by Leda Swann
If she were to meet him, she probably wouldn’t even like him, let alone want to touch him as intimately as she had imagined touching him. Or allow him to take such liberties as he had so warmly described.
Really, to write such words to her, he had to be a libertine. He probably spent half his waking hours writing naughty words to women just for fun, without meaning a single word of any of them. He might seem exciting to her bored spirit, but it would not end well. He would be a drunkard and a liar, or possess a mean spirit, or be vicious.
Dr. Hyde was a good man, an honest man. He would be kind to her.
She clenched her hands into fists and pummeled the bolster on her bed with vigor. She would not wait another week to give Dr. Hyde the answer he ought to have had today. Tomorrow she would accept his offer and speak the words that would bind her to him forever as his wife.
The captain would be forgotten.
Seven
Captain Carterton rapped sharply with the head of his cane on the modest-looking door. Standing there on the street, waiting for his knock to be answered, his stomach jumped and lurched as though he’d swallowed a couple of live scorpions.
It was late to be paying a call, but he had not been able to wait until the next morning. He’d lingered at the barracks only long enough to wash, shave, and change into a fresh uniform before setting off in search of his Beatrice.
This was the moment that had kept him going through the long, lonely nights in South Africa. The moment when he would take Beatrice in his arms and claim her as his own.
The door opened and a young maidservant popped her head out into the street. All he could see was a mob cap and a pair of huge brown eyes in a pale face. “I have come to call upon Miss Beatrice Clemens.” He was proud of the fact that his voice didn’t shake as he spoke the name of the angel who would soon be his wife.
A faint wash of color stained her pale cheeks as she took in his freshly washed and starched uniform. “Right away, sir.” She ushered him into a tiny parlor just off the front hallway and gave him a little bob as she backed into the hallway. “I’ll get Miss Beatrice for you directly.”
He could not sit down. He could not even stand still. Three paces to the end of the room and then three paces back again. Would she never get here?
The room was too small to hold him and all the love he carried with him. There was no space left for any air to breathe. He was on the verge of running up the stairs to go look for her himself, when the door opened and into the room walked Beatrice Clemens.
Straight into his life and into his heart.
His breath caught in his throat and his heart raced in his chest as though a thousand heavily armed Boers were chasing it across the veld. Needles of sweat prickled his forehead, tingling as if her presence burned him.
He took an involuntary step toward her, pulled irresistibly closer into her sphere. She was more beautiful in the flesh than he had imagined, even after seeing her photograph. He could hardly believe that all this feminine perfection could be his.
“Beatrice, my love.” He held out his arms to her, willing her to run into them as he had dreamed for so many lonely nights. “Thank heavens we are together at last.”
Beatrice stopped dead just inside the room and stared in horror at the man standing in front of her, his arms open as if he would embrace her. This wasn’t Teddy, finally come back from South Africa and here to pay her a visit as she had been expecting, but someone else entirely. Someone who seemed to have quite the wrong idea about her. The smile of welcome for her brother froze half-formed on her face. “And who may you be?” she asked, in a voice that could have made the Thames ice over.
A cloud passed over the man’s face. “Beatrice? Don’t you know me?” He sounded hurt and confused, like a toddler who had fallen over and scraped his knee and doesn’t know why it hurts.
“Should I?” His utter certainty that she ought to recognize him threw her. She was certain she would remember meeting a man like he was. Though she was tall for a woman, this man topped her by a good four or five inches. Her muscles might be well-defined from the heavy lifting she had to do on the ward, but this man’s shoulders were so broad and strong he looked as if he had spent his youth laboring on a farm. His clothes, though, showed him to be no farmer, but a gentleman.
“I am Percy. Percy Carterton.” He stepped forward and took her hands in one of his. “My regiment has just returned from South Africa, and I came straightaway to ask you to be my wife.”
Her stomach turned a baker’s dozen somersaults in quick succession and her legs buckled with the shock. If he hadn’t been holding tightly on to her, she would’ve stumbled and fallen.
Percy Carterton? Captain Percival Carterton? The man she had been writing to was no longer safely far away in South Africa but back in England? In London? Standing in Mrs. Bettina’s front parlor? Her head was swimming and she felt faint.
Pulling away from him, she sank down onto the closest sofa. Her mind was whirling so fast she could not think straight. She had thought he was nothing more than a fantasy on paper. Now that he was standing in front of her, whatever was she going to do with him?
“Captain Carterton,” she said weakly, when her throat had unblocked enough for her to speak. “I did not expect to see you back in England.” I did not expect ever to see you, she added silently. I thought you were sure to tire of writing to me long before your regiment was sent home. I was so sure you were merely amusing yourself with our saucy letters, that you did not mean a single word of them.
“I would’ve written to you, darling, to let you know that I was coming home, but I could not.” He gestured with his chin at his right arm, and for the first time Beatrice noticed that it was in a sling of the same color as his regimental jacket.
She blinked twice in quick succession. “You were wounded?”
“Shot in the arm.”
