The Tainted Love of a Captain

by Jane Lark

  When Harry returned to the house it was two hours later. The ride had been stimulating and his blood was racing. He was ready to go to Brighton. He just needed Charlie to tell him her family’s address and then he would go.

  Ash ran ahead across the lawn, as exhilarated by their exercise as Harry as they walked from the stables around the back of the house towards the drawing room.

  Ash had saved him from madness when he’d returned from the Crimea, another moment when his family had rallied and found the solution for him. But he would not take Ash to India. He would leave the dog with Drew and with Iris, who had named her. He would not subject a dog to weeks on a ship. Yet Obsidian… He wanted to take her.

  All these thoughts tried to smother other thoughts as the ride had done. But regardless, all he could see in his mind was Charlie’s face as she slept, while all he could think about was what had happened when she’d been so young—and it had affected her so badly she would steal a fortune from the family of the man she had run to for protection.

  By the time he reached the house the stimulation that had been in his blood after the ride had stagnated. His mind was muddled and twisted. When a soldier’s mind needed order.

  Now perhaps he saw what his family had seen in him when they had given him Ash. When someone was hurt in the flesh… Damn. He thought of men who had been hurt in the flesh. There should have been treatments that saved them. But when someone was hurt in the mind, there were no treatments. The only answer was strength to fight and battle through.

  He walked up the steps on to the terrace. Then remembered that his family might be about the house now.

  He hesitated. Ash sat.

  But Charlie was in there, and she might be awake too.

  Love held his heart in a fist.

  As he walked towards the French doors his hand lifted, in anger and frustration. He wanted to hurt the man who had hurt her. He punched out and his fist hit the wall. The strike shot a sharp pain up his arm and ripped the flesh off his knuckles.

  He shook his hand out as his left hand turned the handle. Glad that he had the pain to distract his thoughts now.

  ‘Harry, why on earth did you do that?’ His mother pulled the door open, then stepped back to let him and Ash in. She had been in the drawing room alone. The writing desk was open and there was paper there and a quill in the ink bottle. She must have been writing a letter.

  She held the hand he’d wounded in a careful way that braced his palm but avoided his knuckles and drew him across the room to a chair. ‘Sit,’ she ordered.

  Ash did so, as though his mother had ordered her. Harry laughed with a dry, hollow sound. He did sit, though.

  ‘Why would you do something so silly? Look at your hand.’

  He saw it and felt it, but it was only grazed skin, he’d not broken any bones—he’d not been raped, violated and assaulted for years. He had not lost a limb and lain in agony for days as his flesh had rotted.

  ‘Do not move,’ she told him, then turned away.

  He did not move. He was too distressed and confused to move.

  She returned with a decanter and a glass, put them down on a low table beside the chair he sat in, then took a handkerchief out of her pocket. She put that beside the liquor as his hand started dripping blood on to John’s carpet.

  She moved a chair then so she could sit opposite him. ‘Let me see.’

  He held out his hand. She gripped it and looked at the scuffed and torn skin. ‘What is this about, Harry?’ She reached over for the liquor and held the glass beneath his hand, then tipped the liquid over it.

  He tilted his stinging hand so that the liquor ran into the glass, now tainted with blood. ‘I thought you were going to pour me a glass for my nerves.’

  She looked up and shook her head, her pale-blue eyes saying that she had not found him amusing and she was still angry with him for injuring himself.

  The open wound stung like hell when she set down the glass.

  She poured liquor into the handkerchief and dabbed at the grazes to clean the grit from the wall out of the shallow graze.

  ‘Now, tell me, why would you do such a silly thing? I have been worried since you arrived at the house with a wife sporting a blackened eye, when there had been no word to anyone that you were courting a particular woman.’

  ‘Are you very angry with me for not inviting you to the wedding?’

  She looked up from her task. ‘Of course, you are my son.’

  He smiled. ‘I am sorry. I wished you there, but there was a reason for our haste—’

  ‘I have guessed that as I said I have noticed Charlie’s eye, but that has only made me worry more about the reason for both.’

