by Jane Lark
‘We will walk to the town,’ Harry stated once they’d passed the men. ‘I am sorry, but I could not take the time to fetch Obsidian, men are not allowed to bring women to the barracks and the rule includes officers. I broke it by letting you stay while I served out my duty, so it is best we left at once.’
‘Will you be in trouble?’ Shivers kept raking through her body, even though she was wearing her bonnet and her cloak and it was a summer morning. Her arms folded across her chest. He was walking quickly. Her legs slashed at her petticoats as she tried to keep up.
He sighed. ‘I will be. But it was my choice to take you to my room. Just as it was yours to take me to your bedchamber.’
‘Will you be in severe trouble?’
‘Yes, quite likely. But I will manage it. Have you not been in severe trouble? I think it fair I suffer too and it is not your concern, so you are not to fret over it.’
She glanced at his profile. ‘Are you angry with me?’
‘No, Charlie, I am angry at Hillier, and tired.’
‘I am tired too.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Have you the money to pay for a room in the inn for me?’
‘Let that also be my concern. You will have a room and a bed and food to eat. I will ensure it. Although I may struggle with the quality of clothing, and such, that Hillier provided, you will not be left to beg.’
Yet this felt like begging, but she had nowhere else to go. Her arms fell and swung at her sides with the pace of their steps. At least she knew there would be a room, a roof and a bed. Now at least there was no need to be afraid of the next hour, and until the next night.
Harry walked with the rhythm of a march, while Ash kept pace at his heel. Her heart raced with the pace of his strides as she tried to hurry and keep up on his other side.
He took her to the inn they had first lain in together and her fingers curled into fists at her sides as her chin tilted up defensively while Harry requested a room for an indefinite stay. The man looked at her with a gaze that judged her badly. She knew that look, she had learned it at the age of fourteen.
Harry was asked for money as a down-payment. He took a purse out of his coat pocket and put some money in the man’s hand.
She bit the inside of her cheek to stop the tears. She had been forced by circumstance and love for her family into accepting a life under Mark’s protection; she did not want to force Harry into protecting her.
His hand held her arm as they walked upstairs and the gentle contact sent relief flooding into her blood; it seemed to express concern and caring for her despite their situation.
When they reached the room, he let her go. ‘I have to leave you now, I’m afraid. I have asked them to send you breakfast up and Ash will stay to keep you company. But I must return to the barracks to receive whatever judgement my commanding officer wishes to bestow. It is better I return than wait for him to send for me.’
‘I am sorry,’ apologies were the only words her tongue wished to say. She had not wanted it to be like this. They had shared something she’d thought special and now it was all ruined, soiled and stained. It was not special any more, it was a need.
‘It is not your fault. You must do as you wish while I’m gone. I have paid enough money for you to live here for a few days without incurring debt, so do not be afraid to order food, drink or a bath, and here.’ He withdrew his purse from his pocket and gave it to her. ‘This will give you something, at least, although not much, with which to find some clothes other than those you are dressed in.’
She swallowed against the lump of tears gathering in her throat. ‘You will come back?’
‘Yes. Of course. I just… I cannot be sure when. It is dependent on how lenient my Lieutenant Colonel feels.’ He smiled, but the smile was not in his eyes, it had no depth.
She had done something terrible.
His hands lifted and he stepped forward, then he braced either side of her head. ‘Do not be afraid, promise me? Relax here. I will talk my way out of this.’
Tears made his face a blur.
His lips pressed on to hers, then another kiss touched her cheek. Then he pulled away. ‘I have to go. But you must smile for me before I leave, so I may remember that while I am away.’
She opened her lips in a smile, but it was probably more of a grimace.
His fingers tapped beneath her chin. ‘I have to go.’
Once he’d gone, she sat in a chair and cried as Ash sat beside her with her head in Charlie’s lap.
‘What will happen now, Ash?’