The regiment had seen real action, then. Teddy’s occasional letters had been full of his desire to go into battle with the Boers or the Zulus—he didn’t care which as long as he saw enough action to justify his presence in South Africa. It was strange that Teddy would be in England but had not accompanied his friend.
Assuming of course that Teddy was in England…
A sudden thought made a wave of true terror shudder through her. Her chest constricted so that she could not breathe, and her palms broke out into a sweat. Had he been sent to her to break the bad news of her brother? She was the only family he had left living in London. “And T…Teddy?” She could hardly speak past the blockage in her throat. “He was in the same regiment as you? Was he…? Is he…?”
“Alive and kicking,” the captain said cheerfully. “He came through the bloodiest battle of the war without a scratch on him. He’s joined another regiment now, and is posted safely in Pretoria. He asked me to tell you that he is well and misses you all.”
The ball of lead that had been her heart lightened again at his words. “Then you have not come to give me bad news?” Her face relaxed from a rictus of fear into a trembling smile.
“Bad news? No, I am no bearer of evil tidings. I would have stepped in front of a bullet myself rather than bring you news of your brother’s death.” He sank to one knee in front of her, and picked up her hand in his once again. “I have come, my darling Beatrice, to ask you to be my wife.”
Beatrice gaped openmouthed at him. He could not be serious. It was simply not possible. Men did not ask complete strangers to marry them. Not if they were in their right minds.
Perhaps he was a little touched in the head. During her time at St. Thomas’s, she had come across old soldiers who had served in the Crimean War who had never mentally recovered from their traumatic experiences, even when their bodies were fit and well. Reality had proved to be too harsh for them—and they lived in a world of their own making.
She tugged her hand out of his and placed it firmly on her lap again. “But I have only just this minute met you. We do not even know each other,” she
said in her best calm nurse voice. Of all the myriad of reasons she could have chosen to show him what a mistake he was making, she could only think of this one.
He did not rise immediately from his knees. “Your letters gave me a window into your heart, a view into your soul. You showed me Beatrice as she really was, an angel of mercy, bringing light and hope to a soldier’s wounded soul.” His voice was deep and low, and as intense as if his whole life was riding on convincing her of his sincerity. “Ever since I received your first missive, I have dreamed of making you my wife.”
“They were just letters,” she protested, growing more uncomfortable with every moment that passed. Though he was living in a different reality to her own, maybe he was not touched after all. It was all the fault of those pesky letters.
Deep in her conscience she’d known that no good could come of her saucy letters, but they had been so amusing both to write and to receive. Captain Carterton’s words had made her dull days lighter. She had looked forward to receiving each one as a window into another life—a life that was a lot more exciting than hers.
And if she were to be honest with herself, she had enjoyed the naughty tingle that his heated words gave her. His letters stirred her blood more than Dr. Hyde’s dry touch ever had. Many was the night she had gone to sleep dreaming of the touch of his lips on hers, or the feel of his hand on her breasts.
But it had all been a dream, a fantasy, an idle amusement to lighten her days. Nothing that was real or true. She had had no idea that the captain was writing in all seriousness, or that he fancied himself in love with her. The very notion was absurd.
The captain rose to his feet, and started to pace about the room. He filled the tiny parlor to overflowing. It was too small to hold a man his size. He towered over the small overstuffed armchairs, the lace doilies on the sideboard, and the trinkets on the mantelpiece. He did not belong in such a feminine, dainty room. “I fell in love with you when you first wrote to me. Nothing you have said or done ever since has made me change my opinion of you.”
“I am sorry to hear it,” she said primly, averting her eyes from him. She could not let him labor under his delusion any longer. “But I am sure you will get over your passing fancy for me. I am about to be married.”
A smile, soul-deep, settled on his face. “Yes, to me.”
She hated having to be the one to take that look of utter happiness away from him. “No, to a Dr. Hyde. A good man, who works in the same hospital as I do. He asked me to marry him just this afternoon, and I intend to accept him.”
He stopped his pacing in midstride and simply looked at her, as if he could look into her heart and read what was written there.
In the moments of silence that followed, Beatrice could hear the clock in the corner ticking with preternatural loudness. It deafened her. Desperately she fought the temptation to clap her hands over her ears to block out the noise of the tick-tock. The captain would think she was mad as well as cruel and capricious.
Finally he spoke. “Then you have not already given him your promise?”
“I will do so in the morning.” There was no point telling him a lie. Her letters had given him too many half-truths and insinuations already, and look where her falsehoods had led her. She had made her decision to marry Dr. Hyde for the best of reasons, and everyone would have to live with it.
To her surprise, he merely shook his head with the utmost confidence, and sat down next to her on the sofa, crowding her skirts quite unnecessarily with his large frame. “You cannot love him. If you had loved him, you would’ve accepted him right away. If you had truly intended to marry him, you would never have written such words to me.”
She bristled at his inference that she did not know her own mind. A rational and well-educated woman, she was perfectly well equipped to come to a sensible decision on such matters. “I respect and admire him. That is all I expect of a husband.”
“Not love?” He shook his head slowly back and forth as if her words pained him. “That is niggardly of you. You are only giving him a half-measure, less than he has a right to expect. I feel sorry for him.”
