The Captain and the Cavalry Trooper
Page 1
Table of Contents
Legal Page
Title Page
Book Description
Dedication
Trademarks Acknowledgement
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
New Excerpt
About the Authors
Publisher Page
The Captain and the Cavalry Trooper
ISBN # 978-1-78651-664-0
©Copyright Catherine Curzon and Eleanor Harkstead 2018
Cover Art by Posh Gosh ©Copyright April 2018
Edited by Ann Leveille
Pride Publishing
This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Pride Publishing.
Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Pride Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.
The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.
Published in 2018 by Pride Publishing, UK
Pride Publishing is a subsidiary of Totally Entwined Group Limited.
Captivating Captains
THE CAPTAIN AND THE CAVALRY TROOPER
Catherine Curzon and Eleanor Harkstead
Book one in the Captivating Captains series
As the Great War tears Europe apart, two men from different worlds find sanctuary in each other’s arms.
Captain Robert Thorne is the fiercest officer in the regiment. Awaiting the command to go to the front, he has no time for simpering, comely lads. That’s until one summer day in 1917, when his dark, flashing eye falls upon the newest recruit at Chateau de Desgravier, a fresh-faced farmer’s boy with little experience of life and a wealth of poetry in his heart.
Trooper Jack Woodvine has a way with strong, difficult stallions, and whispers them to his gentle will. Yet even he has never tamed a creature like Captain Thorne.
With the shadow of the Great War and the scheming of enemies closer to home threatening their fleeting chance at happiness, can the captain and the cavalry trooper make it home safely? More importantly, will they see peacetime together?
Dedication
CC—To the Rakish Colonial, Nelly and Pippa. Thanks for the snuggles!
EH—For Vivian. Never forgotten.
Trademarks Acknowledgement
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:
The Morning Post: The Daily Telegraph
Boy’s Own Paper: BPC Publishing Ltd.
Sherlock Holmes: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’: John Keats
‘Guide Me, O Thou Great Redeemer’: William Williams, translated by Peter Williams
‘Pretty Polly Oliver’: traditional
‘She Walks in Beauty’: Lord Byron
‘Sì, mi chiamano Mimì’: Giacomo Puccini
‘The Raggle-Taggle Gypsies’: traditional
Chapter One
Northern France
1917
The wagon carrying Jack Woodvine bumped and jerked along the poplar-lined lanes, a fine spray of mud rising up each time the huge wooden wheels splashed through a puddle.
He had given up checking the time and, even though the journey was far from comfortable, tried to doze as he passed along under the iron-gray sky. A chateau, they’d said. Different from the barracks he’d been in when he was first deployed. Doubtless it would be a dismal old fortress, but was it silly of him to hope for bright pennants fluttering from a turret?
Finally, the wagon drew up at a gatehouse of pale stone. As Jack climbed out, dragging his kitbag behind him, sunlight nudged back the clouds and turned the gray slate of the roofs to blue.
“You the new groom?” A soldier appeared from the gatehouse. His cap was so low over his eyes that Jack couldn’t make out his expression.
“Yes—Trooper Woodvine. Jack Woodvine.” He took a letter from his pocket and held it out to the man. “I’ve been transferred from another battalion. This is the Chateau de Desgravier?”
“Yes, Trooper! Turn left at the bottom of the drive for the stables. Quick march!”
The last thing Jack wanted to do was march, quickly or otherwise, but he shouldered his kitbag, jammed his cap onto his head and marched down the tree-lined avenue.
It was thickly leaved, but through the branches he could see the white stone of the chateau ahead. He rounded a bend in the driveway and he saw it—Chateau de Desgravier.
An enormous tower rose up in front of him, its roof reaching into a delicate point. Jack sighed, the spots of mud on his face cracking as he smiled. It might not have had pennants floating from it, but it was exactly like something from a fairytale. Beside the tower were the stone and brick and filigreed windows of what looked to Jack like a palace. Who would ever think that the front was only a few miles to the east?
Quick march!
Jack continued on his way, turning to his left just as he’d been ordered. The path here bore evidence of horses—straw, manure, the marks of horseshoes. Ahead, an archway, figures at work. A lad of Jack’s age maneuvering a wheelbarrow, another leading a horse out to the paddock.
This wouldn’t be so bad. It seemed to be a peaceful place, and easy work for a lad like Jack. He raised his hand and grinned at the grooms as he headed under the archway and into the vast stable yard.
Then he heard singing. In French.
Jack dropped his kitbag and looked round. The voice was that of a man, yet heightened slightly, giving it a teasing, effeminate edge, and Jack couldn’t help but follow it like a sailor lured by a siren, pulled along the row of open stables toward that lilting chanson. Inside those stables young men labored and sweated, brooms swept and spades shoveled, yet one of the boxes at the far corner of the yard seemed to have been transformed into an impromptu theater.
