The Tainted Love of a Captain. Jane Lark

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       Chapter 2

      When Harry collected his letters, there were three. One from his sister, which largely contained stories about the cleverness of her children and asked after Ash on behalf of Iris. The next came from his younger brother, Daniel, saying he was thinking of a military career and asking for Harry’s view.

      God, how to respond on such a point to his little brother when his mind cried out daily with the haunting visions of men cut through by swords or lances or blown to pieces by cannon and shots from a rifle? He’d seen their bodies fall into the mud. Then there were the men he had visited lying in filthy sheets in makeshift hospitals, where the air had been foetid with the smell of their putrid flesh rotting on their bones. He could not encourage his brother to become a soldier.

      The third letter was another invitation to Colonel Hillier’s. The men he’d played with probably wished to win their money back. He smiled, then took the letter to the mess room, where he could write back and accept. He did not accept for the benefit of a game, though, but for another opportunity to see Charlotte.

      They had met twice more on the beach while he’d played with Ash. But he was still interested in seeing her at the Colonel’s house. He was trying to decipher how things stood with her. A woman who was paid for her bed sport and yet named as belonging exclusively to one man.

      His lieutenant colonel was also invited and so they rode into Brighton together.

      When they walked into the hall, as a servant shut the front door, Colonel Hillier came into the hall to greet them. It was unlike the previous occasion when Harry had visited the house.

      He welcomed Harry’s lieutenant colonel first, then looked at Harry and held out a hand. ‘You have eyes remarkably like those of a woman I once knew, Captain Marlow.’ He shook Harry’s hand then turned away.

      It was an odd statement and one that discomposed Harry to the point he made the decision not to accept any more invitations. The man had a mistress and yet perhaps he had a leaning either way and favoured men and women. Harry was not that way inclined. He looked at Charlotte differently, though, when she was called into the room to offer them a cigar from the wooden box.

      She did not smile at him in the same open way she had done at the seashore. But as she walked about the men who were gathered at the unusual half-circle table her gaze favoured Harry, her eyes expressing the connection they had formed in the last few days as they’d conversed, a budding sort of friendship.

      Harry’s eyes were continually drawn to her too; whenever she came into the room she pulled his attention away from the card game.

      He had a very strong desire to bed her. Even the thought somewhat released the tension in his body and his mind, quietening the guilt that always hovered in his soul. If merely thinking about lying with her could make him feel better, then how much better would he feel if he did it?

      He stared back at his cards. Why should he not accept the opportunity? She was not a virtuous woman and she had approached him, after all. Did it matter, then, that she was paid by another man?

      Perhaps it would be stealing, in a way. Yet surely Hillier paid for her hours and not her body. She was not his slave. He did not own her.

      Harry refilled his glass, losing focus on his cards and consequently as he refreshed the brandy in his glass again and again he lost hand after hand.

      He left Hillier’s sixty pounds down but with a desperate desire for the hours until he was to meet Charlotte again to hurry past. His decision on the woman was made. She was desirable, she had made herself available and he wished to partake.

      ~

      Charlie stood on the uneven pebbles waiting for Harry. He approached from the street that contained the inn where he kept his horse. Ash walked at a swift pace beside him, keeping up with the long strides of his master.

      Harry always looked so handsome and very grand in his manner. He walked with a determined stride and his dark-blue trousers, with their outer yellow stripe, seemed to make him taller and his vivid scarlet coat made his slender, muscular figure more defined.

      He was the prettiest man she’d ever seen; it was that which had made her watch him and his dog. He was fascinatingly attractive, almost too handsome to be real. Yet now she had spoken to him she knew he was real and as beautiful as he’d looked from a distance.

      Before he had come to Mark’s she’d been longing to ask the other officers who played cards who the man who entertained his dog on the beach was? But she had never dared.

      It was the dog that she had seen first and then she had watched Ash run up the beach and her attention had been drawn from Ash to her master. The closeness he seemed to have with Ash had made her want to stop and watch them and then she had noticed that Harry was even prettier than his dog.

      Then he had come to Mark’s. Captain Harry Marlow. It was a wonderful name, too. It made her smile. Harry.

      ‘Hello!’ he called from a few feet away.

      The pace of her heart beat lifted in a fluttering sensation.

      Since they had been talking each day, her heart felt as though it had grown the wings of a butterfly. ‘Hello.’

      ‘How are you?’ he asked as he joined her.

      Charlie glanced back along the path at the maid who’d walked with her. She had left Tilly a few feet away to mind her own business and Tilly had not come nearer to listen, which was what Charlie feared. But if anything had been said to Mark about her liaisons with Harry, which it probably had, he had not complained to her about it.

      She looked at Harry, again, turning her back on Tilly. ‘I am well. How was your game last evening?’

      ‘Must you ask?’ He threw the stick out into the sea. ‘Do you not know?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Then do not ask.’

      She laughed as Ash returned with the stick.

      Harry looked at her after he’d thrown the stick again. ‘I have a question to ask you, though.’

      ‘Then you must ask it.’ She was very forward with Harry. She kept surprising herself. But it was the atmosphere he exuded. He always spoke СКАЧАТЬ