Beatrice laced her fingers together, perturbed at his nearness. It was almost as if the captain could see into the most secret corners of her heart. He was voicing the fears and doubts that she did not want to acknowledge even to herself, and making her face what she did not want to face. “He is a worthy man. In time I will grow to love him as he deserves.”
“You seem very sure of such an uncertain future.”
She hated the way he made her feel, as if she were doing something wrong. Marrying Dr. Hyde was the sensible choice. She knew it was. If he were in her situation, he would do exactly the same. “There is no reason why I should not become fond of him.”
“And yet you have known him for how long already and your heart is still untouched? A month? Two?”
“Fourteen months, if you must know. Not that it makes any difference to my decision.”
The smile on the captain’s face had grown wider with every word she spoke, until it almost split his face in two. “And he has not been able to make you fall in love with him for all this time? Either he has been a sluggard in wooing you, or your heart is made of stone to resist him.”
Her fingers itched to slap the look of satisfaction off his face. Just because she was not in love with her fiancé—yet—didn’t mean she would break it off with him. Or, God forbid, agree to marry the captain in his place. “Love cannot be commanded.”
“No, but it can be coaxed and persuaded into existence.” He put his unhurt arm around her shoulders and drew her close to him. “Has he tried to coax and persuade you as I would have done? As I wrote to you in my letters?”
He felt far too good, close to her as he was. It reminded her of all the naughty words he had written to her, and made her wonder if the reality would be as good as her imagination had painted it to be.
His body gave out a male heat all of its own that made her feel as if she were sitting by a roaring fire. She wanted to curl up into him and bask in his warmth, to unbutton his shirt and slide her hands underneath his linen to stroke his warm skin. She wanted to lean into him and kiss him, taste him.
A bad idea for a woman who was determined on becoming engaged to another man in the morning.
“Dr. Hyde is a respectable gentleman. He does not need to coax or persuade me.” She said the words as if they sullied her tongue just in speaking them.
A twinkle of laughter came into his eyes. He had such pretty eyes, green with a hint of tawny brown around the edges. “Every woman needs to be coaxed.”
She turned her head away from him, away from temptation. Listening to him was bad for her, just like eating too many slices of rich plum cake in one sitting was bad for her. It made her sick to the stomach, and she regretted it the moment she had licked the last delicious crumb from her lips. “I am not every woman.”
“Indeed, you are not.” His breath was hot on her neck, and it sent sharp red spikes of pleasure darting into her flesh. “You are Beatrice, the woman I love. The only woman in the world for me.”
If she thought that eating too much plum cake was hard to resist, the temptation that the captain posed was a hundred times greater. No, a thousand times. “You do not know who I am.”
“Then give me a chance, my love.” His eyes were serious, pleading. His fingertips touched her cheek, lightly, reverently. It was the brush of a butterfly wing, the touch of gossamer, and it shattered her resolve into tiny shards. She would die to be touched like this. “Let me get to know you. Get to know me in return.”
“And Dr. Hyde? What of him?” She crossed her arms over her chest to protect herself, to hold herself together. The touch of her bodice grated against her suddenly sensitive nipples, and she let out a tiny moan. It was too much for her. She could not fight on all fronts.
“You are not promised.” His voice was demanding, inexorable.
“Not yet.” It was a cry for help, a cry for mercy
. If she gave in to him now, she was lost.
He had no mercy. “Do not give him your promise.” His words were both a demand and a promise.
Nothing she had said or done in the last year would have given Dr. Hyde any indication she would not accept his suit. She had always intended to do so. She still intended to do so. “I must.” She could not honorably refuse him. Not now. Not even though her body was crying out for the touch of the captain’s hands. Dr. Hyde’s courtship, and her tacit acceptance of it, had gone too far.
“Delay it, then. For a fortnight. That is all I ask.”
“A week, then.” She dusted her hands off and pushed him away, getting to her feet to dismiss him before she did something she would regret, like pulling up her skirts and begging him to touch her between her legs where she ached for him. So much would she give the captain, but no more. This was her life he was playing with. “Next Sunday, I shall promise Dr. Hyde that I will become his wife.”
He leaned back on the sofa, his good arm behind his head, just watching her. “Unless I can convince you otherwise during that time.” Despite the lateness of the hour, he was in no hurry to leave.
She walked away from him toward the window, and pulled back the curtain to look out at the night. The lamplighter had lit the streetlight on the corner, and its pale glow cast a circle of illumination at its feet.
It was easier to think straight when the captain’s scent couldn’t distract her, when his closeness did not make her breath catch in her throat. Her whole body still burned for him, but her desire was under her control once again.
She stared at the pale circle of light in the night. “I made up my mind a long time ago that I would marry Dr. Hyde, and I generally get what I want. He is a sensible, rational choice for a woman in my position. I have to be honest with you—for all that you wear a handsome jacket and talk prettily to me, I do not like your chances of changing my mind.”
She had not heard him get up, but there he was behind her. “I always get what I want, too,” he breathed into her ear. “And I want you.” His lips touched the bare skin of her neck in a gentle kiss.