The Belle of Belgrave Square (Belles of London #2)(39)

“Ah. I see that you do,” he said. “Where to start? Shall I begin with the way I executed prisoners who were trying to escape? Or with the manner in which I dealt with cowardice and insubordination in the ranks?”

He came to stand in front of her. His posture was vaguely combative.

She drew back from him, her fingers gripping tight to the bench.

“There were floggings. Brandings. Other punishments—as creative as they were cruel. Naturally, I insisted on carrying the sentences out myself.” He came closer still, his legs brushing the swell of her skirts. “The deserters I sometimes shot, depending on my mood. And for minor infractions—”

“You don’t have to tell me,” she managed at last. “I don’t want to know.”

“Don’t you? Forgive me. It seemed you were curious.”

“No. That is, I am, but only because . . . Because I can’t believe—” Julia struggled to give voice to the worst of it. The accusation that he’d been not only excessively harsh in his punishments but unjust, too. Unchristian. “Is it true you beat a soldier nearly to death for giving bread to a dying prisoner?”

Captain Blunt went as still as one of the statues in the Claverings’ garden. A strange expression passed over his face. “Who told you that?”

Julia saw no reason to prevaricate. “Viscountess Heatherton. She claims her husband read dispatches during the war.”

“Did he, by God.” Captain Blunt loomed over her. “What else did her ladyship say about this ill-fated Good Samaritan? Did she tell you his name?”

Julia’s heart thudded heavily. “No. Nothing like that. She only said he was the bookish son of a country vicar.”

“Bookish.” Captain Blunt huffed. “Yes, I suppose he was.”

“Was?” Her voice dropped to an apprehensive whisper. “You didn’t kill him, did you?”

“No, I didn’t kill him. But he’s dead all the same. Pity. You’d have liked him.”

“Why do you say so?”

“He was a dreamer. He loved novels—reading them and writing them.” Captain Blunt’s expression turned pensive. “He was a brave lad, too. Noble, you might say. All the same, he wasn’t made for soldiering.”

“How did he die?”

“In the same skirmish that killed the rest of my men. He took a sharpshooter’s bullet to the face.”

Julia was hard-pressed not to flinch.

Captain Blunt grimaced. “Forgive me. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Poor man. It sounds dreadful.”

“It was. All of it. Would that I could forget.”

She couldn’t be certain, but she thought she detected a note of remorse in the captain’s words. “Are you sorry?”

“That he’s dead?”

“For that, or . . . for any of it?”

He sank down beside her on the bench, as close to her as he’d been in the anteroom during Lady Clifford’s musicale. “Every day, every hour, I’m sorrier than I can express.”

Julia exhaled the breath she’d been holding. “You regret your conduct? I suppose that’s a start.”

“My regret is nothing new, Miss Wychwood. I’ve had years to come to terms with my past. Six long years since I returned to England.” His gaze captured hers, solemn and steady in the torchlight. “I want to tell you—and you must believe—that I came back from the Crimea a completely different man. Since that time, I have been doing my utmost to right the wrongs of the past.”

She stared up at him, the warmth of compassion stirring in her veins. “The war changed you?”

“Utterly.” His face was half-shadowed in the flickering flames, making him look very much the part of a man caught between the forces of light and darkness. “You do believe people can change?”

“I do,” she said. “I-I want to.”

“Then believe it. I am not now the man that I was then. That person—the soldier you’ve heard stories about—is dead.”

“And in his place?”

“Someone else. Someone who’s trying very hard to do the right thing in extremely difficult circumstances.”

Julia’s compassion for him grew. She was beginning to understand.

This was the reason he was committed to raising his illegitimate children. To repairing their home and restoring their birthright. He wasn’t some rogue determined to flout society. He was a changed man—a penitent man—attempting to make amends.

“Is this why you need a suitable lady at your side?” she asked.

“It is,” he said. “Very much so.”

The fountain trickled behind them in a melodic splash of water.

And Julia knew—she simply knew—that that lady wasn’t her. Not because she’d told him so, but because he’d discovered it for himself. It’s why he hadn’t come to her when she’d arrived in the ballroom. Why he hadn’t appeared to claim a dance with her or offered to bring her a cup of punch.

He’d admitted to having seen her. If he had wanted her company, he’d have sought her out. Nothing would have stopped him. But he hadn’t. Not until he’d felt honor bound to save her from Lord Gresham.