The Tainted Love of a Captain

by Jane Lark

  She shook her head. No. Mark did not own her. But it had felt as though he had.

  Harry’s hand ran over her hair as the tears returned. It was not sadness that kept making her cry. It was only that everything was so muddled.

  ‘You do not need to worry,’ Harry repeated. ‘I will keep you safe.’

  Once they’d dressed, they took Ash out for a walk, but then Harry had to return to the barracks for duty.

  ‘You are to keep this door locked. Do not open it for anyone but me in the morning. Ash will stay with you and keep you company,’ he said as he put his sword on and buckled the belt.

  She was sitting on the bed with her hands in her lap. She did not want to be alone. But he had to go. Her head nodded her acceptance.

  ‘Charlie.’ He crossed the room, then leant and cupped one side of her face as he kissed the other. ‘Do not be afraid, simply be careful. If you lie down and sleep I will be here when you wake.’

  She nodded again, then stood so she could hold him. I love you.

  His arms came about her as hers wrapped about his neck and she breathed in his smell.

  There had been nothing that felt sexual between them since she’d gone to the barracks, but there had been these gestures that seemed affectionate. She hoped he had deeper feelings for her too. Love. It would make her feel less guilty for forcing herself on him.

  He kissed her hair, then let her go. ‘I have to get to the barracks.’

  She nodded and bit her lip as he left.

  Chapter 7

  His hours of duty had been another night of strategy planning. Five hundred… He did not have it, and even if he did, why should he pay for her? She had come to him by choice. Paying for her would feel sordid.

  No, he did not want to pay. But he did want her.

  There had been a quiet emotion whispering through him all day. It told him to do more. It urged him to make this into something he could be pleased with. Something that would feel satisfying, not make him feel hollowed out with more guilt.

  ‘Marriage.’

  He breathed out.

  That was what had been on his mind. Marriage.

  Should he?

  The desire to do it was building like a snow storm in a flurry of flakes that had begun to blind him. He could not focus on any of the work he was supposed to be doing.

  He sat back in the chair, staring at the papers before him. Then he stood. He would walk out among the men on guard.

  Marriage…

  He had always said he would never marry. What good was a wife to an army man, who was continually on the move and often uncertain he would live to see the sunrise of another day.

  But in this situation, with Charlie, there was no other choice that he found acceptable.

  When he left the barracks at the end of his duty, his belief that the idea was right was still multiplying. He had two days now, with no duty. He had the time to consider his life and what he wanted to do with it and resolve this.

  He ordered salted ham and eggs sent to the room before he walked up.

  When he tried the handle the room was locked, as he’d requested of her. He tapped the door gently. ‘Charlie.’

  The door opened in a moment. She had not been asleep. Yet… she had not entirely obeyed his order to keep the door locked, she was in her chemise and drawers and it reminded him that someone would have had to help her with her lacing; she must have called for a maid last night to help her undress. Had she been scared?

  ‘Harry.’ Her arms wrapped about his midriff, clinging on to him, so that he had to bustle her backwards to walk into the room. It was the way his youngest sister had always clung to him on his homecomings, like a monkey.

  The memory of his smallest sister made him think of something else too. If there was marriage there could be children, yet he had already ceased wearing his sheath. There could already be a child, no matter that he’d withdrawn. He had not worn the sheath since the day he’d forgotten it.

  ‘I have ordered breakfast.’

  She had still not let him go.

  When she took off his hat, he leant and caught her lips with a kiss, then pulled away and smiled at her. Her eye was no worse and the scarlet in places had turned darker. She was no longer bleeding behind her eye, it was starting to heal.

  She let him go and set his hat aside. Then as he took off his gloves, she returned and her fingers began unbuckling his sword belt. He was not in the mood for playing around with her, though. Not when her eye looked so sore and he felt so damned guilty.

  He took over the task of taking off his sword belt and turned his back on her, facing the chair as he slipped it off, then set the sword down. ‘Did you sleep?’

  ‘Yes. But you must be very tired.’

  He looked back at her. ‘I am used to managing with only a small amount of sleep, it is a part of being a soldier.’

  There was a knock on the door. Charlie’s head spun as she looked in the direction of the sound.

  ‘It will be breakfast,’ Harry said reassuringly, but he ensured that he was the one who opened the door. It was breakfast.

  They ate at the small table, facing one another, with her in her underwear. Through the thin cotton he could see her breasts shaking as she moved and lifting as she breathed in. Something twisted in his stomach that would not be resistant to taking her back to bed for exercise, not sleep. Yet there was the weight of guilt and the burden of empathy pushing the thought down.

  After the meal he stood up to undress and retire, to sleep. Another knock struck the door. A harder knock that held an intent. It was not the inn’s servers coming to fetch the empty tray.

  Harry lifted a hand, telling Charlie to stay where she was, well away from the door, as he went over to it. He picked up his sword and unsheathed it, then walked to the door without a word as the knock struck again. He opened it. Then re-sheathed his sword as the major saluted.

  ‘Captain Marlow. Sir.’

  Harry saluted in return, in recognition of his junior officer. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I have been asked to bring you back to the barracks, sir. There are orders.’

