Since the Surrender

by Julie Anne Long

  Chase instantly recognized she meant to surreptitiously leave the house.

  In her hand she clutched a half-crumpled sheet of foolscap.

  In two strides he was within a few feet of her. “Good day, Mrs. March. Where are you going?”

  She visibly started. Halted in her tracks.

  And then her shoulder went back stiffly in resignation. She turned very slowly. Her eyes flared hotly when they met his.

  His question had been very direct.

  But then, he was generally very direct, as she knew.

  “You seem to be everywhere, Captain Eversea. And yet we speak very rarely these days, don’t we?”

  Impressive gambit, indeed. An attempt to put him on the defensive.

  “Are you reluctant to answer my question, Mrs. March?”

  A hesitation. He could sense the tick of her thoughts.

  “Is my destination truly any of your business, Captain Eversea?” She’d tried for imperiousness. She was the wife of his commanding officer, after all.

  But he just smiled a slow, grim, entirely comprehending smile that soon had her fidgeting nervously with the sheet of foolscap in her hand. She was clever but young, and doubtless inexperienced when it came to lying, simply because it didn’t come naturally to her. Otherwise she would have known her evasiveness was tantamount to confession.

  “It most certainly is my business if you intend to visit with Lady d’Aligny after the colonel has requested you not to do it.”

  She went visibly still. To her credit, she didn’t deny a thing, or lie about where she intended to go. But he saw a wounded flicker in her eyes. The message rustled; her hand was shaking.

  Somewhere out in the garden a bird gave voice to a series of trills.

  “But she’s my friend.” She’d tried to measure out the words evenly. But he’d heard the pain in her voice, and his fingers curled involuntarily into a fist. She held up the message, as though displaying evidence of friendship. “She invited me for tea. She misses my company, she says, and I miss hers, and it’s been but three days since I’ve seen her. Surely just for tea…” Something approaching stubborn defiance began to harden her lovely features. “Surely there could be no harm in tea, Captain Ever…”

  She trailed off at the cold, implacable expression on his face.

  “She’s not your friend, Mrs. March. She’s using you. This is war. The colonel doubtless has made his wishes known to you with regards to the Lady d’Aligny. Don’t be a child.”

  He’d said it firmly. But gently, gently, too. As though the message she held was a loaded and aimed pistol and he was attempting to talk her into lowering it.

  She dropped her eyes to the message quickly, her fine brows diving. Trying to disguise her hurt and disappointment and confusion.

  He’d seen all of it, anyway.

  And in that instant he felt her hurt so acutely it might well have been his own.

  And, absurdly, that was when he became truly furious at the d’Alignys.

  And what kind of soldier did this make him when suddenly the welfare of Mrs. March meant more to him than the d’Aligny betrayal?

  She lifted her head again. They regarded each other wordlessly for a moment. Her pale eyes seemed unnaturally bright. Two faint spots of pink had appeared high on cheeks.

  “How do you know she’s not my friend? Perhaps she cares for me because she enjoys my company, and not simply because I might do her the good fortune of betraying the British army to her in some useful way. And I swear to you, I never have.”

  This was so desperately, staggeringly naive and surprisingly, maturely ironic that for a moment he didn’t know how to respond.

  “I know you never have, Mrs. March. Your husband would ensure you were never able to, and he would never put you in that position or use your friendship with Lady d’Aligny in that way. I fear your loyalty to Lady d’Aligny is admirable but misguided, Mrs. March, and you must abandon it.”

  It was no pleasure to disappoint her, to watch her struggle with a betrayal. Perhaps the first she’d ever known.

  But suddenly her eyes glinted bright as flints and the high color in her cheeks blazed.

  Ah. And here was the temper Mrs. March tried so valiantly to disguise.

  “Despite what you might think, calling me Mrs. March again and again does not impose a greater distance between us…Captain Eversea. One might think you’re attempting to remind yourself that I am a Mrs…. March.”