~
It was as though the first charge of Armageddon struck Harry as he stood before the Lieutenant Colonel.
‘I might demote you for this. I might have you court-martialled.’
Damn. He would be shamed forever if he faced the judgement of a military court. ‘Forgive me, sir. I saw no other option at the time. Miss Cotton was in shock and injured.’
‘And your mistress.’ The words were snapped at Harry in an accusation.
The denial rose to the tip of Harry’s tongue, but… It was the truth now, she was his, and he had been living as though that was the truth for the last few days. He bowed his head and acknowledged it.
‘And you have taken her from the care of a Colonel.’
A retired Colonel, he wanted to say. He did not. It hardly mattered. He knew the army. The Colonel’s rank would still have sway among Harry’s higher-ranking officers. His fate was now being busily rewritten. To what?
He breathed in, in a controlled way. He had survived a war; he would survive the outcomes of this, whatever they were.
‘You are dismissed. I will let you know what I decide later.’
Harry stiffened his stature and saluted. ‘Lieutenant Colonel.’ Then he turned with a step and walked out. Damn. Damn it.
But Lord, he did not regret what he’d done with Charlie. She had been everything to him these last few days.
When he walked past the slot for his letters, he stopped. There were two for him. He took them out and walked on towards his room. He would pack some of his things, then ride back to the inn.
In his room he opened one of the letters that was written by a hand he knew. It was from John—his older, ducal half-brother, who held the purse strings. He unfolded the paper with an eagerness that one of his nephews might feel.
No. The word jumped out and bit at him. His fingers creased the paper as his grip on it tightened. ‘No… Damn you.’
How dare you even think that I would approve such a thing… How many times have I told you, warned you, that you cannot behave so? It will break our mother’s heart if she heard of you keeping a woman. No. I will not fund it. I will stop the damned allowance, if that is how you are choosing to spend it. I had thought this behaviour outgrown. I was wrong, then. I am stopping your allowance. Enough is enough.
Lord. Anger rushed into Harry’s limbs with a surge of longing for a sword fight and the rage roared in his ears, yelling out inside him. He needed the bloody money, it was not want, nor desire, it was desperation now. Damn. He was not a youth to be moralised at. He’d thought he had outgrown the condemnation of his brother too. It sent a bitter taste flooding into his mouth.
He discarded the letter, throwing it on to the bed, then opened the next one.
Hillier. Bloody hell.
The letter was an outpouring of accusations, of theft and then demand. Harry was accused of stealing, both for stealing Charlie away and for taking the Colonel’s food and drink. God. He had spent three days in the man’s house. But he had been invited— ‘By his mistress.’ It was a type of madness that had come over Harry where Charlie was concerned.
Yet he still did not regret.
You owe me, Captain Marlow. Apparently the price of his theft—of Charlie—was five hundred pounds. Harry thought her priceless and he still did not regret. Let Hillier, as well as his brother, go to hell.
But five hundred, that could not be found, even if he wished to pay it,
and if it was not paid as it would not be, what then?
Nausea stirred in Harry’s stomach as he packed his things. His life had changed and neither time nor fate could be turned back. He’d learned that well enough in a baptism of a barrage of firing-arms in the Crimea. Guilt swept up into his mind and thrust its fists at his chest, but that, he had learned, must be lived with. Now there was simply another part to it.
He picked up his sword belt, wrapped it about his waist and secured the buckle. Then he put his pistol in his bag and pulled the drawstring tight before lifting the bag on to his shoulder. He felt as though Ash should be beside him, but Ash was with Charlie.
At the inn, he left Obsidian to the care of the stables, then walked into the reception room and asked for food, coffee and a bathing tub to be sent to his room.
His body ached to join Charlie in the room he’d hired. He had no idea what the outcome of this would be, yet he knew that he was glad to have her here. The thought of her with Hillier would have cut deeper than any sense of guilt he’d known since the war.
He knocked on the door.