  There are orders… What bloody orders? He had been looking forward to his hours off duty.

  He looked back at Charlie, who was hiding out of sight, in her underwear. He smiled, then wrapped his sword belt about his hips, slid the leather through the buckle and pulled it tight, securing it before turning and picking up his hat and gloves. He lifted a hand in her direction, in a slight gesture to say goodbye, deliberately not speaking as he did not want his man to know she was in the room. He walked out of it then.

  The lock clicked home in the door behind him once he’d walked two paces. The Major probably knew she was in there. He must have heard it too, but at least she had listened to Harry’s advice.

  This was another charge of Armageddon. ‘You have a new posting, Captain Marlow,’ his Lieutenant Colonel stated as Harry stood before him, in the official stance a soldier had to express before a superior officer—especially when the superior officer had been giving him a dressing down. He had known he was in trouble, but a new post. Where?

  ‘Sir.’ He could not stop the note of surprise slipping into his voice. ‘I did not think the regiment—’

  ‘Not the regiment, Captain Marlow, just you. You are being transferred to another regiment. A cavalry regiment that is leaving for India in six weeks. You will have four weeks’ leave and then you must report to your new regiment in Plymouth.’ He held out the letter, with all the information written on it, the dates and details so quickly planned to dispose of Harry.

  This was Colonel Hillier’s doing. He had wished Charlie out of his house and on the streets, not in the keeping of another man. Now the man, who had embarrassed him by taking his mistress in and staying with her in his house, was to be disposed of. It would leave Charlie without a protector. That was the intent.

  It would not, though. Harry’s decision had already been virtually made and now the decision
cemented in his chest. He would marry her. She would have to go with him. That was all. They would both go to India. Lord. Less than a week ago they had been idling in her bed and playing carelessly in her small parlour and now his future had been entirely rewritten.

  But so what? The emotions within him did not reject it.

  He bowed.

  ‘You may pack your things now and go and report to your new commander on the date there.’

  Thrown out of his regiment and the barracks, his home, as quickly as that. With no chance to say a proper goodbye to his men, or his friends. It was as Charlie must have felt the other night as she was pushed through the door into the street. Only he had a family and numerous homes he could always go to and now a posting in India. Another option would be to refuse it and retire from the army, but the army was all he knew. He would not want to have to find a new career or live on his share of his grandfather’s inheritance, kept by John. When he was working, accepting that money was one thing, but to live off it entirely, when it was gifted by John… No, he would not go cap in hand and beg his brother to reinstate his allowance. He was a soldier and he would stay a soldier.

  Harry saluted, then turned on his heel with one step and walked out.

  He had moved half his things to the inn already. He packed the other half as the men came to him to say goodbye—word and rumour had travelled. Gareth was the last to come, but Harry would guess that he had been at the heart of the rumour spreading. He would have made sure the men knew they were about to lose Harry. They had passed through so much together in the Crimea. The men in his regiment were like brothers. The relationship between soldiers who had survived a war was different to any other. But the attachment was something controlled, though. There had been a constant fear of loss that could distract and cause deaths and so connections were held away from the heart as guilt was forced back too.

  When Harry finished packing, Gareth gripped his arm.

  They were close, they’d turned to each other to deal with the pressures of command. Gareth had been to Harry what his cousins had been when he was younger. They had behaved badly together and fought hard together, loved women (in the sexual vein of the word) and lost men together. But even with Gareth, all those shared emotions had been held away from his heart. Stone. That was what a military man needed in his chest, not flesh that could be wounded.

  And Charlie? How did she fit within that life, where a man only ever gave half of himself because the grim reaper stood behind him? How much of himself could he give to Charlie? Not all, never all, he needed a firm heart. But his body already felt as though he had given a greater part of him than he’d ever shared before.

  Harry embraced Gareth then they left the room and walked through the halls together. This was a strange goodbye. A goodbye he’d never imagined saying, as he’d never pictured himself as a married man.

  Gareth stood with him as Harry saddled Obsidian, jesting and mocking Harry for letting a woman sway his life. Harry smiled and laughed, even though inside he was windswept by shock. Just as Charlie had been yesterday.

  He shook hands with Gareth before he mounted the horse.

  Gareth lifted his hand in a final parting gesture. ‘We must communicate in writing. I wish to hear how this domesticated life you are planning works out.’

  Harry smiled. ‘I shall be awaiting that tale too.’

  His friend laughed.

  ‘Captain Marlow! Captain! Sir!’ Harry looked as one of the men hurried across the yard. He held up a letter.

  More bad news, no doubt.

  ‘This just arrived in the packet for you, sir. I’m glad I caught you.’

  Harry leant down in the saddle to accept the letter. ‘Thank you.’ The writing was his father’s.

  He pushed the letter inside his coat, between the buttons on his chest. Whatever his father had to say could wait. He saluted the man, saluted Gareth and rode Obsidian out of the barracks, with the remainder of his belongings in a roll strapped behind the saddle.

  And so his new life began.

  He read his father’s letter as he walked up to the room from the inn’s stable, the second half of his belongings over his shoulder.