  He froze.

  A brutal warrior, was Rosalind March. She’d identified and aimed straight for his weakness as no one before had. She’d rendered him speechless and momentarily helpless for the first time in his life.

  Unfortunately, his weakness was also her own.

  She knew she’d gone too far. She stared at him. Her mouth parted just a bit in shock. She’d frightened herself with her own recklessness.

  He couldn’t yet speak. He was gruesomely ashamed that she was correct.

  And furious to be laid bare by a woman.

  He would never forget her dress that day: white muslin, covered all over with tiny, whiter dots, the neckline edged in fine lace. The sleeves were puffed and short. Her arms bare. Maypole strands of hair had escaped at her nape and fell in loose twists to her jaw. Her lips were generous: lush, pale pink, the bottom fuller than the top. A band of satin, cream-colored, tied beneath her waist, it reflected light, as did her skin.

  That her mind and soft voice should cut him so startlingly to the bone seemed wrong, incongruous. She was all softness.

  At last she jerked her eyes away from his gaze.

  But she’d drawn back a veil between them that could not now be dropped. The moment was a precipice for both of them.

  Still, she’d tried a conciliatory laugh. It was a failure: short and nervous. “Oh, fear not, our valiant captain. I consider myself duly warned. I shall obey. You needn’t fuss so.” Her hand came up then to touch him, lightly. Meant to flirt, or to soothe, or to placate, he supposed.

  He snatched it in midair as though it were a striking cobra.

  He hadn’t even given her time to gasp. Her green eyes were dark, her pupils enormous with pure astonishment. She was too surprised to be too frightened of him.

  Yet.

  He held her wrist fast, and perhaps too tightly.

  Impressions set in: God, but her skin was unthinkably fine. Soft. So soft. How could it survive this war unscathed?

  How could destiny allow anyone but him to touch it?

  A ridiculous, traitorous thought. But it owned him. And it ached in him. Mocked him.

  In seconds he was mesmerized by the fact that he was touching her skin outside of any social context that would allow him to properly do it. He ought now to speak or at least release her.

  He seemed unable to do either.

  The silence began to pulse.

  Rosalind swallowed. He watched, fascinated. Her pupils were huge, turning her pale green eyes to ash gray. She was riveted by something in his face. Her swift breath fluttered the few stray tendrils clinging to her jaw.

  It was Rosalind who broke the silence with a whisper.

  “Why are you afraid of me?”

  A more sophisticated woman would have turned the words into an innuendo or a taunt. But she wasn’t that kind of woman, not yet. She was genuinely confused and hurt by whatever was between them; he heard it in her voice. And he heard fear there, too.

  But she couldn’t disguise the fascination. For what red-blooded woman wouldn’t be fascinated to discover how much power she held over a man like him?

  Chase was suddenly aware of how very alone they were in that passageway. It seemed as secret, as separate from the house, as their feelings were secret from the world.

  You ought to afraid of me, Mrs. March.

  Because I’m afraid of myself.

  Because he wasn’t one to waste words, and because she knew the answer to her own question, and as patience wasn’t his forte, he said nothing. Instead, as if in
a dream, he watched himself slowly turn her hand over. And slowly raise it to his lips.

  And then in her palm place a kiss that surely must have seared her, must have branded her, with its sheer carnal tenderness.

  There’s your answer, Mrs. March.

  Her breath snagged audibly. Her arm gave a minute jerk.

  And as he was in no way a coward, just a military man without a compass or a map in this particular terrain, he lifted his lips from her palm and looked into her eyes to assess the consequences of what he’d just done.

  But he didn’t give her hand back to her.

  She didn’t attempt to retrieve it from him.

  Color had rushed into her throat, her cheeks, over the tops of her breasts, flushing cream skin to pink. Her eyes were brilliant, shot through with emotions too complex and varied for Chase to decode. Her lashes lowered in confusion, but she lifted them swiftly again, a force of will, and with them up came her chin. Bravado. She wanted him to know she wasn’t a coward, either.