  ‘I do love you, Mama.’ He was unsure why he spoke the words, but they were in his head and in weeks he would sail away and perhaps never see her again.

  ‘I know, Harry. I love you too, even if you were always my most difficult child.’

  A sound that was more like a real laugh escaped his throat.

  ‘But now you may stop avoiding my question. Tell me the reason for this sudden outburst of temper that would cause you to hurt yourself?’

  Because I cannot hurt the man who deserves it. ‘It is Charlie.’ His heart, which had been hard but was now entirely soft, aching flesh, wanted desperately to tell his mother everything. ‘Papa has always said that if you knew the way I lived my life, you would never forgive me.’

  She looked up from her task, her eyes asking why, with a concerned expression.

  He wanted to be forgiven. ‘I have always used whores.’

  His mother’s breath caught on the word, with a sharp intake—his father had been right, she was horrified.

  ‘I know it was wrong now.’ Harry rushed on. He did not want her to think badly of him, but he had a desire to be honest. ‘I realise that women who are paid have probably not had a choice…’ He breathed in, steeling himself. Her gaze moved from his eyes to the expression on his face, and back, as though she sought to judge the truth of his statement and emotion. ‘I have learnt that from Charlie,’ he said as he breathed out.

  ‘From Charlie…’ Confusion gathered in her voice and her hold on his hand tightened as the handkerchief stopped dabbing at his wound.

  ‘Yes. She was kept by a man.’

  ‘Oh, Harry.’ She let go of his hand and sat back in her seat. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘Fallen in love.’ Yes. That was the truth. He’d been intrigued and charmed and… ‘She approached me. I did not take her from the man in that way. She—’

  ‘I am not angry that you have rescued her. Why would I be angry over that? Oh the poor woman.’

  Rescued, it was an odd choice of word, but, yes, he supposed that was what had happened; Charlie had been saved from any more abuse, humiliation and disgrace and the fear of that befalling her sister had led her to steal money, jewellery and his pistol. ‘She is still hurting.’ She must have felt rescued when they’d left Brighton.

  His mother straightened and her body stiffened in a very similar way to the look of defence that Charlie had sometimes.

  ‘I need to help her. I may help her practically, but how do I cope with the thoughts for her? She was fourteen when it began, Mama. It is haunting me more than the war now and it must haunt her…’

  His mother was staring at him with eyes that held numerous questions. ‘Just love her, Harry. That is what she will need. A man who loves her regardless of her past.’

  ‘The man she was with wants money and he has power over her family. John is taking them in so they will not be reliant on Hillier, but I am going to go back to—Mama.’ She had stood suddenly, and in such a rush she knocked over the chair. ‘Mama…’ Her hand covered her mouth as she dropped the handkerchief, then her other hand pressed against her stomach.

  He saw her stomach convulse as her hand pressed more firmly to her mouth. She was going to be ill.

  Harry rose. ‘Papa!’ he shouted as he started walking across the room towar
ds the door into the hall, to fetch help. His father must be downstairs at the breakfast table, surely. ‘Papa!’ He yelled again as behind him his mother actually vomited on the carpet that he had bled upon. ‘Papa!’ he yelled more strongly, using the full depth of his voice.

  The door opened as Harry reached it, but it was not his father, it was John.

  ‘Fetch Father. Mama is ill.’ Harry turned back as John passed the order on to a servant. There was an ornamental bowl on a half-circular table, which stood against one wall in the room. Harry walked over and picked it up, then returned to his mother, who was still being sick.

  She had dropped to kneel on the floor. He knelt on one knee beside her. ‘Here.’ He put the bowl before her and settled a hand on her shoulder. She had always been slender, incredibly beautiful and serene and kind in nature, and he could not ever remember seeing her ill.

  John stood over them, hovering, just as Ash now sat before the hearth, staring at the commotion.

  ‘Your father, Your Grace.’

  Harry looked back at the servant who’d announced his father. ‘Would you take the dog to the stables?’ Then he looked at Ash. ‘Go.’

