The Tainted Love of a Captain

by Jane Lark

  She smiled and bobbed a curtsey.

  Katherine smiled too. ‘I shall see you at luncheon, then.’

  ‘Yes.’

  As Katherine went back into the other room, Charlie hurried across the sitting room, her heart racing. Once she was in the hall, she lifted her skirts and ran to her room, and there she looked through Harry’s things. There was a small amount of money. She took his pistol too and wrapped everything in her cloak. Then she rushed back downstairs.

  No one was in the main hall. The servants must all be serving the family elsewhere.

  She turned the round handle on the giant door and walked out, leaving it for someone else to shut. The road must be a mile or more away, but she did not know how to find her way to anywhere without walking back along the drive and so she walked that way. However when she thought she was out of sight of the windows in the house she lifted her skirts with her free hand and ran again, hoping the riders would not return this way.

  ~

  When Harry dropped down from Obsidian’s saddle on to the ground, he looked about everyone, trying to see his father. It had been good to ride in a large group again when it was only for pleasure, and yet he’d wanted to speak to his father about Charlie and he hadn’t had the chance.

  ‘Papa!’ he called out as he spotted his father about to walk inside ahead of everyone else. ‘Father!’

  He turned and looked back at Harry.

  Harry uncharacte‌ristically left Obsidian in the care of a groom and walked towards his father. But he wanted to ensure his father treated Charlie as he should and she was a higher priority than his horse.

  The others talked animatedly as they passed his father, exhilarated from their ride.

  Harry breathed out a long breath. He hoped this would not be too much of a challenge.

  ‘Harry…’ his father acknowledged as Harry reached him.

  ‘May we go somewhere to talk?’

  His father’s eyebrows lifted, saying why? ‘Yes,’ he agreed anyway. ‘Let’s see if John is using the library.’

  He was. But he offered to vacate it, saying that he’d use the excuse to go up to the nursery.

  Once John had left and the door was shut, his father looked at Harry. ‘So…’

  ‘Why have you not spoken to Charlie?’

  A frown crunched his father’s brow, but he did not answer, he turned away.

  ‘I have never thought you pompous before. She is not what you think.’

  His father stared out through the window, as though he sought to avoid the conversation.

  Harry had never seen his father run from a conversation before either.

  ‘You have no idea what I think.’ He had not turned back to face Harry.

  ‘I think you cannot bring yourself to speak to such a woman. That is how you have termed my associations in the past. But there is a reason she lived as she did—’

  ‘You think I do not know!’ His father shouted as he finally turned. It was also unlike his father to shout. His father breathed in, in a way that suggested he fought to regain control of his temper. ‘That she has some explanation is exactly what I do know.’ His pitch had lowered. ‘…She has a bruise about her eye that declares it. Why do you think I have hated you sleeping with such women? Because, in my opinion, there is always a reason, a history, these women are never there by choice. They are in that position due to fate or force and you have compounded that.’

  The words hit Harry hard, he had learned that now and, yes, he had compounded that in the past, and since meeting Charlie it had added to his sense of guilt. But he no longer felt guilty about Charlie, not now she was his wife. ‘I wish Charlie to be happy. That is what she deserves and you are making her unhappy by ignoring her.’

  ‘Sorry.’ His father’s hand lifted and ran over his face.

  With the apology his father’s demeanour changed and instead of anger there was a defeated appearance in his stance.

  ‘It is not her. It is only that she makes me think of things I would rather not recall. There is a life that goes on away from us which is easier not to contemplate.’

  ‘I know.’ His own imagination was broader now. But he could do nothing for the women he’d lain with in the past.

  ‘It is why I have always hated you using such women,’ his father said again.

  Harry sighed. ‘I understand that now. But I cannot change the past. I will change Charlie’s future, though. I cannot let you ignore her.’

  His father looked into Harry’s eyes. ‘I have not meant to ignore her. I am just not sure what to say to her. It sickens me to imagine what she has experienced. It is disgust that has silenced me. It is because of the bruise about her eye. I shall force myself to ignore it.’

  ‘Good.’ Harry’s voice was sharp. Disgust. The word made anger bleed into Harry’s veins. He’d always been irritated by his father judging him for sleeping with such women. Now he was angered because his father was judging those women—and Charlie among them.

  A knock rapped on the thick wooden door. Harry looked back as the door opened.

  It was John. ‘I’ve been told something I’m sure you will want to know.’

  John was now forty-ish in age and had grey at his temples in the same place Harry’s mother did. His half-brother was father-like in appearance now as well as could be discerned from the staunch inflexibility of his nature—and the way he had of needing to be the family’s protector. Harry would have to have the conversation that he’d just had with his father with John too. He needed them both to accept Charlie.

  ‘Your wife was outside in the courtyard earlier with a man.’

  What? A frown pulled at the muscles in Harry’s brow. ‘Do not be ridiculous.’

  John shut the door behind him. Then sent Harry one of his ducal looks that denied all emotion and expressed his authority. ‘I am not being ridiculous. A man called here who claimed to be her brother. They spoke together outside, but at the end of the conversation she slapped him, and then he stopped her walking away. My groom interrupted and told the man to leave, then your wife came in and spent the next hour with Katherine.’

