Читать книгу The Tainted Love of a Captain - Jane Lark - Страница 10

There was a travelling trunk in the middle of the hall. Charlie clasped the bannister and stopped on the stairs as she looked at Mr Rook, the butler. ‘Who?’

‘Colonel Hillier is travelling to London, Miss.’

It was not an arrival then, but Mark about to leave. He’d said nothing to her yesterday. Yet that was not abnormal. She was his servant as much as anyone else in the house; he had no obligation to tell her anything.

She walked down the last few steps as he walked into the hall. The front door opened and men came in to lift the trunk out to the carriage.

‘How long are you likely to be away?’

He looked over. ‘Hello, Charlotte. I am not sure, a few days perhaps.’

A few days. She would have the house to herself for a few days.

He came to her and held her hands, then leant forward and kissed her lips. She pressed her lips back against his because if she did not he complained. Yet Mark’s kisses made her wish to wipe her mouth afterwards. Harry did not make her feel like that. She liked his kisses.

The hall was busy as the final preparations for Mark’s journey were undertaken. She remained there and watched, leaning back against the newel post. Then when the door finally closed behind Mark, she looked at the grandfather clock. It was twenty minutes after she had walked downstairs, a little after eleven. Harry had said he could not meet her because he had to work through the night. But if he had been working through the night then in the day he was free.

Her feet carried her across the hall and into Mark’s office, where she found out some paper, a quill and ink. She was not very good at reading and writing, but she knew enough to write what she wished to tell Harry.

She took everything back to her room and sat at her dressing table, then picked up the small ink bottle to open it. Her arm accidently caught the top of her perfume decanter and knocked it over. She hastily pulled the paper out of the way and righted the decanter, then mopped up the spilt perfume with a handkerchief from the drawer. But a few drops had fallen on the paper and so it smelt of the essence of roses when she began to write.

The tip of the quill scratched out the words, then she let the ink dry, folded the letter and sealed it with wax so no one but Harry would open it. She put on her bonnet, but did not call for Tilly to accompany her on the walk. She had not taken Tilly with her on the days she’d met Harry at the inns and to take her again now would stir questions she did not care to answer.

She went to the inn she had gone to the last time she’d written to Harry and gave the letter to a boy who was clearing out the stables, with a coin to encourage him to take it immediately. Then she gave a groom, who tried to stop the boy, money to let the boy go on her errand.

The day was cloudy and the sea loud as it rolled up on to the pebbles while she walked back to the house. There had been a storm last night and it had stirred up the energy in the sea, making the waves higher and seemingly angrier as they charged up towards the seafront. Yet there were still a number of bathing carriages out in the water, where some of the wealthy had chosen to swim.

Her strides kicked at her petticoats in her haste as she hurried back to Mark’s. It was going to be an intolerable day if Harry did not come. She would be wandering about the house awaiting him and she would be so disappointed. He had to come.

~

‘There is a letter for you.’

Every muscle in Harry’s body jolted as the envelope landed lightly on his stomach a second after he’d heard Gareth speak. Ash barked at Gareth, leaping off the bed, startled too.

Harry lay back down and let his muscles relax now he knew it was not a deadly threat but his friend.

Gareth stroked Ash’s head.

‘Must you keep walking into my room when I am asleep.’ Harry’s forearm fell on to his forehead and he shut his eyes again.

‘The letter smells of perfume and was delivered by a stable boy, who said he was told to ensure you received it urgently. I am merely fulfilling the direction and I think it is fair to guess, as the letter did not come in the post or with the dispatches, it is nothing to do with your family, which the smell of it would indicate too.’

Harry picked up the envelope and smelt it, without opening his eyes. Roses. Charlotte. He opened his eyes. ‘What hour is it?’

‘Just past eleven.’

His duty had finished at six. He’d eaten and then come here to sleep. He’d barely slept. But he lifted the sheet and then turned to sit sideways on his bed and opened the letter. Then he looked up at Gareth. ‘Thank you for this, you may go now.’

‘Dismissed for a woman. You are not going to tell me who, then?’

‘I am not going to tell you who, no.’

Gareth took Harry’s hat off the peg on the wall and flung it at him, then turned and walked out of the door.