  The servant walked into the room behind Harry’s father. His mother straightened and turned into Harry’s chest, but then his father saw her and realised something was wrong and in a moment she was taken away from Harry’s arms and held in his father’s. He sat on a sofa with her.

  She was crying. The tears ran on to her cheeks in rivers.

  ‘What happened?’ his father asked of Harry.

  Harry stood as the servant walked Ash away with a grip on Ash’s collar. ‘I was telling her about Charlie and she just suddenly became ill.’

  ‘Telling her about Charlie…’ John’s eyebrows lifted. It was a question and an accusation.

  ‘Darling, what is it?’ His father’s hand lay over her hair, pressing her head against his shoulder.

  John stared at Harry. ‘Did you say the name?’ His voice was low, as though he did not want his father or mother to hear.

  ‘What name?’

  ‘The name of the man Charlie was with.’

  ‘Hillier…’

  His mother’s reaction was instant, her stomach heaved and she covered her mouth. Harry bent and picked up the bowl, then gave it to his father. Then he looked at John.

  John shook his head and did not explain, but walked to the door, then said to someone in the hall. ‘Have my mother’s maid sent to her room, and Lady Marlow will need sweet tea, and probably laudanum and she will want to retire to her bed, I am sure.’ He shut the door before coming back to join their sorry gathering. ‘Papa.’

  Harry’s father looked up at John.

  ‘The man whom Harry’s Charlie was with was also my father’s Lieutenant Colonel.’

  ‘No.’ The shock that hit Harry’s father was palpable. The air became thick with the strength of his reaction. He paled and went to move, as though he’d rise and ride for Brighton now, but he could not move with Harry’s mother on his lap. His eyes widened and his lips parted. ‘She has never said the name,’ he said to John. ‘How can you know?’

  ‘Mama did not tell me, remember? I know the truth from investigators. They gave me the name.’

  The grip his father had about his mother’s shoulders firmed in a way that implied a level of protection Harry had seen only when the army had ridden through villages and the men had pulled their wives and children closer. ‘And you have known who he was all this time and not said a word?’

  ‘There was no point in telling you. We could have done nothing. It was needless torture to know and be able to do nothing.’

  ‘There would have been a way.’

  The conversation flew from his brother to his father, and Harry did not understand a word. Investigators… known who… she had not given a name. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I will take your mother upstairs,’ his father said, sliding an arm beneath her legs, as he braced her shoulders, then he stood with her in his arms.

  Harry touched her shoulder. ‘I am sorry if I upset you.’

  She did not even look at him, her head remained pressed into his father’s shoulder.

  His father sent him a bitter look before turning away.

  Harry walked past them, crossing the room to open the door.

  Once they’d gone, he shut the door behind them and looked at John. ‘What did I do? Why would the thought of Hillier upset her?’

  John’s lips pursed, as though he did not want to speak.

  ‘Tell me, for God sake!’ Harry was utterly confused.

  ‘Hillier did to her what he did to your wife.’ John’s hands clasped into fists at his side.

  ‘What?’ That was impossible.

  ‘After my father died, Hillier took her in and forced her to become his mistress.’

  ‘She is the daughter of a duke…’ The idea was preposterous.

  ‘Grandfather had cut her off when she eloped with my father. She had nowhere to go. It was in Brussels. After the battle of Waterloo. Within hours of my father’s death Hillier took her to his home.’

  There was a similarity. Charlie had been forced into a desperate situation and she had gone to Hillier. But his mother… The thought was still ridiculous.

  ‘It is true, Harry,’ John said. ‘If you come into the library, I will show you the file. It is locked in a drawer in my desk.’

  ‘The file… Why do you have papers on this?’

  ‘Because for ten years of my life she was missing and no one would tell me why, so I paid a man to find out. No one would speak of it because she was living, as your Charlie was, for those ten years, kept by men against her wishes, with some freedoms but without freedom because she had no other choice. Now do you understand why Papa and I have told you time and again to leave such women alone? And she will hate that you know this. She did not want me to know.’

