Temptation (Avon Red)

by Leda Swann

  “The matron of our boardinghouse is a trained nurse. She doesn’t work at the hospital anymore—she hasn’t since she married—but she still nurses the occasional private patient. She would be glad of the extra money.” She hesitated for a moment before adding. “I think your sergeant-major and Mrs. Bettina would find they have a lot in common.”

  Eight

  Beatrice looked at the line of people waiting to be treated. Some days, when there was sickness in the City, it snaked out the door and into the corridor, but today it was blessedly short.

  At the head of the line was a very familiar face.

  She gave a sigh, not sure whether it was born of irritation or of pleasure. Would Captain Carterton never let her be?

  She beckoned him over with a frown. “You are not needed at the barracks?” Her voice was as stern as she could make it. She had to make him realize that she was not a pushover. He could not simply command her attention whenever he felt like it.

  There might be passion between them—his kiss had taught her that much—but passion was not to be trusted. She wanted more from a husband, needed more from a husband, than a good time between the sheets.

  A husband was forever. A woman had to choose wisely when she picked the man she would marry, and not allow herself to be blinded by transient bodily desires. She did not know the captain’s character, and she certainly doubted the permanence of his affections. In fact, she suspected he was poor husband material all around.

  If she was a different sort of woman, she might consider taking him as a temporary lover. He would do very well for that sort of thing. Just the thought of him lying over her, pushing his cock into her secret places, was enough to make her squirm with heat.

  Unfortunately she was not in the market for a lover…

  The captain gestured at his wounded arm, seemingly not at all concerned by the sternness of her voice. “I’m officially on invalid leave. A soldier, even an officer, isn’t much good if he’s only got one arm. I’ve come to have the dressings changed.”

  “Could the army surgeons not oblige you?” In her experience, the army surgeons were jealous of their patients and only sent the most intractable cases to the public hospital.

  He gave her a cheeky grin. “They are not as pretty as you are.”

  “If you have come to see me in my professional capacity, I trust you will keep the conversation appropriate,” she said in her most quelling tone.

  “I waited for you. I wanted it to be your hands that healed me, not the hands of a stranger.”

  “The result would be the same.”

  His smile crinkled the corner of his eyes. “Ah, but the process would be so much less pleasant.”

  She gave a sigh. Mules had nothing on his stubbornness. She might as well give in to him graciously and save her energy for the battles that really mattered. Like resisting his physical appeal. “Let me take off your sling and see what’s underneath.”

  He held out his arm to her. She untied the sling and carefully unwound the bandages the covered his arm.

  She recoiled at the sight of the nasty red gashes that covered his upper arm. The red lines sprawled out over his arm like the tracks of a wandering centipede. She tried not to let the shock show on her face at the sight, but she could not help letting a gasp of indrawn breath escape her. “A bullet did all this to you?” It looked as if his arm had been put in a mangle and the handle turned until his arm was nothing but a bloody pulp.

  “The bullet did part of it. The rest was done by a surgeon digging out the bullet and all the pieces of bone it shattered.”

  “I hope he was a good surgeon,” she muttered, as she tested the edges of each cut.

  He held himself stock-still, not twitching so much as a single muscle on his face, as she probed at his cuts. “An army surgeon. He’d had plenty of practice stitching up bullet wounds.”

  The whole arm was a mass of yellow and green from fading bruises. The cuts appeared to be healing well, with no sign of infection. “Can you move it?”

  He gave it an exploratory swing. “I’m not sure my shoulder joint will ever be the same again,” he said, a grimace of pain flitting over his face. “And I doubt I’ll be much good with a spade. But it should work well enough for my purposes—to raise a standard, ride a horse, fire a rifle. It won’t get me invalided out of the army permanently. That’s all I care about.”

  “So you’ll still be Captain Carterton.”

  “I will always be Captain Carterton,” he replied proudly. “Once a captain, always a captain.”

  “Just as I shall always be a nurse, I suppose.” She fetched a pot of ointment from a cupboard and smoothed it carefully over his arm. “The cuts are healing nicely, but soon they’ll start to itch, if they don’t already. Don’t scratch them—it will impede their healing and may cause them to get inflamed or infected. I will give you a bottle of ointment to take away with you. Rub it into your arm every day and it should stop the skin from getting too uncomfortably dry and scaly.”

  He looked askance at the pot of ointment and made no move to take it from her. “Isn’t that what you nurses are for? To tend to your patients’ wounds?”

  “Nurses are here to do what their patients cannot do for themselves. Not what they are simply too lazy to do for themselves,” she scolded him. She didn’t need to give him another excuse to follow her around and invent tasks for her to do under the guise of needing assistance.

  “You could see to my arm every day. It would not take you long. And then you would be sure that the ointment was applied in accordance with your high standards, and not just slapped on willy-nilly by a careless soldier in a hurry to visit his sweetheart.”

  His skin under her hands was warm, not with the heat of fever but with the warmth of life. She could happily smooth ointment into his skin for an hour on end. “You are the one who will suffer if you forget.” Just being this close to him was a treat for her foolish senses.