Jack hardly dared glance through that open door, yet he couldn’t help himself, blinking at the hazy darkness of the interior where half a dozen grooms lounged in the straw, watching the chanteur in rapt silence.
Right in front of Jack, his back to the door, was the figure of a young man, clad in jodhpurs, polished riding boots and nothing else. No, that wasn’t quite true, b
ecause he was wearing something, the sort of something Jack didn’t really see much of in Shropshire. It was some sort of silken scarf, a shawl, perhaps, that was looped around his neck twice, the wide, dazzling red fabric decorated with intricate yellow flowers. They were bright against the pale skin of his naked back, as bright as the tip of the cigarette that glowed in the end of a long ebony cigarette holder that the singer held in his elegant right hand. He gestured with it like a painter with his brush, making intricate movements with his wrist as he sang, his voice a low purr, then a high, tuneful trill, then a comically deep bass that drew laughter from his audience.
He moved with the confidence of a dancer, hips swinging seductively, head cocked to one side, free hand resting on his narrow hip and here, in this strange fairytale place, he was bewitching.
The singer executed a near-perfect pirouette yet quite suddenly, when he was facing Jack, stopped. He put the cigarette holder to his pink lips, drew in a long, deep breath and blew out a smoke ring, his full lips forming a perfect O.
“Well, now.” He sucked in his pale cheeks and asked, “Who on earth have we here?”
Jack blinked as the smoke ring drifted into his face.
“Tr-trooper Woodvine, reporting for Captain Thorne. I’ve been transferred—I’m his new groom. I don’t suppose—”
The words dried in Jack’s throat. As enthralling as this otherworldly figure was, with his slim face and high cheekbones, there was an unsettling glint of mockery in his narrow blue eyes.
“Sorry.” Jack took a half-step backward. “I interrupted your song. I should…”
The singer moved a little, just enough that he could dart his head forward on its slender neck and draw his nose from Jack’s shoulder to his ear, breathing deeply all the way. They didn’t touch but the invasion, the authority, was clear. However lowly their station, Jack had wandered innocently into someone else’s domain.
When the young man’s nose reached Jack’s ear he threw his head back and let out a loud sigh through his parted lips, arms extended to either side. Then he finally spoke again, declaring to the heavens, “I smell new blood!”
Behind him, his small audience tittered nervously and his head dropped once more, those glittering blue eyes focused on Jack.
“Trooper Charles, sir!” He executed a courtly bow, the hand that held the cigarette twirling elaborately. “But you’re so darling and green that you may address me as Queenie. Aren’t you the lucky one?”
Jack reached for the doorframe to casually prop himself against it and essay the appearance of calm. Queenie?
“You may call me Jack.”
He extended his free hand to shake. A handshake showed the mettle of a man, his father was always telling him so. A good, firm hand at the market and a fellow would never have his prices beaten down.
Queenie’s narrow gaze slid down Jack like a snake and settled on his hand. He didn’t take it, didn’t move at all for a few seconds as the silence between them grew thicker. Then, in one quick movement, he placed his cigarette holder between Jack’s fingers and said, “Have a treat on me. Welcome to Cinderella’s doss house!”
Jack brought it hesitantly to his lips, smiling gamely at the grooms who made up Queenie’s audience. He pouted his lips against the carved ebony and inhaled.
The cough was so violent that Jack nearly dropped the holder, but an instinct in him born of a lifetime on a farm of tinder-dry hay meant he clamped it between his fingers. As he heaved for breath, he stamped on the nearby straw, suffocating any sparks that might have fallen.
The other grooms laughed and Queenie’s head tipped back to emit a bray of hilarity as a strong hand walloped Jack’s back.
A friendly Cockney burr chirruped, “Cough up, chicken—there’s a good lad!”
“We have a new little chicky in our nest,” Queenie told his audience, turning to address them. “I want you all to make him terribly welcome, or he might burn down our stables and then where would your Queenie sing?”
The stocky lad who had rescued Jack from his coughing fit was a head shorter than him. He pulled a face that could have been a smile or a sneer and took the cigarette holder from his fingers. He passed it to Queenie, all the while fixing his stare on the new arrival.
“Trooper Cole. Wilfred, that’s me. You’re Captain Thorne’s new boy, aren’t you?”
He laughed, then turned his head to spit on the floor, pulling a skinny roll-up from behind his ear.
“I’m Jack Woodvine. I mean…Trooper Woodvine.”
“I s’pose me and Queenie better take you to your quarters?”
“That would— But…oughtn’t I to introduce myself to Captain Thorne?”
“I’d say that’s a bit difficult, seeing as he’s not here at the moment.” Wilfred picked up Jack’s kitbag as easily as if it were spun from a feather. “Come on, soldier. Your palace awaits!”
