Page 52 of The Belle of Belgrave Square

“You can’t have done those things,” she said.

His black brows lifted a fraction. “Did you not hear me, Miss Wychwood? I deny nothing.”

“But you don’t know the—”

“What did this person tell you? That I was a monster? I freely own to it.” A faint thread of bitterness colored the captain’s voice. “Surely, you don’t require the particulars.”

Julia frowned. She didn’t know what response she’d anticipated from him, but it wasn’t this scathing admission of guilt. It was too frank. Too brazen.

Something about it wasn’t right.

It was that hint of bitterness. That, and something else. An odd glint of iron-forged resolve in his eyes, as if he were a man who was willingly—almost determinedly—confessing to a crime he hadn’t committed.

“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?”