  Harry could not take the story in. Moments ago his mind had been spinning with the knowledge of Charlie… Now his mother… With Hillier… Rescue, she had said just now. ‘Who rescued her? How did she escape that life, then?’ He still did not believe it.

  ‘Your father. Papa met her and fell in love with her. He helped her.’

  If this was true, had Hillier known who Harry was? He’d commented on Harry’s eyes that night, the night Harry had thought him interested in men.

  God.

  ‘I am going to Brighton.’ Harry turned away.

  ‘You cannot do anything stupid. I am keeping your weapons.’

  Harry looked back over his shoulder. ‘I still have my hands.’

  ‘I should come with you, but if I go I will kill him. It is why I have never visited you in Brighton. I knew he was there.’

  When Harry walked out, Henry stood in the hall with Drew and Rob. Harry’s drinking partners of last night. But everything had changed since last night.

  ‘Your shouting disturbed our breakfast,’ Henry complained mockingly. ‘We have come out to see what the commotion is about. Are you ready to go and causing a scene because no one was here to send you off?’

  ‘What is happening?’ Rob asked, more seriously. ‘We saw Mama. Was she ill?’

  ‘Yes. I am riding for Brighton in half an hour. If you wish to ride with me, Henry, Drew, I would appreciate your company. But Rob, you are not to come.’ He had no idea what he was going to do when he got there, only that he had to go and do something to make Hillier pay for what he’d done to two of the women whom Harry loved.

  Pain swept through his chest as the knowledge embedded there, his mother as well as Charlie. God.

  ‘We will have the carriage readied and meet you here in the hall in half an hour, then,’ Drew stated.

  Harry turned away and ran up the stairs, saying no more, closing his lips on the words that longed to exclaim his outrage and the bitter emotion of betrayal. The world had betrayed him. He had thought it clean and honest. Now he had seen war and come home to discover that nothing was what
it had appeared to be.

  When he walked into the room he shared with Charlie, he expected to see her red hair spread across the pillows. It was not. The bed was creased but empty. He went to the door leading into the small dressing room, but she was not there either.

  ‘Charlie.’ He looked to where her bonnet had been. It was no longer there and her cloak was not on the side where he’d left it.

  She had gone.

  When had she gone?

  He walked over to the bed and touched the pillow. It had no heat left in it. She had not been in the bed for a while. His gaze caught on the bottle of laudanum as it glimmered, reflecting the morning sunlight. He picked it up. There was still some inside. She had not drunk the whole dose – she had deliberately deceived him yesterday. She had always intended to run away again.

  A knock struck the door.

  He turned around as hope leapt in his chest. Perhaps she had simply dressed and gone down to breakfast.

  He walked across the room. But why would she knock and not walk in? ‘Mama.’

  She was paler than normal and her eyes shone red from the tears she’d cried, and yet—there was that stiff stance that he’d noticed earlier which was so similar to Charlie’s posture as she denied judgement.

  God. It was true. She had endured what Charlie had.

  ‘May I speak with your wife? May I see Charlie?’

  ‘She is not here and should you not be lying down?’

  ‘I am recovered. I was shocked, that was all. Your father wished me to lie abed with a fogged mind full of laudanum, but the sweet tea that John ordered was a much better remedy. Where is she, Harry?’

  ‘I have no idea.’ He stepped back and lifted his hand, as if to show her the empty room. ‘Gone, that is all.’

  His mother walked in to look. ‘Why?’

  ‘That man has threatened her family and her sister. She tried to go back to Brighton yesterday. I have just discovered she is not here; she might have gone again.’

  ‘To him?’

  ‘To protect her sister.’

  His mother’s eyes were wide. She had memories too and he had thought when he’d returned from the Crimea that he was the only one amongst his family who knew what suffering looked like and he’d felt guilty for indulging in such a richness of life. But she had known that feeling too. And he had not even thought—she had seen the wounded men after Waterloo.