  The belongings of the rest of his family filled huge rooms and houses.

  The memory of home and his family made him smile, that was where he’d go now, for the weeks before he was to report at Plymouth.

  Harry! What the hell do you think you are doing? The letter began, which did not bode well for the remains of it. John had ratted on him then.

  It was an entire letter of reprimand and complaint. The sort of diatribe he had received in his youth from his moralistic father. Yet again the sort of complaints he had expected to have outgrown. When would they allow him to make his own decisions regardless of their views? At what age? Eighty?

  How dare you consider this… You have been told again and again…

  Yes, he had been warned against sleeping with women who chose to be paid. He had always retorted, ‘was that not better than seducing an innocent woman,’ or ‘misleading some barmaid or a serving girl into thinking there might be more’. But now, as he read those words, his refusal to listen stung him with an accusation from his own mind as he saw Charlie and heard her words. She had been seven years with one man and yet she’d never enjoyed it nor ever been happy, from what he could tell. So why had she done it, then? Why did other women? For money, not pleasure, certainly, and he had traded with them for the use of their flesh, telling himself it gave them as much pleasure as it had given him. His father’s words cut with a poisoned tip of a lack of integrity when he read them today and saw them through the lens of his association with Charlie.

  If your mother hears…

  They had always been the primary words of his father’s complaint. He had been terrified of Harry’s mother knowing that he associated with such woman, as though she would be tainted merely by the knowledge of Harry’s unsavoury behaviour.

  Well, his father would be swallowing his words soon when Harry rode up the drive with Charlie wearing his ring on her finger. They had denied him the money to keep her, but hopefully they would not deny her.

  The letter was addressed from Harry’s brother’s estate in Kent, his parents, and probably all of his extended family, were there for the summer. They gathered at John’s estate once a year, or sometimes twice, sometimes for Christmas too.

  That would be where he would go then, via London. He needed a marriage licence, and then he would go to John’s and introduce his wife to his family before he went to India.

  His new life and his new strategy were prepared.

  ~

  Charlie was dressed and waiting for Harry. She had been looking through the window, trying to see when he came back, but the first she knew of his return was the sound of his footsteps on the stairs.

  Once she’d heard the soldiers leave with him, she’d immediately rung for a maid to help her dress. Her hands had shaken as she’d tried to stand still while the woman had laced her corset, and her palms had been cool despite the warm weather and yet damp with sweat. She’d been scared someone else would come or that Harry would never return. He had obviously been in a lot more trouble than he’d led her to believe. She had caused that trouble.

  But what would be the outcome.

  After she’d dressed, she’d taken Ash down to walk beside the sea. She’d known Harry would be a while. The sound and the energy of the waves had calmed her mind a little, but all the time she’d been wary of the possibility of one of the Colonel’s servants watching her. She had continually looked across her shoulder. She had been mindful of Harry too and what might be happening at the barracks. What if he had been put into the cells there? That thought had made her return to the inn in the hope that he would be there.

  He had not been here then. But now he was.

  She opened the door before he knocked, she was so certain the footsteps were his. The sight of him in his uniform, so strong and bold, grasped about her
heart just as it had this morning when she’d opened the door to him.

  He smiled at her, his lips twisting to one side slightly, in a way that apologised as he lifted another canvas bag from his shoulder and let it fall on the floor.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and hung on. ‘What happened?’ He had no need to apologise. Any request for forgiveness should come from her lips, not his. She had begun this by pressing her friendship upon him. Then she had urged him to come to Mark’s and stay there.

  ‘I have a new posting,’ he said.

  She let him go. ‘To where?’

  He smiled as he took off his hat and gloves. ‘India.’

  Oh. Lord. A sound of shock and pain escaped her lips. A sound she would have preferred him not to hear, but he ignored it anyway and looked down to unfasten the buckle of his sword belt.

  ‘Do not worry, it means you will have me to yourself for four weeks.’ He looked back up as he took the belt from his hips. ‘Or perhaps not all to yourself. We will go to my family. They are all together in one place. It will inevitably mean you must share your time with my nephews and nieces, but if we are to be in India for years, as I imagine, then I would like to see my family before we go.’

  We…

  His hand slid into his trouser pocket. Then lifted. His fingers held something.

  ‘Charlie, you are going to have be saddled with me I’m afraid. I cannot leave you here. I can neither protect you nor afford to set you up here while I am away—and regardless I want you with me. So, there is only one answer for it. You must marry me!’ It was a ring in his fingers. A gold band. ‘This will have to do, as both your engagement and wedding ring, I’m afraid. I bought it from a pawn shop in the Lanes.’ He laughed. ‘I hope you will forgive it, but I do not have much ready cash at the current time.’

  She swallowed against the tears building in her throat. Then she blinked them from her eyes. How silly. But they were happy tears.

  ‘Thank you.’ She had thought he would leave her behind when he’d said he had to leave, but to marry her… ‘Thank you,’ she said again as she looked at the ring, unable to believe this. A month ago she had been living at Mark’s and Harry had been a beautiful stranger on the beach.