  It was all said as a matter of fact.

  She had been talking to a man who had offended her and then detained her. Anger turned over in Harry’s stomach with the sharp twist of a dagger’s blade as a strong punch thumped at his chest. Was it one of Hillier’s servants?

  Yet John had said her brother. ‘She has a brother. She wrote to her family from Brighton and gave them this address.’

  ‘He was very much a working man,’ John stated. Again it was voiced as a fact and yet was he questioning her background?

  ‘Yes, her family are poor, as I told you,’ Harry said it as factually as John had been speaking. ‘She thinks you all incredibly odd and that is making her find it difficult here, I know.’ He looked at his father. ‘And she thinks you rude. She has said that you both must hate her.’

  ‘I do not hate her,’ John said immediately. ‘I simply…’ He had paled in that odd way he did when Charlie was mentioned or present. ‘I do not know how to manage with her here. It makes things awkward. But it is not her fault.’

  It was Harry’s, then. Well damn them. John was as bad as his father. ‘Oh never mind. Please just try to speak to her and make her not feel so terrible while she is here. We shall not be an embarrassment to you for long. I shall ask Drew if we can move to stay with him.’ Harry turned and opened the door.

  ‘Harry,’ John said.

  Harry did not look back.

  ‘Harry. You do not need to go to Drew’s.’ John followed him.

  Harry looked over his shoulder before going into the hall. ‘No. You have expressed your view. I’ll not have her feeling insulted and unhappy.’ He walked out. So many times in his life he had walked away from his father’s ill opinion. Now he knew his father’s perspective on all of those occasions had been correct—but in this… He was wrong. Charlie might have a past and a story that had brought her here, but why s
hould that influence her future. She had a right to write the story of her future as she wished.

  He climbed the stairs with his teeth gritted and his hands fisted against his anger. He went to the drawing room first. There were several of the people who had returned from riding there and Katherine and his mother, but not Charlie.

  She had probably been too self-conscious to remain in the public rooms of the house while he had ridden out. She would be in their room. He did not stay in the drawing room, he turned around and walked back out, then climbed the next flight of stairs in a hurry.

  Was she afraid? Had she been hurt by this man she’d been speaking to? Her brother… The brother who at nineteen had let his sister, who was a child of fifteen, sell herself.

  Harry’s strides were swift and his footfalls heavy as he walked along the landing to their bedchamber. He did not knock, but opened the door, his heart pulsing out the rhythm of the drumbeat for a march. She was not in the bedroom. He opened the door of the dressing room. She was not there, but it looked as though she had been there; his things were strewn across the floor, as if she’d been looking for something and throwing things aside.

  The items of his clothing and possessions that were scattered over the carpet spoke of urgency and desperation. The pace of his heartbeat did not ease. He leant to pick the things up. His sword rested on the chest, unmoved, on the far side of the room. It reminded him that his pistol had been in the bag, which now had its contents scattered. His pistol and his purse.

  He patted the bag. What was left within it definitely did not include either the pistol or his money. Damn.

  A bitter taste flooded his mouth as it spun through his gut too. He continued picking up clothes, refusing to believe. Yet someone had been here, talking to her… What had they said?

  ‘Harry.’

  He straightened and turned. He’d not shut the bedroom door and now John stood there, looking at the mess and the creased clothes that were clutched in Harry’s hands.

  ‘What?’ Harry asked.

  John walked a few paces forward. ‘I am sorry.’ His pitch held an ominous note. ‘This is not what you will want to hear and I feel awful for thinking it and yet… there was the conversation witnessed outside too and—’

  ‘What? Simply say it. I do not need the preamble to sweeten it.’

  ‘The maid has told me three of Katherine’s necklaces are missing. They had been left on the table in the sitting room. Katherine was deciding on a dress for the ball and the jewellery to accompany it. I’m sorry. When your wife visited Katherine in our rooms, she was left alone for a short time. No one has seen her since.’

  Damn. Damn. One hand lifted and combed through his hair. It must have been Charlie, and she’d gone.

  But she must have walked, she could not ride and the only way she knew back to the road was along the drive.

  He turned his back on John and threw the clothes he’d picked up on to the bed, then noticed her bonnet was still in the far corner of the dressing room. She had taken the time to find his pistol and his money, but she had not taken her bonnet. Her actions suggested she had been emotional and not thinking clearly. He refused to believe this was calculated. ‘I will find her.’

  ‘I will come with you,’ John stated.

  Harry turned around. ‘No. I’ll manage this. You will scare her.’ He walked out past his brother. Damn. He wanted to believe her innocent and yet many women such as her were not honest. The tainted phrase his father used pulsed disgust into his blood.

  If his father was disgusted by talk of such women, Harry was disgusted by his father. And he refused to think badly of Charlie. She was not like anyone but herself. She had been stupid, that was all. There must be a reason.

  He hurried down the stairs, then on the first floor landing opened the door leading to the servants’ stairs and walked down that to get to the hall, which would take him directly to the stables. The servants were busy taking the family’s luncheon up to the dining room and the hall was full of people. He dodged through them as they bowed and curtsied.

