Page 19 of The Untamed Heart

They drank their coffee and Eustacia watched with approval as Marcus devoured several large slices of cake, clearly having worked up an appetite. Yet she could tell he was fidgety and eager to carry on, so she said nothing, just returned to her sketching as he hurried back to pick up the fork again.

She let him work uninterrupted for another half an hour, though at one point he broke off for a sit-down, clutching at his side and breathing carefully.

Eustacia found him a captivating subject, revelling in the chance to record his powerful form as he dug the soil. It was a delight to capture the angle of his broad shoulders, the firm stance of his long legs. His well-worn buckskin breeches clung to his muscular thighs, and Eustacia felt not a shred of guilt in spending far too much time studying and lovingly committing their likeness to paper.

Yet, she could not let him labour for them all day, even if he was clearly enjoying himself. She could tell he was tiring despite the many short breaks he’d taken. Though he tried to hide it, his movements were not so fluid, and he was breathing heavier than before.

“I am the most dreadful tyrant,” she said regretfully, putting her sketchpad aside.

He looked up, frowning. A fine sheen of perspiration glistened on his skin, and he had a smudge of dirt on his cheek. Eustacia thought he had never looked more appealing.

He straightened, and she saw the slight wince of pain he gave with a pang of tenderness.

“How so?” he asked.

“Well, I get you here under the guise of having your portrait done and immediately put you to work like a common labourer. You must think me a dreadful creature.”

He laughed at that and fished a handkerchief from his pocket. He wiped his face and tucked it away, leaning on the fork and gazing about the place. “You’ve done me a kindness, and you well know it,” he said before meeting her eyes again. “I think I should have gone mad stuck in that little cottage, as comfortable as it is. I’m not made for sitting about. Taming this beautiful wilderness is the best medicine anyone could have prescribed me.”

Eustacia nodded, choosing her words carefully. She was terribly aware of his fierce pride, and yet he had chosen her because he wanted her to show the world a man, one who had done his duty and survived, not some gilt-edged perfect image of a national hero. “It must be dreadfully hard to have a vocation that became your entire world, and to have it taken away from you.”

He sent her a dark look and drew the fork from the soil, stabbing it back in several times. “I’m alive. What have I to complain about when so many of my friends and comrades are dead?”

“Sometimes living is harder, I think,” she said gently. “The dead have nothing left to trouble them. Those left behind live with the guilt, with the mess, with the necessity of doing the mundane everyday things that never stop, no matter what dreadful or wonderful things happen to us.”

He glanced up at her and then looked away again.

“If you’d never gone to war, would you have been a gardener, like your grandfather?”

A muscle ticked in his jaw, and she knew he was annoyed with her, irritated that she had spoiled his peace. She was too, truth be told, but she feared he would not allow himself to see that there was more here than an hour’s respite from the world if she did not push him a little. The joy she had sensed emanating from him while he worked seemed to her akin to what she felt when she was lost in a painting. It wasn’t simply something she could do, not just a talent she had been born with and a gift she had honed with hours and hours of diligent practice. It was necessary. It was as much a part of her as her blood and bones, and if she could not paint, she would surely wither and die.

He felt the same way about this garden, oh, not just this specific garden, but it called to him in the same way that a beautiful vista or a fascinating face did to her. It was necessary to him, to his happiness and peace of mind. But he had been a soldier for so long and turned his back on that part of him, that she feared he had forgotten how crucial, how elemental it really was.

But then what did she know, for he was glowering down at the earth with fury now.

“Yes. I would have. I wish to God I had, and then I would never have seen and done all the bloody deeds that haunt my dreams. I ought to have listened to my grandfather.”

There was such regret behind the angry words, and something that sounded dreadfully like shame. Eustacia swallowed, wondering what she was doing, prodding at this poor man’s wounds. She was an interfering busybody who had no right, and yet she wished he had listened to his grandfather too and never been so ill used by war and the world around him.

“He did not wish you to become a soldier?”

Marcus snorted. “He did not. It was the only time I ever saw him truly angry, for he was a quiet fellow. But he loathed my father. He said a lot of dreadful things about him which at the time I could not see. I admired my father as much as I feared him back then. But I have decades of experience over the boy I was and I see now that every word he said was true.”

He turned away from her and crouched, tugging up the few remaining weeds that scattered the rich, dark soil of the neat bed he had cleared.

Eustacia hesitated, wishing to ask but fearing the answer.

“Is he still living, your grandfather?”

He did not turn but shook his head as he cast the weeds onto the great heap he had gathered. “No. He died three weeks before Waterloo, and for that I am grateful.”

“Grateful? You did not hope to see him again?”

“For my sake, yes, grateful. And of course, I wished to see him. I would have given anything to speak with him one last time,” he said roughly. “But I would not have had him know of that… that bloodbath for worlds. I would not have wished for him to look into my eyes and understand all that I had seen and done. He would have—”

He broke off, his jaw rigid.

“Never mind,” he said crossly and wrenched the fork free of the soil, carrying it back to the shed.