the only sign of her understanding about the severity of the situation they faced.

“Your grandfather is dead?” She asked.

“Yes. When I was twenty, I received a letter in England from my mother, telling me he had died.” He didn’t tell her it was the only letter his mother wrote. He’d gotten past the pain she had caused.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. What he did that day changed my life forever.

” He took a deep breath and released it before continuing.

“ Mon grand-père said my father was the reason they were there. That he was a traitor to France, an embarrassment to his daughter and grandson, and my father would be hanged for his crimes.”

She gasped. “No.”

“Yes,” he said, with no more emotion than if he’d admitted he was tired and wanted to sleep.

“My grandfather judged my father guilty of treason, said he had been sending information to the British and that he would die for his crimes. My father didn’t deny it.

He asked the general not to hang him in front of his son.

It was then that general looked at me and realized who I was.

Then he laughed.” Elias’s chin tightened involuntarily.

“He laughed and denied my father’s request. I stood there and watched my father die…

I watched the life drain out of his eyes and his body twitch as he swung from a tree. ”

Tears were streaming down Máira’s cheeks, but he couldn’t see them. All he could see was the vision of his father’s feet swinging and hear the horrific sound of the soldiers laughing.

“He left me there with my father, said I must be the one to deliver the news to my mother. So, I climbed the tree to cut him down. It took me three times because I kept falling, and once I lost consciousness from the pain in my arm. When I finally got him down, I made a sling out of that damn military jacket they forced on me, and I…I used the rope that had taken my father’s life to drag him back to Le Conquet.

I reached the house just as the sun was rising in the most glorious burst of color I’ve ever seen.

“My mother wailed her grief when she saw me drop to my knees in front of the house. She’d been waiting up, knowing that something was seriously wrong when my father and I hadn’t returned the previous night.

She used her wrapper to cover my father’s body and took me inside to tend to my arm, and the rope burns on my other hand and back.

She listened to my recounting of the events with her eyes growing colder and colder with each word I uttered.

By the time I finished telling her of what my grandfather had done, I no longer recognized the woman who raised me.

“In my grief and pain, I didn’t know she had put laudanum in the tea she gave me to drink while I told her what happened.

While I slept, she washed my father’s body and buried him behind our home in her garden.

” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I have no idea how she did it, where she obtained the strength to dig his grave and bury a man so much larger than she, but she did. Then she put me on a ship the very next day bound for England with a letter to the War Office.”

“The next day? But your arm…”

“ Mon grand-père had told me he would come for me in one month, after my arm healed. She didn’t want to take a chance I was still there.”

“What happened to Claude?”

“I don’t know. The soldiers tied him to a horse and took him. Over the years I thought about Claude from time to time. I even asked Hag if she had heard from him, but as far as the people of Le Conquer knew, Claude was as dead as my father.”

He paused, then looked up at her. Tears were streaming down her cheeks and the look on her face he would never forget. “Claude’s parents passed on believing their son to be dead, if not by the hands of the soldiers, then by the hands of war. I suppose we all died that day.”

As far as he was concerned, his own grand-père died the moment he sentenced his father to death. He only wished he’d had the opportunity to return the favor to the bastard.