The Tainted Love of a Captain

by Jane Lark

  Relief filled Harry as he picked up the cards. This was a constant that had been with him since before the Crimea. He’d spent hours at card tables with his cousins during their dissolute years and the pleasure to be found in a card game had lasted throughout the war. When he’d returned, playing cards had provided a base for normality. He was once again in a place in which he could face reality.

  But those he had previously played with, his cousins, were wed now and happily settled with their wives and children. Life had progressed without him. Everything had changed here. He was a soldier and nothing besides that now.

  He looked at the cards he held and then at the faces of those about the table, trying to judge which men were his competition.

  ‘Charlotte!’ Colonel Hillier called.

  Harry was aware of the woman walking into the room, but he did not look, his mind was on the cards and the game.

  ‘Bring my box of cigars, would you?’

  ‘Yes.’ It was a young woman’s voice that answered.

  When she returned, a rose perfume scented the air. The perfume was very like the one his mother used. The scent increased in intensity as the woman came closer, circulating about the half table, holding out the open box of cigars as each man then helped himself.

  When she reached Harry, he looked up. My God. The woman from the seashore. She had the most striking auburn hair, full of rioting curls, and she had remarkably large, beautiful hazel eyes that hinted at the colour of bracken in autumn. He had noticed neither thing from a distance, but then her hair had been beneath a bonnet.

  ‘Thank you.’ He took a cigar from the box.

  She smiled at him as colour tinted her pale skin a deep pink while her eyes opened wider, as though she was also shocked to encounter him here.

  His invitation had not been due to her, then; the thought had crossed his mind.

  He looked back at his cards, but his thoughts and attention were now partly drawn to the woman.

  When she finished handing out the cigars, she walked back about the men with matches to light their cigars. He watched her face when she lit a match for him. She looked only at the task, and yet when he sucked on the cigar, holding it to the match to draw the flame and light the end, he sensed her staring at him.

  Did her father know that she walked with her maid along the shore each afternoon and watched him?

  She left the room once her task was complete. But some of his thoughts remained with her even then. She was a very attractive woman. He had never really looked at her when he’d been on the beach. Yet his mind’s focus on her was involuntary; she was a young miss and he was not interested in such women. His mind, however, begged to differ on that point this evening.

  She returned to the room five times to circulate with cigars or refill the decanter. All tasks a servant might have completed, but the Colonel called for his daughter to undertake them. Perhaps this odd collection of men had been invited not solely to play cards but to obtain a suitor for his daughter and this was his version of a shop window to sell her attributes.

  Harry smiled as he won his fourth hand.

  He leant back in his chair as the money on the table was passed along to him and his gaze clashed with the woman’s. Their gazes had met several times. She coloured and looked away.

  If this card game had been played in a gentleman’s club, where the women were available, she would not be colouring as she met his gaze but looking alluringly and by now he would have beckoned her over and invited her to sit on his knee as he played, effectively claiming her for the night. Perhaps he would go in search of a woman after this. The escape that could be found in a bed with a woman had been the other constant surviving from his old life.

  He did not seek a woman when he left the Colonel’s, richer by the grand sum of fifty pounds; the Colonel’s auburn-haired daughter was still too much on his mind. If he lay with a woman it would be the Colonel’s daughter in the bed in his mind and that felt sordid. Instead he returned to the barracks and climbed back into the narrow bed that he shared with Ash.

  ~

  ‘You have a letter, my friend.’

  Harry awoke and sat up instantly, his hand reaching for his sword, which lay on the floor beside his bed. Instinct. But the instinct was overridden when he saw Gareth. ‘Must you walk in without knocking? One day I will not awake fully and your throat will be cut.’ Harry turned to sit on the edge of the bed. The letter was thrown on to the covers beside him.

  Gareth merely laughed as Harry picked the letter up.