  She could not have come out this way. She must have left via the front door. It was a wonder no one had noticed. John’s servants usually saw everything.

  A groom was brushing Obsidian down. Harry asked for another horse, ‘A fast animal, with an appetite for a gallop.’ Harry had the appetite, it clenched in his gut, like the moments before the battle cry to charge when all he wished for was to be off and running to silence the roaring words of doubt.

  When the horse was saddled, he mounted with a swift single movement. Then clasped the reins tight and led the stallion out of the courtyard, before kicking his heels. Then they were away, riding fast along the verge of the long drive.

  She was not on the drive and she could not have hidden because it was all open grassland.

  He turned the horse on to the road, in the direction they’d travelled from London, wondering suddenly if he was wrong and he should have brought someone with him. Not John. But Drew or his brother Rob. Rob owed him favours like this.

  Perhaps he should have put his sword on?

  What if she had gone to meet this man she had been speaking to.

  Perhaps she was not even on the road but had arranged an assignation somewhere in the grounds of his brother’s property?

  Harry breathed out. His heart might be racing but his breath was steady. When he fought, he needed the strength that air gave his muscles and his mind. He’d learned to maintain the pace of his breaths.

  He continued riding at a canter. Charlie would not have had time to get much further. He must catch up with her soon.

  The Pheasant Inn came into view.

  Suspicion and hope snarled up. It was a coaching inn. She might be there and, even if she was not, someone may have seen her on the road.

  He pulled the stallion into a trot and held it firm. They had given him the liveliest horse, as he’d asked.

  But he had not asked for a lively woman. He had not asked for any woman—but he’d gained a lively wife; the wife he deserved for his former sins.

  He stopped before the inn, swung a leg over the animal’s rump and dropped to the ground, then walked the animal under the arch into the yard. A coach stood in the centre. A coach for paying passengers.

  He breathed out steadily as he looked for a groom. A young lad caught his eye and came forward. ‘Hold my horse for a moment.’

  Harry walked towards the carriage, not wanting to believe and yet… He clasped the coach’s door handle, turned it and opened the door.

  She was there, sitting in the far corner clutching a cloth parcel. Her rolled-up cloak. He presumed it contained his pistol and his purse, if nothing else.

  What was this? Why was she here? What had it do with the man she had spoken to? Was she making a bloody fool of him?

  ‘Get out.’ His voice was bitter and accusing. ‘Get out!’ he shouted when she did not move.

  But this seemed so unlike Charlie? Yet what did he really know of her?

  She was like a deer, sitting in her corner, frozen, as though if she did not move he could not see her. The deer was always seen by the human eye, there was no hiding. The instinct simply made the animal, or a human, an easier target for a shot.

  He knew hardly anything of her. He had known nothing of her history until the day before they had married and it could have all been a damned lie.

  ‘Out!’ he growled at her, reaching in and clasping her arm. ‘Come on. Come out. What the hell do you think you are doing?’

  ‘Sir…’ A man in the uniform of the coach company approached. ‘Please unhand that woman.’

  ‘This is my wife. I will handle her as I wish,’ he snarled at the man, then looked at Charlie ‘and she is coming home with me to explain just why she felt the need to run away.’

  There was one thing he did know for certain; that Hillier had hit her and thrown her out of his house. But why, then, had she chosen to steal from the family of the man who had helped her, ins
tead of asking him for help!

  Because she was desperate. The answer whispered at the back of his head. The state of their room had spoken of that. But he was damned well desperate now. Desperate to understand—

  Charlie stumbled as Harry started walking, pulling her along beside him. There was a crowd gathering about them, a crowd that might become a mob if Charlie uttered one word of complaint. She did not speak, but her skin burned a vivid red.

  Damn her. How could she have done this?

  He’d been telling his father and John that they were wrong, and she had done this. How was he supposed to help her when she had done this?

  He picked her up by the waist and put her up on to his saddle on her stomach as she still hugged her precious parcel of stolen things. She deserved to be taken home like that, but he was not a cruel man like Hillier. ‘Grip the saddle, lift your skirt and slide your leg to the far side.’ She did so, struggling to balance as she held her rolled-up cloak.

  He gritted his teeth and set his foot into the stirrup, then pulled himself up and sat behind her, with his hips up against her bottom. Now he must ride home in this frustrating position when he was angrier at her than he had ever been at anyone.

  ‘Good day, all.’ He touched his fingers to his forehead in a mock salute to their audience.

  His brother was going to kill him for this. There would be a rumour flying about John’s estate within hours. His violent younger brother had returned from war to treat his wife so brutally she had run away.

  He did not speak as his hips rocked forward against her bottom, in a rhythm that had a sexual undertone, but it was only to tell the horse to walk. The horse walked out of the courtyard and into the road. Then Harry lifted into the rise and fall that told the animal to trot. Charlie was hanging on to the stallion’s mane. He still did not speak because he was too angry to say a word. Why? The word was spinning, shouting and yelling a charge in his head. But if he spoke it now he would scream the question at her like the army officer he was.