Harry laughed, picked up his hat and put it on the bed beside him, then looked at the letter as Ash rested her head on his knee. The black tip of her nose sniffed the paper as Harry read.

Dear Harry,

I have news. Mark, Colonel Hillier, is away. He is in London for a few days and so I hoped, thought, that you might like to come to the house.

Officers call here all the time, it would not be at all exceptional for you to call here as a friend. We can spend longer together here and you must bring Ash. We could take her for a walk along the shore after luncheon. If you will come for luncheon?

Tell me you will come. You must come. It is such an opportunity.

Yours sincerely

Charlie

‘Charlie…’ he said aloud, his eyebrows lifting. ‘Charlotte… Charlie…’ The shortened, less-formal name suited her. ‘Luncheon…’ He looked at Ash and stroked her neck, laughing quietly. Then shook his head slightly. He’d be a lunatic to go. Like everything about this affair with her it rang of oddness and imbalance. The etiquette of a relationship with another man’s mistress was something he did not understand.

Was it really appropriate for him to call on her at Hillier’s? Yet perhaps Hillier knew, perhaps he was allowing this. She had left his house on her own for several afternoons.

He sighed. He hated thinking about her and Hillier. He would go, for good or bad, whether it was right or wrong. He wanted to see her again, he’d not seen her for four days. The abstinence had opened a cavern in his chest that he knew would be repaired by a few moments of her company.

It had probably reached and passed midday when he knocked on Colonel Hillier’s door, with Ash sitting close to the heel of his boot.

‘No, do not worry. I will answer it. You can go back to the kitchen.’ He heard the words, spoken by Charlotte, through the door. Then the door was opened. ‘Hello,’ she said in a breathless whisper.

‘Hello.’ He saluted her, in a teasing gesture. ‘I am here as ordered, Miss Cotton.’

She reached out and gripped the cloth of the sleeve of his scarlet coat. ‘Come in.’ Once he had been pulled inside, she whispered. ‘I am so glad you came.’ Ash paced about the hall sniffing everything as Harry took off his hat.

‘I have luncheon all laid out for myself in the parlour. I was going to eat alone but as you are here you must join me, Captain Marlow, with your dog!’ She spoke in an overly loud voice, he presumed for the ears of the servant who had been sent back to the kitchen. ‘You will, won’t you?’ This last sentence was said much more quietly, just for his ears.

‘I will, thank you. That is very kind of you to invite me to stay as the Colonel is not here!’ He smiled after he’d spoken for the ears of the servant too, then bowed slightly, in a gesture of habit, in the way he might have done had one of his sisters-in-law asked him to stay to eat.

Charlotte, or Charlie, turned and walked ahead of him, leading him to a room at the back of the house. It was relatively small and very feminine, very yellow. She held the door as he walked in with Ash at his heel, then shut it firmly, as though she shut out the world. ‘This is my room,’ her voice had become conspiratorial. ‘No one is allowed in here unless I invite them.’

There was an immediate difference in her. Her posture became less rigid and her movements more flowing and there was a hint of mischief in her eyes and her smile too. She was more relaxed here.

He glanced about the room. ‘This is a very pleasant space.’

‘It is, isn’t it. It is my hiding place.’

There was not much in the way of furniture, but there was a comfortable sofa and a chair.

‘Look. I am prepared.’

The food was on a table in one corner of the room.

She crossed the room, passing him. ‘Would you like something to eat?’

‘Yes, now you speak of it, my stomach is growling at me.’

She began filling a plate for him with sandwiches and small pies, then she held it out. ‘There.’

He stepped forward and took the plate from her hand. ‘Thank you.’ This was truly bizarre, when he’d thought this relationship could be no more peculiar.

‘Well, sit then, Harry, do, you are making me feel awkward.’

He smiled and did her bidding. Then put down the plate and took off his gloves. He dropped them on the arm of the chair before he began to eat. Ash lay on the floor before him, watching Charlotte, Charlie, filling a plate for herself. ‘You signed your letter ‘Charlie’…’ Would she prefer him to use the name?

She sent him a smile across her shoulder.

He would guess she did prefer it.

‘It is a nickname I have had since I was a child. I thought if anyone broke the seal they would think my letter from a man.’