  He expected it to be from a member of his family. All of his brothers and sisters wrote to him on occasion, along with his mother and father. Even his cousin and friend, Henry, had kept in contact and sent him amusing anecdotes while Harry had been away. But Harry did not recognise the writing and when he turned the letter over there was no imprint of a seal in the wax.

  ‘Do you want to come for a ride with me, for a proper gallop, without the dog?’ Gareth asked as Harry opened the letter.

  Harry looked up. ‘Yes.’ It was Sunday and neither of them had any hours of duty.

  ‘I’ll give you forty minutes precisely,’ Gareth answered, before turning and walking out of Harry’s room.

  Harry’s hand settled on Ash’s head and stroked behind the dog’s ear as he looked at his letter, which came from an unknown source.

  Dear Captain Marlow,

  I am so glad I have discovered your name. I have been longing to know it for three whole weeks and now I know it I can write to you.

  I have seen you on the beach with your beautiful dog. It is charming the way you and she play your game of fetch.

  The woman from the shore. The Colonel’s—very forward—auburn-haired daughter. She should surely not be writing to him.

  I wonder, that is I hope, that you might be willing to walk with me along the seafront one day, perhaps today. I can be there at four. If you are going to the beach today? There is no need to write back, simply meet me if you can.

  Yours sincerely,

  Charlotte Cotton

  Cotton… A frown pulled at his brow. It was not the retired Colonel’s surname. A step daughter then? Perhaps?

  She was in Harry’s mind again, then, as he dressed. With her large, fascinating hazel eyes and her vivid hair.

  He let Ash accompany him to the stables, then left the dog in Obsidian’s stall before leading the horse out into the middle of the huge stable block full of whinnying and neighing horses.

  Gareth was waiting outside, sitting astride his horse. ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘I am,’ Harry answered as he mounted. The weather today was bright, warm sunshine.

  They smiled at one another before they turned the horses. Then left the barracks at the pace of a trot, talking as they rode. They rode out to the hills at a canter before letting the animals have their heads in a gallop. It was as good for Harry as it was for Obsidian to feel the wind whipping at him as Obsidian cut through the stillness of the world at a raging gallop.

  At the top of the cliffs they stopped and looked down, watching the sea.

  Harry looked back towards Brighton and thought of the woman who would be waiting there for him at four. He had no intent to go, or rather, he might go to exercise Ash, but he would not communicate with the woman… He said aloud, ‘The woman on the shore—’

  ‘The one who has been watching you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Harry looked over at his friend as they walked their horses farther along the cliff path.

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘If you give me a chance I will tell you.’ Harry laughed, then continued. ‘I know who she is.’

  ‘You have spoken with her? When? What did she say?’

  ‘Last evening at Colonel Hillier’s. She is his daughter. Or perhaps his step-daughter. They do not have the same surname.’

  Gareth broke into laughter that came from deep in his throat.

  ‘Why is that amusing?’ Harry charged.

  His friend drew i
n a deep breath to quell his mirth. Then smiled broadly. ‘You fool, Harry. I never had you down as a naïve man.’

  ‘Naïve…’ Harry’s eyebrows lifted.

  ‘She is his mistress. Not his daughter.’ Gareth laughed again.

  His mistress… Lord. He’d had no idea. He swallowed and looked ahead. ‘She did not behave like his mistress.’ He thought of how regularly her colour had heightened and how she had looked away. Yet the fact the Colonel had used her to serve them fitted Gareth’s definition.

  ‘I have not seen her so I did not recognise her on the beach, but I have heard the woman is an outstanding beauty. Everyone comments on her when they have been to Hillier’s.’

  Something scratched along Harry’s spine, like a knife on stone. It was the word, ‘everyone’ that had stirred the sensation. The image in his head was something he did not want to picture. ‘She is beautiful.’ She was. Her auburn hair and her eyes seemed even more attractive now he knew she was a touchable, attainable woman, another man’s, but only because that man paid for her keep. Yet the thought of being able to touch her conjured up more images he did not want to see.