‘Come in!’
He opened the door and stepped into a new way of life. ‘Hello.’
Ash bounded over to him, barking.
Charlie was sitting up on the bed, her hair a mess. The bright bruise about her eye had become even larger during his absence; it had crept quite far out on to her cheek. The internal wound was still bleeding. He would have to watch her and make sure it was nothing more serious.
‘What happened?’ She slid across to the edge of the bed and got up.
‘Nothing for you to fret over. I have brought my things. I will be staying here with you when I am not on duty.’ He put the bag down on the floor by a chair and took off his sword, then rested it across the chair.
When the meal of stew and bread was brought up, she ate too, and they sat and talked. Her hands trembled as she ate. She was still very distressed. It made him realise how much of herself Charlie kept hidden. He had always seen the things she’d revealed, the honest and natural way she behaved, both out of a bed and in it. Yet she had said very little about herself or how she felt. Those were things, he now realised, she’d deliberately kept secret, though he did not believe she had ever lied.
‘What happened last night?’ he asked. ‘How were you hurt, really?’
‘I told you; Mark slapped me and I fell. He did not hit me.’
He had hit her, just with an open hand and not a closed one, the action was the same. But Harry did not say that; it made no difference. He would never let Hillier near her again. ‘Because of us?’
‘Yes.’
‘How did he discover it?’ Not that they had been discreet.
‘The housekeeper wrote to him. He returned late and he shouted at me and smacked me and then threw me out through the front door. I had nowhere to go and so I just walked. Then I realised I was walking towards the barracks and I carried on because I knew you were there.’
‘And, as I told you, that was the right thing to do.’ She had not sounded as though she thought that true.
‘You are not in too much trouble?’ Perhaps she was uncertain because she felt guilty over the problems it had stirred up.
‘No.’ He did not want the worry to be hers. He’d become used to the burden of guilt; he could carry another weight.
‘When are you on duty again? When must you go?’
‘Tonight. We have the rest of the day to spend together.’
‘But you must be tired, you have not slept.’
‘I have ordered a bath, I will bathe and then sleep, and you may bathe and sleep with me. You said you were tired too earlier; I doubt you slept much last night or when I was gone.’
She shook her head.
As she sat in the tin bath before him Harry combed her hair. He had washed her hair for her too, their legs tangled and contorted about one another.
‘Tomorrow, I will take you shopping and we will buy you one more dress, at least, and underwear and such things that you need.’ His brother and his ill opinion be damned, Harry would pay the bill with an I-owe-you agreement, if he must, and he would use John’s name and have them send the bloody bills to his brother too. He would not see Charlie suffer unduly for what they had done together. Their affair had been a joint endeavour; he should bear as much of the brunt of the results as her.
‘Thank you.’
‘You do not need to thank me.’
It was a strange thing to lie in a bed with her when she was his; his to keep, protect and care for. This woman, who he held in his arms, he also held in the palm of his hand. She ate by his gift now and she slept in sheets in a dry room by his gift. The knowledge was an odd feeling in his gut. He did not try to touch her in any way, but simply held her. She was still a little in shock—and the knowledge that he was now paying her… by a sort of method… did not sit comfortably with him at all.
Strange. His morals had always previously encouraged him to pay a woman.
He shut his eyes and expected to see a hospital tent, or the battlefield and hear the sound of cannons or screaming and moaning men. Instead he could still see the vivid red bruise around Charlie’s eye.
He swallowed against the lump of emotion in his throat, then let the tiredness claim him.
~
A knock, a sudden, hard strike, hit the door of the room that Harry had taken for them. Harry was asleep but Charlie had been lying awake beside him for a little while. She sat up.
The door was hit again.
Charlie climbed off the bed. ‘I am coming, wait,’ she said it quietly as she walked towards the door. Harry had worked all night and he’d been sorting things out for her benefit for most of the morning; she did not want to wake him unnecessarily. It was probably only someone come to take away the bath tub they had used. She did not attempt to dress fully, but she picked up Harry’s coat and put it on over her chemise. She was not indecent, she had her chemise and drawers on.