  Everything about him was so tempting. The softness of his skin, the knowledge that he had been wounded in the service of his country, even the curl of his moustaches all made her want to take him in her arms and press him close to her heart.

  It was a foolish reaction for an almost engaged woman to have to a man who was not her almost-fiancé. Unfortunately, she could not always control her desire with the force of her common sense.

  He was looking at her with big puppy-dog eyes, begging her to take pity on him. “And you became a nurse to reduce the suffering in the world.”

  She shook her head mournfully at him. He was clearly determined to get his own way. She may as well just give in gracefully. “Come and see me early in the mornings, before my shift starts, and I will spend a couple of minutes attending to you.”

  A smile like a beam of sunshine on a winter’s day brightened his face. “I knew you had a generous heart.”

  She put the ointment away and fetched some clean bandages, which she wound carefully around his injured arm. Allowing the gashes to remain covered would keep them clean and promote their healing. “But only five minutes. No more. And you must behave yourself or I will refuse to see you again.”

  “With a threat like that, I will be on my best behavior.” He leaned closer to her so none of the others in the busy clinic could hear him. “I will be so well behaved that I will not even beg you for a kiss.”

  She stepped back and fixed him with a glare. “See that you don’t. Now run away and find something else to amuse you. Go play with your toy soldiers or something. I have more patients to attend to.”

  “Toy soldiers?” He gave a huff of affronted pride. “Me, a wounded veteran of the Transvaal Rebellion, play with toy soldiers? You insult me.”

  She gave him a little push. “Off you run, there’s a good little captain.”

  He gave an easy shrug. “If you insist. I need to give my troop of French soldiers a new coat of paint anyway. Their jackets are looking quite chipped and dirty.” He brushed past her face with his own in wha
t might have been a parting kiss, and then he was gone.

  Beatrice watched him go before she turned to the line of patients waiting to see her and called the next one up. One thing was clear—she could not tell Dr. Hyde that she would marry him while her foolish attraction to Captain Carterton was raging out of control. She could not agree to marry one man while she was dreaming of making love to another—it would not be fair to either of them.

  Captain Carterton had the knack of making her go weak at the knees just by looking at her. Without a single touch, he could have her panting with need for him, with desire for his hands on her body, his lips on hers. She could not see him without being reminded of the words he had written to her, the words of both desire and of love. He wanted her in the most elemental way that a man wanted a woman, and her body responded to him in kind.

  She wanted him to take control of her, to take possession of her, as she had never wanted any other man. She wanted to feel him thrusting inside her, making her his woman. She wanted him to take her. To fuck her, just as he had described in his letters.

  The need to touch him came back stronger every time she fought it off. She caught herself at odd moments during the day obsessing over how his hair would feel under her fingers, how smooth his chest would be, and how his member might swell and grow at her touch. She wanted to find out everything about him, and more.

  Even more annoyingly, she had discovered that not only did she desire him, but she liked him. He was generous and attentive to his wounded friend, by turns charming and passionately affectionate to her, and bravely uncomplaining about his injury even though she could see that it had to be terribly painful.

  He made her heart lift just to see him. She could not help liking him. That was more dangerous even than the passion she felt. Such passion as he aroused in her would be a fleeting sensation. It must be. Nothing that strong and hot could last without burning itself out.

  Eventually he would tire of pursuing her, and her wayward passions would settle down from a raging inferno into a gentle simmer. She would mourn its passing, even though she knew it was for the best. He had built his affection for her on a fantasy. It would wither and die as quickly as it had sprung up.

  Once that happened, she could once again think clearly and with a level head about Dr. Hyde’s offer. But until then, she would have to avoid the doctor’s company.

  After leaving Beatrice in the hospital, Captain Carterton strode over to the boardinghouse where she lived. She had suggested the matron as a private nurse for Sergeant-Major Tofts, and he was anxious to settle the matter with her, if he could. Though the sergeant-major’s leg seemed to be healing well enough, his friend did not seem to be healing as well in spirit as he was in body. A pretty nurse to attend to him and to keep him company when he had no other visitors would be just what he needed.

  The matron was an attractive woman, no longer in the first flush of youth. He introduced himself and explained his errand.

  “A private nurse?” She pursed her lips together. “I haven’t practiced as a nurse for some years now. I’m not sure I would be up to the task.”

  Captain Carterton had immediately warmed to her. The few minutes he had spent in her company had already made him sure that she would be the perfect antidote to the sergeant-major’s dullness of spirits. “Beatrice, Miss Clemens, said you took on the odd nursing job still. She suggested you would be perfect for the task.”

  “I have accepted the odd position, taking care of elderly folk, mostly,” Mrs. Bettina said with a self-deprecating smile. “They need a bit of care and attention, but not serious nursing. Not like a wounded man.”

  “My friend is the same as any other man. He needs company and care more than anything else. And you could always call on the nurses on the wards to help you, if you needed something. I’m sure he would be very grateful for the attention. As would I.”

  “Could I work around the times I need to be here for my girls?” she asked him anxiously. “They are my first duty. I cannot neglect them for another position.”

