Before I could introduce myself, he looked at me and said, “I know who you are. And I know why you’ve come, Mr. Burvelle.”
My heart sank. He knew?
“You’ve come to inquire into the death of your brother, Nevare Burvelle. Your sister knew he was here, enlisted under a false name. I knew that eventually there would be this reckoning. And I am ready for it.”
Despite his brave and honest words, his voice shook slightly. He swallowed, and when he spoke again, his voice was a bit higher. “If you wish to demand satisfaction of me, you have that right.” His hands moved very slightly on the desktop, a faint scrabbling motion. “If you wish to bring formal charges against me, you have that right also. I can only tell you that when I took action that night, I believed I was acting in the name of justice. I’ll admit to you, sir, that I killed your soldier-brother. But it was not without provocation. I was deceived, sir. Deceived by your brother’s false name and deceived by the harlot I had taken for my wife.”
He suddenly lunged for his desk drawer, jerking it open and reaching inside. I took two steps back, certain that he would pull out a pistol and kill me where I stood. Instead, his shaking hands pulled out a packet of papers bound with a piece of string. He pulled the knot, the string came undone, and they spilled across the desk. Only then did I know them. Why she had kept them, I’ll never know, but I would wager that every one of them was there. All the letters I’d written to Carsina from the Academy. On the top of the pile, smudged as if it had been opened and read many times, was an envelope addressed to Carsina in my sister’s hand. He coughed as if trying to clear his throat of a sob. He took another document from the drawer. I recognized the enlistment papers I’d signed when I joined the regiment. And with it, an envelope addressed in my father’s hand.
“I didn’t know he was a noble’s soldier son.” Thayer’s voice was choked. “I didn’t know that he and Carsina had previously been…together. I had no idea until I took over as commander. Haren’s records were a mess. And the command had changed so often since he died, no one had put things in order. So it was up to me. First, I found the letter from your father, warning Colonel Haren that your brother might try to enlist. It was in the Colonel’s private papers. I thought it a sad little document and wondered why he’d kept it. But on the back of the envelope, he’d made a note.”
His hands spidered over to pick up the envelope and turn it over. My blood moved cold through my veins. I tried to take slow breaths, to stand as Rosse would have stood as this tawdry little story unfolded. Thayer swallowed loudly. The envelope fell from his nerveless fingers. He took a shuddering breath. “I could scarcely believe what I read, sir. But when I looked up the enlistment papers for Nevare Burv, there was no denying it any longer.” He looked up at me and strain tightened every muscle in his face. In a strangled voice he said, “It was bad enough to know that your brother had been a noble son, a soldier son gone bad. I felt terrible that we, that he had died as he did. But worse was to come, sir. Far worse for me.”
His voice faded. He looked at his desk. His hands crept across the scattered papers there. “I felt terrible, sir, but it was sorrow for what your family had endured. I tried to write to your father and could not. Simply could not. I thought perhaps it was better that he never know the fate his errant son had met. But then, in early spring, a courier came. And I could scarcely believe my eyes. For there was a letter for my Carsina, my beloved dead wife. And it came from the sister of the man who had tormented her with his attentions and then desecrated her body. I could not believe it. How could she even have known Carsina?
“Curiosity overcame me. I opened it. And what I read tore the heart out of me: it made clear the connection between the man I’d killed and the woman I’d loved. It made a lie of the love I’d had for Carsina. I’d been a fool. She’d probably been laughing at me all the time when I offered her my name. I went through her things then, and found other letters. I found an earlier letter from your sister, one that had concealed a letter for that man, a letter she trusted that my Carsina would hand to him. I knew then she had been seeing him. And beneath her night things, tied with a ribbon, as if they were a treasure, I found all these. Letter after letter from Nevare. Highly improper correspondence.
“She had lied to me. The heartless bitch. She led me to believe she was untouched and pure. But here we have the evidence of her perfidy. She was a lying, cheating slut. And because of her, I took a man’s life!”