She opened the door a little and peered around it. ‘Hello.’
‘Miss Cotton.’ The door was pushed open wider. It was Mark’s manservant, his valet, Mr Perrin.
The moment threw Charlie back years, to the stupid young girl who had taken this man’s hand and climbed up into the Colonel’s carriage, and later Perrin had collected her from her mother’s house and brought her here to Brighton. She swallowed against the fear in her throat. All the emotions that she’d known then and thought she’d conquered were inside her again.
‘You are to come back,’ he said. The words were an order. She was being recalled.
But. ‘No.’ Her chin tilted up in defiance. She was with Harry now. ‘No.’ This was where she wanted to be. She was not young and as pliant as dough to be manipulated any more. She did not want to be Mark’s any more.
‘You will come home with me, Miss Cotton.’ Perrin’s hand lifted as he stepped forward.
‘No. She will not.’
Mr Perrin looked beyond her.
Charlie turned.
Harry walked towards them. He’d woken, risen and he must have moved with stealth and speed because he’d collected his sword without her even hearing. He unsheathed the sword as he moved, with a whisper of steel. In the next second the tip was directed at Mr Perrin’s chest, at the level of his heart, at a flat, sideways angle as Harry held out his elbow in a posture that said he was prepared to lunge.
Harry’s stance spoke of a knowledge of exactly how to kill a man and all the muscles beneath the skin of his upper body were taut and ready to do it.
‘She will not, and if you do not go I will push this sword into your chest with a force that will make the steel pass through your clothing, flesh and between your ribs, to skewer your sour heart.’
This was the first time she’d faced Harry the soldier. This was the man who rode his black horse towards the fight on a battlefield, knowing that he would kill or be killed. Fear whispered through her with the same quiet sound as when he’d withdrawn
his sword. He scared her like this and he was only clothed in his underwear.
She touched his chest. ‘Harry.’
He looked at her. It was as though he did not see her immediately. He looked through her at first. But then he focused and his hand that held the sword fell. Then he looked back at Mr Perrin. ‘Go.’
Mr Perrin did not move. ‘If you want her, you have to pay for her. The price is five hundred pounds as you have been told. Colonel Hillier said if you do not have the money you cannot have her.’
‘He threw her out,’ Harry’s words were dismissive.
‘He has changed his mind.’ Mr Perrin looked at her. ‘You are to come with me, Miss Cotton.’
‘No. My mind has changed too,’ Charlie stepped closer to Harry and wrapped her arm about his waist. ‘I want to be with Harry. I have a right to choose. Colonel Hillier cannot force me to go back.’ She was not that girl who had felt trapped into leaving her family to put food back on their plates. She had come to Harry and he was taking care of her.
Harry’s chest moved with his breaths, but his body was still rigid and ready to strike. He was holding on to his temper tightly.
Mr Perrin looked at her. But she was not afraid now because she knew Harry would slash him with the sword if he made a move to take her. ‘If you stay, Miss, he owes Colonel Hillier five hundred pounds. Or someone does.’ She did not move. He turned away then.
Harry stepped forward and closed the door, then turned the key in the lock to secure it. He turned and looked at her, his hand that carried the sword hanging at his side. ‘I’m sorry.’
Five hundred pounds… Did Mark really expect Harry to pay him. ‘Did you know about the money?’
‘There was a letter at the barracks.’
She swallowed. She dared not ask if he would pay it. He should not have to pay it. She did not want him to pay for her.
‘Charlie.’ He’d seen her becoming lost and had called her back to him. His free hand lifted.
She went to him again and his hand embraced the back of her head and drew her forehead to his shoulder. ‘Do not worry. He did not own you. He cannot force you to go back or make me pay him anything.’