  She had asked him to meet her. He wanted to do so now. Would it be wrong for him to speak with her?

  He debated the question internally during their ride back to the barracks and as he brushed Obsidian down. He was undecided when he ate his luncheon and he remained undecided even after that. It was not until half past the hour of three that he made up his mind.

  He would go and he would speak to her. He saddled Obsidian again and took Ash with him as he normally would. Having Ash beside the horse quietened his doubt. If he changed his mind he could just walk down to the waves.

  He left Obsidian at the inn, then walked towards the sound of the sea. The noise of the water washing up on to the pebbles began to ease his soul and he could taste the salt in the air.

  She was there, with her maid. They were on the path at the head of the beach, a few yards away. He crossed the street. She walked towards him and intercepted his path. ‘Captain Marlow!’ she called. ‘Well met!’ She spoke as though she had not written and he therefore presumed the maid did not know that this interchange had been orchestrated.

  He bowed, slightly. ‘Miss Cotton.’ What was the etiquette for a man’s mistress? He knew how to behave with whores and with respectable women, but a mistress was somewhere in between. ‘Would you care to walk with me?’ He lifted his arm, in the way he might have offered his arm to one of his sisters or cousins.

  The maid held back to walk a few paces behind them as Ash looked up at him with eyes that asked why he had not walked on to the pebbles. Harry clicked the fingers of his free hand and tapped his leg to tell Ash to stay at his side.

  ‘I like your dog. What is her name?’ Miss Cotton said loudly. He presumed for the benefit of the maid as much as for an answer.

  ‘Ash. She was named by my niece.’

  She looked at him as though the fact that he might have a niece was a bizarre thought. ‘Oh.’

  He smiled. Her colour had been high since the moment they had faced each other, but now it became even redder.

  ‘Your dog has a very pleasant nature.’

  ‘Yes, she does.’

  ‘I am glad you came,’ she said in a quieter voice, leaning closer to him as he’d seen her do when she spoke to her maid. ‘It took me so much courage to write. But you have never looked at me here. Then you looked at me last night and I wrote in a rash moment because I have had a great desire to know the man with the lovely dog. I hope you do not think me too forward.’ Her back straightened when she had finished her conspiratorial whisper and her chin lifted high. There was a sense of dignity in her posture, no matter her status.

  ‘I was not sure that I would come.’

  Her head turned and she looked at him about the rim of her bonnet, her fingers pulling on his arm a little. ‘I admire you as much as your dog. I have wanted to meet you as well as Ash.’

  ‘I am aware. I have seen you watching me.’ He breathed in. ‘It was flattering.’ He had not thought so a day ago and yet having seen the woman up close. Yes, the interest and attention of such a beautiful woman was flattering. Her large, expressive eyes, within the shadow of her bonnet’s brim, were particularly fascinating and the curls of her vibrantly coloured hair peeked from beneath the edges of the bonnet, providing a temptation to touch it.

  She smiled. ‘I think it is lovely how you play with the dog. There seems such regard between you as you play. So, yes, I have been watching your games and admiring you and your affection for Ash, from a distance. It is very charming to watch. Your friend has looked back at me, but you have no more than glanced. You have given me no opportunity to compliment you before.’

  ‘I thought you were…’ He had been about to insult her and say that he’d thought her respectable, which would tell her that now he thought she was not. ‘I thought you someone different.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘No one in particular, simply a young woman looking for a husband and I would make a poor candidate for that.’

  Her colour had descended, but now it heightened again. It was strange to be with a woman who blushed so freely and frequently.

  ‘How long have you had Ash?’

  ‘Months only, since I returned from the Crimea. She was a gift from my family.’

  ‘Oh. You have a wife?’

  He smiled at her. ‘No. She was a gift from my sister and her husband, which is why my niece named her.’

  ‘Oh. What is your first name, Captain? I did not hear it last night.’

  ‘Harry, Miss Cotton.’