He laughed. ‘They would not have. The perfume gave the intent of your letter away immediately and if that had not, your words would have done.’

She smiled as she came to sit next to him. ‘But no one intercepted it…’

‘No, no one opened it. Yet what would Colonel Hillier think of me being here, Charlotte? Charlie.’

‘I have no idea what Mark will think.’ Her chin lifted as she answered, in a way that denied any judgement. It reminded him of days when he had been challenged over his morals and behaviour by his father. He had always answered with an equally harsh dismissal; he had never cared for anyone else’s opinion.

But now he was older and wiser and her words made him less certain of his decision to come. He did not want any trouble with a Colonel, retired or not. ‘Is this sensible, then?’

Her chin lifted even higher. ‘If he complains, then I shall tell him that I am allowed to do what I wish, just as he does.’

The look on her face touched him, literally, as if her fingers had pushed into his chest. Her expression said do not deny me and do not judge me. How could he condemn her? He’d not led a wholesome life. And Hillier could not own her, as Harry had thought the other day; she was not a slave.

He smiled. ‘And send military men perfumed letters of seduction and tempt them into your parlour for luncheon. Am I to be snared in a web of deceit, then, Charlie?’ He joked to shatter the hard look of defence and defiance that had cast across her expression.

The words succeeded and the stiffness in her posture disappeared again as a laugh broke from her throat. ‘Yes, exactly that. I hope to snare you and I shall have you all wrapped up in my sewing threads.’

She stood then. ‘You do not have a drink.’ She poured him a glass of lemonade. ‘Since you introduced me to it, I have had a kitchen maid make lemonade every day.’

His smile widened when she handed him the glass. Once he held it, he lifted the glass in a toast. ‘To leading our lives as we wish.’

She raised her glass in the same gesture. ‘To freedom.’ Then drank when he did.

The sourness tingled on his tongue, then the sweetness flooded his throat.

He laughed a lot as they ate, because she did, and her laugh had an infectious quality.

After they’d eaten they walked Ash along the seashore as he’d always done alone. It had become normal now for her to be there. Even Ash seemed to think it right that she was there. The dog walked at her side not Harry’s.

He was tired still, and the world felt surreal with that strange sensation that was a symptom of being only half awake; it gave his hours with Charlie a dream-like quality. He was lucky, probably, that they met no one from the barracks, otherwise the men might have guessed the origin of his scented letter, yet she’d seemed convinced by her desire to do as she wished, as though it really did not matter if Hillier knew.

He accompanied her home after their walk, but he did not go back inside when she invited him. ‘No, I need to rest, I am on duty again tonight.’

‘But will you call on me again tomorrow?’

‘If you wish.’

‘Of course I wish.’

He smiled and bowed his head. ‘Then I will call here. At what hour?’

‘For luncheon again…’ she proposed.

‘Very well, for luncheon.’

For the first time, she did not curtsey to him when they parted; instead she simply turned and opened the door.

When she went inside, he walked away and something clasped in his chest with a hard sudden grasp. He leant and patted Ash’s head. ‘Women are the strangest creatures.’ Yet he’d thought he had mastered that knowledge years ago. Charlie was proving him wrong.

He had a sudden desire to break into a run, though. There was a lightness inside him, a strange emotion that expressed a sense of escapism—and the feeling had not come on the back of a physical encounter; they had not gone near a bed. This feeling was due solely to Charlie’s conversation, her laughter and her smiles.

The next day he arrived at midday. With a smile on his face as he and Ash waited on the doorstep for the door to be opened. His heart had a full feeling, as though he’d just eaten a very rich meal. He had completed his duty and now he had two days to do as he wished.

Charlotte, Charlie, opened the door.

‘Hello. Come in.’ She took hold of his coat sleeve and pulled him over the threshold once more. Then her other hand lifted his hat off his head, before he could do it himself. She put it aside on the hall table. ‘We have the whole house to ourselves, I told all the servants to go out.’

‘You will have me strung up,’ he said as he stripped off his gloves.

She only smiled. Then took his gloves from his hand and dropped them on top of his hat. ‘I have luncheon ready in my parlour.’

‘And lemonade?’

‘And lemonade,’ she confirmed with a nod, holding his hand and then pulling him towards her parlour.

