He’d been shot several times. He was suffering from fever when his horse wandered on to our farm. To this day, we don’t know exactly how they came in our direction, we are a bit off the beaten path. It was clear though that they’d wandered for days. He’d probably got lost and then disoriented. We thought he’d die. But he didn’t. He lived.’ Here, the man paused, his eyes full of sympathy. ‘My master says he was never quite himself. He didn’t always know who he was. He thought his name was Matthew.’
‘That was his second name,’ Jonathon supplied.
‘Some days though, he knew he was Thomas, but not much else,’ the man offered in consolation. ‘But the wounds, the war, had done something to his memories. He’d scream in the night like soldiers do.’ Jonathon nodded and Claire wondered what nightmares came to him.
‘You said he recovered?’ Jonathon pressed.
‘To a point. He helped out around the farm. He liked working with the animals. On good days he rode his horse like the devil. He was something to watch. I’ve never seen a rider like that. But there weren’t that many good days. We knew he didn’t belong with us, but my master had no way to contact anyone, didn’t know who to contact. Then, last year, Thomas took sick. His wounds had damaged his health and the winter was harsh.’ The man shook his head as if he still didn’t believe what had happened. ‘One day he told my master, “My name is Thomas Lashley.” He gave my master this ring and that shell and went out riding. He wasn’t well enough and the lord knows his horse wasn’t either. The winter had ruined both of them. That horse was twenty if it was a day. He didn’t come back. That evening his horse limped in to the barnyard, coated with mud. It had been ridden hard. We fed it, cleaned it, made it warm, but the horse laid down and was dead in the morning.’
Claire covered her mouth, stifling a sob. Jonathon reached out for her hand and she let him take it, knowing that touching her was not only for her comfort but his. ‘Oh, Jonathon.’
Jonathon was bravery itself. He nodded his head, acknowledging the story. ‘Thank you for telling me. May I ask? Did you find a body?’
The man shook his head and Claire thought she saw a spark light Jonathon’s eyes. ‘We went out the next day to look for him. We did not find him, although we found the place he must have fallen.’
‘Thomas does not fall,’ Jonathon said staunchly, automatically. Claire shot him a worried look. He was being stubborn, but surely he had to admit the search was over.
‘Monsieur,’ the informant offered patiently, ‘the ground was churned up. There had been an event of some sort. The horse came back and he did not. He loved that horse. He would never have deserted it. There are wolves in the forests.’ He caught Claire’s eye. ‘My apologies, madame, but I must speak plainly or monsieur will harbour false hope. There are plenty of reasons a body wasn’t found. Perhaps wild animals, or perhaps simply a man went off into the forest to die alone the way animals do when they can no longer be of use to their pack. Animals know when it’s their time. I think your brother did, too. He knew he was failing. He knew death was coming.’ He paused to let Jonathon mull it over. ‘We had only the one piece of information to go on, just his name. I am sorry it took us the better part of the year to reach you.’ It was the informant’s way of saying the conversation was over. There was nothing more he could tell Jonathon.
‘We are grateful, thank you,’ Claire offered in French when Jonathon remained silent. She nudged Jonathon. He drew out the second money clip and numbly placed it on the table. Whatever strength, whatever power of will he’d possessed to make it this far, to conduct this interview in French, to have fought for this moment all these years when others had given up, was gone now. The rest was up to her. He needed her to step into the breach.
Claire rose and walked the man to the door. ‘Thank you for coming. You will find there’s enough there to pay for your travels and a reward for your information as well.’
‘Is he gone?’ Jonathon’s voice asked dully behind her.
‘Yes.’ She crossed the room and knelt beside him, gripping his hands. ‘It was worth it to come. Now you know.’
That was when Jonathon broke. He slipped from the chair into her arms, sobs racking his body as she held him against her. ‘He was alive, Claire. Good God, for six years, he was alive. I should have tried harder.’
The guilt and grief of seven years took him in its relentless grip. All she could do was hold him and let him sob even though her helplessness to do more tore at her heart. In this regard, hope had not been his friend, it had prevented him from truly grieving. Only now, when the hope was gone, could he let go and move on. But that was a choice only Jonathon could make for himself.
Moving on meant acknowledging the search was over, that there was nothing more he could do. Defeat was not a circumstance Jonathon embraced well. He’d not given up on his French, he’d not given up on her. It was natural he didn’t want to give up on his brother. She’d heard it in his voice when he’d challenged the informant about the lack of a body.
‘I should have done more.’ That was the guilt talking.
‘What more could you have done?’ Her voice was intentionally sharp, slicing through the haze of pain. She wasn’t offering the words as a trite consolation. She was asking, as if the answer mattered. Because it did. Jonathon had to move on and he couldn’t if he wouldn’t let go of the past.
Jonathon pulled back, meeting her eyes with a tear-clouded gaze. ‘I could never have left. I should have stayed, I should have found him before the trail grew cold. Then none of this would have happened.’
‘You were shot, dying yourself,’ Claire reminded him. ‘There was little you could do.’ It seemed to Claire that if he couldn’t let go of the past today when all had been revealed, then he never would. What happened here on the wood floor of the Antwerp Hotel suddenly mattered in the extreme. It was an odd place to do battle for a man’s soul, but that’s what this was.
Now that she’d seen the very core of him exposed, she understood the darkest secret he carried. It wasn’t that he’d been to war and seen people killed, nor was it that the war haunted him, or even that the war and the guilt over his brother had stolen his French, messed with his head in a way that prevented him from retrieving that skill until now. No, the darkest secret Jonathon Lashley carried in his depths was that he believed he didn’t deserve to be happy. His guilt demanded his life be lived in sacrifice.
Hadn’t he lost enough already?
Wait.
A thought came to her. What had he said that night in her bedroom? He came home feverish, raving mad in French. She’d not thought anything of it. At the time. She’d been rather focused on other things and understandably so. A man had just climbed into her room. But today, the mention was important. That trip home had been the last time he’d spoken French without extreme conscious effort. She’d heard of cases where guilt was so traumatic it blocked certain things out of one’s mind. There’d been a widow in Little Westbury whose grief over her husband’s death was so severe she couldn’t actually remember he had died. She would keep asking where he was.
‘Why didn’t you tell me the real reason you couldn’t speak or read French any more?’ She laced her fingers through his.
The question seemed to settle him, his control was coming back. That was a good sign. Jonathon