“Captain T is an angel.” Queenie draped one arm sinuously around Jack’s shoulders and walked him back across the stable yard, his naked torso pressed to Jack’s rough tunic. “You’re going to have a bloody easy war, he’s soft as my mother’s newborn kitten.”
He glanced back at Wilfred and asked, “Wouldn’t you say so, Wilf?”
“Not half!” Wilfred laughed, striking a match to light his cigarette. “You couldn’t find a nicer bloke in the entire regiment.”
Jack grinned as they headed up the creaking wooden stairs above the stables. New quarters and new friends, and he wouldn’t have to rough it in a tent. Maybe there’d even be warm water for a bath.
“Well, that’s good to know. The officers were a bit…brusque at my last place.”
“Brusque?” Wilfred raised an amused eyebrow. “That’s a fancy word for a groom!”
“Ignore our lovely Wilf. Strong as an ox, bright as a coal shed.” At the top of the stairs Queenie turned to address Wilfred and Jack, his pale hand resting on the crooked handrail. “Thorny is adorable, not brusque at all. Welcome to our little slice of heaven!”
With that he lifted the latch and threw the door open, directing Jack to enter with another low bow.
The loft’s low, sloping ceiling made it difficult to stand anywhere other than in the middle of the floor. Dormer windows with murky, cracked glazing made no attempt to lift the gloom. The beds were lined up with military precision, as was to be expected, but they were a mixture of sturdy metal bedsteads and low camp beds. Above each, the soldier-grooms had left their imprint of personality, albeit their personalities were almost all the same. Images culled from the pages of gung-ho magazines, of tanks and explosions and enormous guns and heroic men leaping through barbed wire. Shapely stars of music hall and burlesque in enormous hats, elaborate costumes cut to show the boys a lot of leg. The occasional postcard from home had been tucked beside a poster of a woman wearing rather little.
At the far end of that simple loft, someone appeared to have opened a door to an exotic land, a place far removed from the simple rustic pleasures of the grooms. From floor to ceiling hung richly embroidered tapestries depicting scenes of battle from another time, long since lost. Knights jousted on a field of emerald green, a sapphire sky above, dotted with pristine white clouds. Innumerable jabs of the needle had gone to create the sun that blazed down on the curiously bloodless battle, each thread of tapestry teasing out a story from another century.
Between the two tapestries stood a tall screen of black lacquer that served as a door to the mysterious realm beyond, the sort of screen behind which a gentleman’s mistress might tantalizingly undress. A rainbow of butterflies fluttered over its polished surface but only one of its panels was folded back, affording no glimpse of the treasures within.
Was it Queenie’s place behind those tapestries? Was that the peacock’s nest? The only thing Jack knew was that this wasn’t his chamber.
“Now, little Jack, where shall we plant your magic bean?” Queenie strolled along and pointed to one of the metal beds, addressing his followers in a drawl. “Our lovely yo
ung Trooper Miles pissed all over this mattress on the night before he got shipped out. He was terrified, poor thing.”
He took a draw on his cigarette and gestured with it toward the bed, its single scratchy blanket concealing that same soiled mattress.
“Mardy Miles was gassed last weekend, so I’m sure it must be dry by now. Your home from home, little Jack!”
The smile was fading from Jack’s face. Sleeping in the piss of a dead man—they never mentioned that in Boy’s Own Paper.
“Thank you.” Jack forced a grin. “You’ve made me feel very…welcome.”
Wilfred threw Jack’s kitbag onto the bed.
“The crapper’s through that door at the other end. You want to get on it early in the morning—it’s been known to flood.”
“Smashing. Thanks for the tip, Trooper Cole.”
All three of them turned at the sound of feet hammering across the floorboards. A breathless groom ran into the attic.
“Just heard—the officers are nearly back! They rang in from the village.”
“Don’t forget, Jacky,” Queenie twirled the end of his scarf, whirling it before Jack’s eyes, “Thorny is sweet as cherries, and Apollo is a donkey at heart!”
Jack followed Wilfred back down the stairs and into the yard. Hoofbeats were approaching, drumming down the avenue like a distant storm drawing nearer. Jack fidgeted with his buttons, his cuffs, straightening his collar to look smart for his captain.
A voice could be heard in the distance, raised in a furious bark. It was the voice of an officer, a voice that could never belong to a trooper.
“Get out of the bloody way!” Those plummy vowels sang of Sandhurst and swagger sticks, of punting down the river on a balmy afternoon while other men toiled in the fields. It was the voice of rank.
“Next time, Trooper, next time!” The owner of the voice clattered into the yard at a canter, mounted on a perfect gray stallion, its snow-white mane flying with each movement of its muscular neck. The captain sat tall in his saddle, still looking back over one shoulder at whoever had come close to falling beneath those pounding, powerful hooves. His whip was raised in a warning to the unfortunate soldier, brandished high in the air, dark against a clear blue sky.