  Still they said nothing.

  And as the silence was growing absurd, and as he still had her hand, Chase raised her arm again slowly enough to make it a dare, to give her ample opportunity to pull away.

  She did not. She was mesmerized.

  And his fingertips, like a scout, led his lips softly, softly, along the faint blue vein of the underside of her arm, to the crook of her elbow. The scent of roses was stronger there, in the bend.

  That’s where he placed his next kiss.

  Uncompromisingly adult, hot, leisurely—it was the sort of kiss he’d give a practiced lover after they’d exhausted each other in bed. He touched his lips to her, opened them to touch his tongue to salt, sweetness, silk. His lips lingered long enough to feel the skittering of her pulse. The heat of her skin hinted at the rush of blood through her body; he savored this, knowing what he was doing to her, knowing that her nipples had gone hard, that she was likely sweetly, deliciously, dampening between her legs. He savored what he was doing to himself. His skin, every inch of it, felt feverish. His cock stirred, swelling. He did nothing at all to disguise it.

  He was out of his mind.

  Her breathing was rough now. She was frightened or aroused. Both, most likely.

  He slid his hand from her elbow up to her wrist again and held it loosely in the circle of his thumb and forefinger.

  Giving her the option to take it back from him.

  He met her eyes. Willed her to take her arm back from him. To slap him. To say something, anything, but preferably something idiotic or contemptuous enough to cure him of this, to stop him, to stop the both of them.

  But she seemed to have gone mute as well as pink.

  He flicked his eyes toward her bodice: her nipples were sharply peaked beneath the fine muslin of her dress. And his eyes lingered there, and he was certain they spoke silently and eloquently of the things he’d like to do to them. Lick. Touch. Suck.

  He didn’t care whether she saw him staring.

  She noticed him noticing. Her hand gave a tiny spasm then; it was an attempt to free it.

  He released her at once.

  She lifted her hand. He waited for the slap.

  But her hand hovered an instant, seemingly frozen in time. And then, as if hardly daring to do it, it moved for him, landed softly against his jaw. And she dragged the tips of her fingers along his jaw gently, as though daring a wild beast to snap at her.

  He stared at her. His heart beat in painful, martial thumps.

  She’d done it as a test, he knew, bloody woman. To see if his expression would change when she touched him.

  And God help him, he was certain it did, because he saw in hers something that unnerved him. Behind her defenses, her pride, her desire…was what looked like sympathy. She understood.

  When her fingers rested against his cheek, he turned his face into her hand. Unable not to. Hating himself for it.

  She cradled his cheek for an instant. And then she slid her hand behind the nape of his neck, very softly. Her hand was cool, smooth, achingly feminine. And placed the other on his chest and dragged it slowly up to rest against his shoulder. Making her intent very clear.

  In this way, she’d made herself complicit in the betrayal of her husband. She had her own sense of honor, then.

  She wouldn’t allow him to entirely blame himself.

  In a swift instinctive motion Chase’s arms folded her into his body, and her body molded to his with staggering instinct and perfection. One hand settled at the nape of her neck, sliding up the downy short hairs to cradle her head. One at the small of her back.

  He pressed his body, his aching cock, hard and deliberately against her, felt her legs open to press her own body harder, closer to him, closer. So close doubtless they were both hurting each other, themselves, and it was the sweetest imaginable pain.

  He tipped her head back in his hand. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders, around his head.

  The kiss was a sensual clash, quick and angry and imperfect, because they were angry at each other and at themselves and were strung tight with a need they could hardly fully unleash. She tasted inexperienced; she tasted immeasurably sweet; she was tense and quivering. His fingers dropped from her nape, snagged in the lace of her bodice, dragged it down until he found the satin of her breast, and then her nipple, ruched and hard, and he took it between his fingers and rubbed roughly; she gasped an oath into his mouth and ground herself harder against him.

