Jane Lark - The Tainted Love of a Captain

When he looked back up at her face her eyes opened and the mixture of green and light brown looked at him as he moved within her. Her expression asked the strangest questions, as though she found him as much of an enigma as he found her.

Her front teeth pressed into her bottom lip as he continued working

He bent his head and kissed her again. She tasted of the lemonade and the icing on the bun.

The relief—the all-encompassing sensations of intercourse overtook him, and he let them, bathed in them, and let his spirit heal some more. Her fingertips pressed into his arms as she clung to him while he worked. Sounds of his relief carried on his breath with the sound of her pleasure.

His end came without him even attempting to change position and make this last. It did not need to last; it was the perfect escape just as it was.

When he’d finished he rolled on to his back and smiled at the ceiling, then bizarrely laughter gathered in his throat.

She leant up on her elbow and her fingers stroked over his cheek. ‘You make me happy.’

His hand lifted and brushed her hair to set it behind her ear. ‘You make me happy too.’

‘I am going to have some more lemonade. Would you like some?’

‘You are daring to risk the sourness.’

‘For the sweetness that catches on another part of my tongue, yes.’

He smiled. ‘Yes. I will have more lemonade.’

She got up and brought the full glasses back to the bed. He sat up and took his. She put her glass down on the chest beside the bed, then turned and brought over what was left of the plate of sugary buns.

It was the oddest picnic; sitting on top of the bed, naked, drinking lemonade and eating the buns as a warm breeze swept through the window and stirred the hairs on his skin. He’d not think about home again when he tasted lemonade, he’d remember this.

Once the sugar of the lemonade and buns had replenished his strength, he set the empty plate aside. Then with a smile, he turned and took the empty glass from her hand.

He indulged himself again, enjoying her body as she enjoyed his. He’d always believed that he gave the women he’d bedded as much pleasure as he’d received. He doubted it now. With Charlotte… The unguarded expressions on her face and in her eyes and the sounds she made said she genuinely enjoyed what he did and she was earnest in her attempt to please him in response.

When he walked her back, he did not stop at the corner where they’d met earlier, he walked on past it towards Colonel Hillier’s house and damn—he thought about her with that old man. He did not want the thought in his head. He pushed it aside.

He stopped walking a street away from Hillier’s. She curtsied to him, in an awkward gesture. As she’d done the other day. He smiled, rejecting a desire to kiss her, then before they separated he arranged to meet with her again the next day.

In his own bed at the barracks, in the dark, he thought of her, of being in bed with her. A sharp breath escaped his throat as he awoke from a dream aroused with hot, damp skin. He had not dreamt of war. In his dream Charlotte had been unbuttoning his trousers with a promise in her eyes.

A keenness to finish his duty and see her gripped at the muscles in his stomach.

When he met her, he took her to a different inn. He’d decided it was better not to form a pattern. But he arranged for there to be refreshment in the room once more and they lay together twice again. Both things were novelties that he’d enjoyed the day before.

He could not then see her for four days; his rota of duties did not allow it and so the urge to kiss her as they said goodbye was even stronger because he knew it would be days before he could do so again. It was also harder to not think about her with Hillier—about what might happen in Hillier’s house at night.

But she had not spoken of it and he did not wish to acknowledge it. Nor even think about it! He yelled the words into his thoughts to silence them.

There was a travelling trunk in the middle of the hall. Charlie clasped the bannister and stopped on the stairs as she looked at Mr Rook, the butler. ‘Who?’

‘Colonel Hillier is travelling to London, Miss.’

It was not an arrival then, but Mark about to leave. He’d said nothing to her yesterday. Yet that was not abnormal. She was his servant as much as anyone else in the house; he had no obligation to tell her anything.

She walked down the last few steps as he walked into the hall. The front door opened and men came in to lift the trunk out to the carriage.

‘How long are you likely to be away?’

He looked over. ‘Hello, Charlotte. I am not sure, a few days perhaps.’

A few days. She would have the house to herself for a few days.

He came to her and held her hands, then leant forward and kissed her lips. She pressed her lips back against his because if she did not he complained. Yet Mark’s kisses made her wish to wipe her mouth afterwards. Harry did not make her feel like that. She liked his kisses.

The hall was busy as the final preparations for Mark’s journey were undertaken. She remained there and watched, leaning back against the newel post. Then when the door finally closed behind Mark, she looked at the grandfather clock. It was twenty minutes after she had walked downstairs, a little after eleven. Harry had said he could not meet her because he had to work through the night. But if he had been working through the night then in the day he was free.

Her feet carried her across the hall and into Mark’s office, where she found out some paper, a quill and ink. She was not very good at reading and writing, but she knew enough to write what she wished to tell Harry.

She took everything back to her room and sat at her dressing table, then picked up the small ink bottle to open it. Her arm accidently caught the top of her perfume decanter and knocked it over. She hastily pulled the paper out of the way and righted the decanter, then mopped up the spilt perfume with a handkerchief from the drawer. But a few drops had fallen on the paper and so it smelt of the essence of roses when she began to write.

The tip of the quill scratched out the words, then she let the ink dry, folded the letter and sealed it with wax so no one but Harry would open it. She put on her bonnet, but did not call for Tilly to accompany her on the walk. She had not taken Tilly with her on the days she’d met Harry at the inns and to take her again now would stir questions she did not care to answer.

She went to the inn she had gone to the last time she’d written to Harry and gave the letter to a boy who was clearing out the stables, with a coin to encourage him to take it immediately. Then she gave a groom, who tried to stop the boy, money to let the boy go on her errand.

The day was cloudy and the sea loud as it rolled up on to the pebbles while she walked back to the house. There had been a storm last night and it had stirred up the energy in the sea, making the waves higher and seemingly angrier as they charged up towards the seafront. Yet there were still a number of bathing carriages out in the water, where some of the wealthy had chosen to swim.

Her strides kicked at her petticoats in her haste as she hurried back to Mark’s. It was going to be an intolerable day if Harry did not come. She would be wandering about the house awaiting him and she would be so disappointed. He had to come.

~

‘There is a letter for you.’

Every muscle in Harry’s body jolted as the envelope landed lightly on his stomach a second after he’d heard Gareth speak. Ash barked at Gareth, leaping off the bed, startled too.

Harry lay back down and let his muscles relax now he knew it was not a deadly threat but his friend.