‘This is your lair I am being lured into again. Am I to be the luncheon today?’

‘No, you will be dessert.’

Uncertainty lifted his eyebrows, although his smile still broke, yet that twisted a little. He was still unsure whether or not it was wise to call on her here.

They ate their luncheon in her little parlour and drank the lemonade, just as they had done yesterday, talking and laughing together. Then she stood suddenly and took his empty plate from his lap. ‘Shall we go up to bed?’

He glanced at Ash, with a desire to laugh at himself whipping at his chest as his eyebrows lifted again. He was in a strange play. The set for it was perfect; in a feminine parlour. And the scene; the demise of a lustful, sinful soldier. He was still tired from the hours he’d worked through the night, though. For two days he’d had only a couple of hours’ sleep and it made his thoughts disjointed.

He looked up at her as she stood before him, trying to search for some common sense in this. ‘And what will be said by the servants?’

‘They are all out.’

‘I know, but if anyone returns?’

‘I have locked the door between the downstairs and the upstairs and only I have the key,’ her pitch was proud and self-satisfied and her chin tilted upwards, just as it had done yesterday when he’d questioned her judgement.

Damn. The laugh escaped his throat. He could not help himself. The woman was so confusing and enchanting. The Charlotte he had met here, Charlie, was an entirely different person to the trembling woman who’d joined him in a bed in the inn for the first time.

He reached out and held of her hand, without standing or making his decision to accept. Her fingers closed about his as her large eyes looked earnestly at him, asking him why he had not moved yet.

He might be tired but he had learned to ensure his decisions were not slanted by fatigue. ‘Are you certain this is a good idea?’ Perhaps they both needed to come to their senses and stop this now. But his desire to do that was weak, his mind urged him to continue it as much as she did. He wanted to go upstairs with her.

‘Yes. I am. It is the best idea,’ her answer was spoken in her voice that said she intended to live her life as she wished. Her stance reminded him of his youthful self again and his constant refusal to conform to his father’s and older brother’s moralistic view of life. Ah. Damn the world and its judgement.

He stood up.

Damn an army that would make its soldiers march into a battle with a pitiful ration of bullets, let alone food. Damn the infections and diseases that killed the men who had survived the battles and died in filthy beds. Nothing in this world was fair or right.

Who had the power to be a judge over them for choosing to share a bed? No one. They were free to do as they wished.

The emotion that rushed through his body had him lifting a hand to embrace her neck. He wanted this as much as she did. The servants’ or Hillier’s interference be damned. He brought her mouth to his for a long moment.

When they walked upstairs, he led her by the hand as Ash followed them, looking at him with doubt.

If this was a wrong thing to do, then Harry was now cursed, but he would go to hell smiling.

‘Where?’ he asked on the landing.

‘There.’ She pointed to a door in the corner of the landing.

God, he had to ask. ‘Is it the room you share with Hillier?’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘It is my room, as the parlour is my room.’

He breathed out the disturbed sensations that began spinning in his blood on a frothing wave. He did not think he could have lain in the bed with her if Hillier had been there before him. Which was a stupid thought because when he’d slept with other women potentially hundreds of men had been in those beds before him.

He clasped the door handle, turned it and pushed the door open. She took over and led him into the room. It was another small room, like her parlour, and the bed was plain and narrow. Beyond that she had a dressing table, wardrobe and a set of drawers, and that was all. There were none of the fancy things like the jewellery boxes and ornaments he knew were in his sisters’ rooms.

She stood before him smiling proudly and they still held hands as Ash walked around the room sniffing at everything. Ash had known where the letter had come from just as Harry had.

Harry’s free hand lifted and stroked Charlie’s neck, then he kissed her.

She kissed him back as her hand pulled loose from his, then reached to release the buttons of his coat.

It was hurried and urgent when they came together; there were still pins in her hair and the dog lay on the floor beside the bed.

It was the first time they had done this in the way he might have done it with a whore, yet it still felt entirely different. The setting and the hours they’d spent together changed everything. And Charlie… Charlie was simply different—she felt different from every other woman in the world.

When he’d finished, he rolled on to his back, content, and his mind was peaceful as it had not been peaceful for more than a year. He closed his eyes and let that peacefulness enfold him.