Jane Lark - The Tainted Love of a Captain

Gareth stroked Ash’s head.

‘Must you keep walking into my room when I am asleep.’ Harry’s forearm fell on to his forehead and he shut his eyes again.

‘The letter smells of perfume and was delivered by a stable boy, who said he was told to ensure you received it urgently. I am merely fulfilling the direction and I think it is fair to guess, as the letter did not come in the post or with the dispatches, it is nothing to do with your family, which the smell of it would indicate too.’

Harry picked up the envelope and smelt it, without opening his eyes. Roses. Charlotte. He opened his eyes. ‘What hour is it?’

‘Just past eleven.’

His duty had finished at six. He’d eaten and then come here to sleep. He’d barely slept. But he lifted the sheet and then turned to sit sideways on his bed and opened the letter. Then he looked up at Gareth. ‘Thank you for this, you may go now.’

‘Dismissed for a woman. You are not going to tell me who, then?’

‘I am not going to tell you who, no.’

Gareth took Harry’s hat off the peg on the wall and flung it at him, then turned and walked out of the door.

Harry laughed, picked up his hat and put it on the bed beside him, then looked at the letter as Ash rested her head on his knee. The black tip of her nose sniffed the paper as Harry read.

Dear Harry,

I have news. Mark, Colonel Hillier, is away. He is in London for a few days and so I hoped, thought, that you might like to come to the house.

Officers call here all the time, it would not be at all exceptional for you to call here as a friend. We can spend longer together here and you must bring Ash. We could take her for a walk along the shore after luncheon. If you will come for luncheon?

Tell me you will come. You must come. It is such an opportunity.

Yours sincerely

Charlie

‘Charlie…’ he said aloud, his eyebrows lifting. ‘Charlotte… Charlie…’ The shortened, less-formal name suited her. ‘Luncheon…’ He looked at Ash and stroked her neck, laughing quietly. Then shook his head slightly. He’d be a lunatic to go. Like everything about this affair with her it rang of oddness and imbalance. The etiquette of a relationship with another man’s mistress was something he did not understand.

Was it really appropriate for him to call on her at Hillier’s? Yet perhaps Hillier knew, perhaps he was allowing this. She had left his house on her own for several afternoons.

He sighed. He hated thinking about her and Hillier. He would go, for good or bad, whether it was right or wrong. He wanted to see her again, he’d not seen her for four days. The abstinence had opened a cavern in his chest that he knew would be repaired by a few moments of her company.

It had probably reached and passed midday when he knocked on Colonel Hillier’s door, with Ash sitting close to the heel of his boot.

‘No, do not worry. I will answer it. You can go back to the kitchen.’ He heard the words, spoken by Charlotte, through the door. Then the door was opened. ‘Hello,’ she said in a breathless whisper.

‘Hello.’ He saluted her, in a teasing gesture. ‘I am here as ordered, Miss Cotton.’

She reached out and gripped the cloth of the sleeve of his scarlet coat. ‘Come in.’ Once he had been pulled inside, she whispered. ‘I am so glad you came.’ Ash paced about the hall sniffing everything as Harry took off his hat.

‘I have luncheon all laid out for myself in the parlour. I was going to eat alone but as you are here you must join me, Captain Marlow, with your dog!’ She spoke in an overly loud voice, he presumed for the ears of the servant who had been sent back to the kitchen. ‘You will, won’t you?’ This last sentence was said much more quietly, just for his ears.

‘I will, thank you. That is very kind of you to invite me to stay as the Colonel is not here!’ He smiled after he’d spoken for the ears of the servant too, then bowed slightly, in a gesture of habit, in the way he might have done had one of his sisters-in-law asked him to stay to eat.

Charlotte, or Charlie, turned and walked ahead of him, leading him to a room at the back of the house. It was relatively small and very feminine, very yellow. She held the door as he walked in with Ash at his heel, then shut it firmly, as though she shut out the world. ‘This is my room,’ her voice had become conspiratorial. ‘No one is allowed in here unless I invite them.’

There was an immediate difference in her. Her posture became less rigid and her movements more flowing and there was a hint of mischief in her eyes and her smile too. She was more relaxed here.

He glanced about the room. ‘This is a very pleasant space.’

‘It is, isn’t it. It is my hiding place.’

There was not much in the way of furniture, but there was a comfortable sofa and a chair.

‘Look. I am prepared.’

The food was on a table in one corner of the room.

She crossed the room, passing him. ‘Would you like something to eat?’

‘Yes, now you speak of it, my stomach is growling at me.’

She began filling a plate for him with sandwiches and small pies, then she held it out. ‘There.’

He stepped forward and took the plate from her hand. ‘Thank you.’ This was truly bizarre, when he’d thought this relationship could be no more peculiar.

‘Well, sit then, Harry, do, you are making me feel awkward.’

He smiled and did her bidding. Then put down the plate and took off his gloves. He dropped them on the arm of the chair before he began to eat. Ash lay on the floor before him, watching Charlotte, Charlie, filling a plate for herself. ‘You signed your letter ‘Charlie’…’ Would she prefer him to use the name?

She sent him a smile across her shoulder.

He would guess she did prefer it.

‘It is a nickname I have had since I was a child. I thought if anyone broke the seal they would think my letter from a man.’

He laughed. ‘They would not have. The perfume gave the intent of your letter away immediately and if that had not, your words would have done.’

She smiled as she came to sit next to him. ‘But no one intercepted it…’

‘No, no one opened it. Yet what would Colonel Hillier think of me being here, Charlotte? Charlie.’

‘I have no idea what Mark will think.’ Her chin lifted as she answered, in a way that denied any judgement. It reminded him of days when he had been challenged over his morals and behaviour by his father. He had always answered with an equally harsh dismissal; he had never cared for anyone else’s opinion.

But now he was older and wiser and her words made him less certain of his decision to come. He did not want any trouble with a Colonel, retired or not. ‘Is this sensible, then?’

Her chin lifted even higher. ‘If he complains, then I shall tell him that I am allowed to do what I wish, just as he does.’

The look on her face touched him, literally, as if her fingers had pushed into his chest. Her expression said do not deny me and do not judge me. How could he condemn her? He’d not led a wholesome life. And Hillier could not own her, as Harry had thought the other day; she was not a slave.

He smiled. ‘And send military men perfumed letters of seduction and tempt them into your parlour for luncheon. Am I to be snared in a web of deceit, then, Charlie?’ He joked to shatter the hard look of defence and defiance that had cast across her expression.

The words succeeded and the stiffness in her posture disappeared again as a laugh broke from her throat. ‘Yes, exactly that. I hope to snare you and I shall have you all wrapped up in my sewing threads.’

She stood then. ‘You do not have a drink.’ She poured him a glass of lemonade. ‘Since you introduced me to it, I have had a kitchen maid make lemonade every day.’