  Sweet Christ.

  He had evil, traitorous thoughts: did his dear friend the colonel merely hike his wife’s night rail at night and ground away at her? Did she have any idea of the kind of pleasure that could be had from her body? Did she have any idea what he knew, of how he could make her feel?

  Her body, in its lush awkwardness, instinctively knew. He moaned into her mouth.

  Chase knew this kiss was a mistake for a million reasons beyond the obvious, but mainly because in it he sensed dizzying possibility, something that stung like a deep clean saber cut, something that could have been pleasure or pain or both. It was fraught with a thousand things he knew he could never possibly articulate because he’d never needed the vocabulary for them. The taste of her, the way her body blended into his, was entirely new.

  With astonishment, he realized he was shaking.

  Falling. He fell and fell. Her lips were a cloud, her tongue satiny and hot, touching his, testing his, twining and taking, and desire gripped him with talons. And he knew, somehow, he could not fall forever, in the way that a man strung from a noose could not fall forever.

  He needed to end this. It was within his power to save himself and her.

  He did end it. Somehow.

  And then somehow she was out of his arms.

  For an instant he was relieved.

  In the next instant he felt a heaviness, a sadness, that nothing about this grim war had yet induced in him.

  It was silent again. That silence was the sound of his life transformed forever.

  Betrayal sounds like this, he thought, and was then grimly impressed with his newfound sense of melodrama.

  From the corridor, in the distance, through a cracked door, they heard bellowing. It sounded like Kinkade, who must have left the meeting. Chase only heard the last part. “…and if you touch my bleedin’ boots again, Crimway, I’ll make ye wear yer arse for a hat, d’yer hear?”

  “I love my husband, Captain Eversea.” Her voice was low and steady.

  “I love him, too.” His voice was quiet.

  She inhaled sharply and exhaled a sigh. Steadying her pulse, he knew. And then she nodded once, shortly: Good.

  It took her longer to gather her composure, because she was just a young woman in the midst of a war, and he was probably only the second man she’d kissed in her entire life, when he could be a quarter of an hour or more remembering all of his lovers.

  He saw her retreat into herself with a straightened spine, her expressive eyes going distant and impersonal.
/>   Well, then. At some point during this war she’d turned into a colonel’s wife after all. It was entirely possible, Chase thought, that he had something to do with it.

  A different voice, this one Sergeant Wilkerson’s, floated toward them. “…and dinna tell me how to polish a—”

  Ah, the tortures of war.

  To the sounds of profanity and inanity, she’d left him.

  Two days after he kissed Mrs. March, Colonel March informed Chase that he’d been assigned to a different regiment.

  A quiet meeting. Swift and succinct, an order delivered. And that was all.

  The reassignment might very well have been coincidental: Chase was well regarded and needed, and redeployments were not uncommon. But he knew better.

  He would never forget the look on his friend’s face. Not cold, or angry, or regretful.

  Impassive.

  Which was much, much worse than any of those things.

  Chase would never know for certain how Mathew knew. Did Rosalind tell him?

  And here everyone had thought Captain Eversea was a bloody hero. He supposed even he had begun to think he was a bloody hero.

  He hadn’t the faintest idea who he was now.

  And he’d sat for a moment in a sinking silence. And then, unable to speak, he simply nodded when he was dismissed. And bowed.

  After that, having his leg shot open felt rather superfluous.

  It was the last time he saw either Colonel March or Rosalind March.

  In the Velvet Glove, he threw back another whiskey. It burned less going down, which meant memories and pain were dimming, too.

  Chapter 7

  And while Chase was drinking to remember and then forget her, Rosalind discovered that the same wild, filthy street boy she’d enlisted to track down Chase was perched on the museum steps when she exited, licking his fingers free of the last bits of a pasty. She shuddered thinking of how much dirt was going into his mouth along with the pasty and sailed past him.