  ‘That is a happy sounding name. My name is Charlotte.’

  ‘I know. You wrote it in your letter.’

  ‘Oh, I did, didn’t I?’ She laughed, with an embarrassed note, her posture was not as stiff as it had been, she had relaxed a little.

  Her former stiff posture had possibly been a nervous stance rather than an expression of dignity.

  He patted the hand that lay on his arm, in the way he might have done to reassure any respectable woman. ‘I have another name, I am Uncle Baba to my nephews and nieces. The nickname was first coined by my sister’s husband. He defined me as the black sheep of the family.’

  Another brief laugh escaped her mouth; this was a sound of pure amusement. ‘That is an unusual name, how did you earn it?’

  ‘Do you really wish to know?’

  ‘Should I not have asked?’

  ‘Suffice to say I am from a rigidly good and respectable family and my older brothers were very well behaved. I… I prefer to enjoy life.’

  ‘How long is your regiment to be in Brighton?’

  ‘It is hard to tell. One never knows when orders or a crisis may draw us away.’

  ‘I hope it is for a while at least. I like watching you with Ash.’

  He smiled.

  ‘Tell me about your sister and her family?’

  Harry went on to tell her about all of his family. His eldest brother, who sometimes seemed more like a second father he was so severe, inflexible and demanding—though he did not mention that John was a duke. Then he talked of his brother Rob and Rob’s quiet wife and their precious daughter, Sarah. She was the only child Rob and his wife would be able to have and she was therefore precious to them all. Then he talked of his younger siblings. His sisters, Helen and Jennifer, had married while he’d been in the Crimea. They had married twins and so were now sisters and sisters-in-law. His brothers, David and Daniel, were just finishing university and beginning their lives. His sister, Georgiana, had only recently been launched upon London society and then there was Jemima, the youngest of all, at fourteen.

  Charlotte, Miss Cotton, listened avidly, watching his face while he spoke, smiling and laughing as he talked of the antics of his younger siblings and nephews and nieces.

  ‘Have you any family?’ he asked at the end of his long description about his. He’d never asked a whore such a question. He’d
never known anything about the women he paid to share a bed. But nor had he told such women about his family. Conversation was not normally a part of the exchange. But nor had he walked anywhere with a whore’s hand on his arm in this way, and he had never felt a need to reassure a woman of that background before as he’d sought to reassure Charlotte earlier.

  ‘Yes.’ She did not smile when she answered and her voice sounded flat.

  Whenever he spoke of his family words babbled like the ripples on a flooding brook. He may have been an ill-behaved son, who was a constant nuisance to his father and at times an annoying brother, and he may have felt a stranger amongst them a few weeks ago but, even so, there would always be love between them. Ash was testament to that.

  ‘I have an older brother and a sister who is ten years younger than me.’ She did not go on. Thoughts of her family did not flow into her words.

  ‘Do you see them very often?’

  ‘No. I have not seen them for years.’

  His eyebrows lifted. He was unsure what to say. The reply had been spoken so bluntly. He took a breath. ‘I did not see my family for two years during the war. But they wrote to me frequently and regaled me with tales of the things they did. My cousin too. Henry writes some very amusing letters about his bookish wife Susan and his daughter.’

  She smiled. She seemed to like listening to him more than speaking and so he continued talking about his family; after all, he had so many brothers, sisters and cousins it was an endless subject.

  They walked along the seafront for almost an hour as he talked continuously, while she listened.

  But it was Charlotte who ended the conversation. ‘I am sorry, Harry, I must stop you, I have to go. Will you be here again tomorrow?’

  ‘I am on duty in the day tomorrow, but I will be here at five to exercise Ash.’ He had obligated himself then, when his hours here with Ash had become important to him. He did not particularly want to exchange them to entertain a woman with conversation. ‘But if you come here, then you may stand beside me, if you wish, as I throw the stick for Ash. But I cannot deny her the pleasure of the game for two days.’