  “That would be perfectly acceptable,” he assured her. “I would not have any of them suffering because you were busy elsewhere.”

  “And you would want me to start quite soon?”

  “The sooner the better. But I’m sure my friend can wait a few days, if that suits you better,” he added hastily, as a look of concern passed over her face.

  “My cook is away until Wednesday, and I am running the boardinghouse by myself,” she explained. “But I could start on Thursday.”

  “That would be perfect.” He stretched his legs out in front of him. He had achieved one of his goals for the afternoon. The other would not be quite so straightforward. “It’s remarkably warm for this time of year, isn’t it? I worked up quite a thirst walking over here.”

  Mrs. Bettina jumped to her feet. “Oh, where are my manners. I completely forgot to offer you a cup of tea. I swear, I am all at sixes and sevens with Agatha away.”

  “I would love a cup of tea, but please, do not put yourself out. Let me come and help you.”

  “No, I will have the maid bring it to us.” She rang the bell, and instructed the girl who answered to bring in a pot of tea. “And make sure the water boils and put two big spoonfuls of tea into the pot,” she added, for good measure.

  “She is a good, hard worker, but a little slow to learn new things,” she explained to the captain, as the girl ran off to do her bidding.

  “I’m sure all the girls who board with you are hard workers,” he said approvingly. “Miss Clemens, for example. She made a thoroughly good job of bandaging up my arm again just this morning.”

  A knowing look came into Mrs. Bettina’s eyes. “She is a fine young woman. And very pretty, too.”

  “Extremely.” He paused for a moment. “I would like to thank her for taking such good care of my arm, but I don’t know how to. Is she a young lady who loves nature and would like a pretty bunch of violets? That seems so paltry a gift in recompense for her care. I had thought about a pair of silk stockings, but…” He shook his head and let his voice tail off. “They are too…too personal a gift. I own, I am in a quandary for an appropriate gift for her.”

  Mrs. Bettina was looking at him with approval. “You are a thoughtful gentleman to put such effort into finding the right gift for her. Dr. Hyde takes her walking in the park every weekend to listen to the brass band. He is a good man, but after a year he still does not know that she does not like the park and she hates brass bands and would much rather go to a music hall.” She shook her head in despair. “He does not listen.”

  “She likes music halls?”

  “Who doesn’t?” Mrs. Bettina smiled. “I’ve been known to go myself on the odd occasion. A nurse’s salary doesn’t afford many luxuries, but the girls make up a party to go the music halls once every few months.”

  Just then the tea arrived, and Mrs. Bettina poured him out a cup. She waited until he had taken a sip. “I am only telling you this because I am sure Dr. Hyde is not the man for Beatrice,” she blurted out.

  He nearly choked on his mouthful of tea. Clearly he had not been as subtle as he had thought. “I quite agree.”

  “She is not in love with the doctor. Not as a young woman ought to be in love with the man she marries. But what can I say to convince her there is more to life than she knows? Every woman needs to find that out for herself.” She paused and took a sip of her own tea. “What’s more, I do not believe that Dr. Hyde is in love with her, for all he has asked her to be his wife. That would be a marriage of convenience on both sides. Nothing more.”

  “I would offer her more than such an empty marriage. I would offer her love, too. And I would listen to her.”

  She gazed steadily at him, as if she could read his thoughts. “You would offer her marriage?” Her face went a little pink around the edges but she did not look away. “You must forgive me for asking, but she is a good girl, and is very dear to me. I would not have you hurt her in any way.
”

  “Yes, I would offer her marriage.” He shifted uncomfortably on his chair, but Mrs. Bettina deserved to be told the truth. “In fact, I already have.”

  “And her answer?”

  He squared his shoulders. An officer in the English army did not accept defeat. “I have hopes she will accept me the next time I ask her. If not, then the time after that. Because I will not stop asking until she says yes.”

  “You care for her that much?”

  “I do.”

  “Then I shall not regret telling you of her love for music halls. Or that her shift finishes early tomorrow, and she would have plenty of time to come back here to dress before heading out for the evening.”

  In Mrs. Bettina he had found an unexpected ally in his quest. He rose from his chair and bent over to kiss her hand. “You will not regret your confidence in me.”

  She rose, too, to see him to the door. “See that I don’t,” were her parting words as he walked out and onto the street.

  Captain Carterton was waiting outside the hospital for Beatrice when her shift finished the following afternoon.

  She raised her eyebrows at him as he fell into step beside her. “Do your bandages need changing again already? Or is it something else this time? Your leg, perhaps? Or maybe there is something wrong with your head?”

  She wished he wasn’t quite so handsome in his civilian clothes. The elegant cut of his trousers showed off the fine trim of his leg, and his waistcoat buttoned over a broad chest and flat stomach. Not that she should be looking at his chest or his stomach. Or his legs. Or the bits in between. Definitely not those. But he was a fine figure of a man nonetheless, even when he left his red jacket back at the barracks.

  Her snippy attitude just made him laugh. “There is nothing wrong with my head. But I thank you for asking.”

  “Then what can I do for you?”

  He offered her his arm. “I have come to walk you home.”