Jane Lark - The Lost Love of a Soldier - A timeless Historical romance for fans of War and Peace

She was young. But if he waited someone else would snap her up by the time he returned. To keep such a beauty, he had to take her with him. The girl could keep him sane, when all about him was brutality and madness.

He’d spent the last three years watching the few men who had their wives travelling with them, following the drum. It was not a pleasure filled life, but at night they’d had each other, before and after a battle.

His choice had been the comfort of a camp whore or the camaraderie of jaded war beleaguered men.

Not that he did not like his men; they’d survived too much together. But there were times a man wanted a woman, and there were times only one woman would do.

He wanted solace, someone to take to bed and escape war with – someone who would help him shut out the visions of the death he’d left behind.

Of course more fool his heart – picking the daughter of a duke.

He’d held little expectation Pembroke would welcome his proposal, but Paul had known he had to try to do things properly.

God. His father would go mad when he heard of this. It would set Pembroke against him for years, when his father sought a political alliance. But self-sacrifice be damned. He’d given his life to society. Now he’d discovered something he wanted more than others’ good opinion. Ellen.

He’d had little to do with his father though anyway, since he’d gone to war. His father had paid for his commission, and then his duty had been done. He’d ensured his sixth son had an independent living.

At first Paul had kept in contact with them, but war was not a thing to write of, he’d grown distant from his family now. In the summer when he’d been with them at Pembroke’s, he’d had little conversation to share with them. He was not interested in politics, and they would not have been interested in his tales of survival and death.

He cracked open the seal on her letter and read it quickly, drinking his ale as he did. She’d said, yes . Not that he’d doubted she would, he’d known since the summer the girl was attached to him. But before he’d felt guilty. Now he did not. Argyle? God, her father was a bastard. Paul would be rescuing her from a life of hell.

Her father, and his, could go hang. This girl was meant for him, and he was right for her. He needed her too much.

He couldn’t remember the point attraction had become love. At some point between catching her staring at him across the room the first day he’d arrived at Pembroke Place and hearing her sing as he sat beside her turning the pages of her music, while her thigh brushed against his through a thin layer of muslin, her cotton petticoats and his pantaloons.

Any day soon this girl would be his, and she may have to learn how to endure the hardship of an army camp, but regardless he would make sure she never regretted eloping. Determination to make her happy gripped in his gut, and determination to love the girl so she’d never feel she lacked a thing.

Setting his empty tankard sharply back on the beer stained table, he rose and returned to the clerk’s desk. “When may I hire a yellow bounder? I need a fast carriage.”

“I can find out for you, Captain. Are you dining? If so I’ll see what is free while you eat.”

“Yes, I’ll dine.” Paul turned away and returned to the taproom. Not that he was hungry. His stomach had been tied up in knots for more than a week. Ever since he’d received his orders to sail and decided to come back and get Ellen he’d hardly been able to eat a bloody thing. He wanted this woman too much.

She’d stayed in his head since he’d left in August. She’d hovered in his dreams at night and walked with him in daydreams in the sunlit hours. She’d enchanted him, and he’d found her unfledged and ready for flight.

Thank God he’d come to entertain himself when his father and brothers had visited Pembroke’s. He could so easily have stayed away and gone to London.

But his father and hers were going to be mad as hell.

He asked for another tankard of ale and ordered the pork dish. He’d eaten enough bloody rabbit for a whole century during the Peninsular War. He would not touch the rabbit pie. It reminded him too much of the biting pain when hunger gripped inside you and you still had to march or fight. Yet he barely touched the meal, his hunger now was for a certain pale-blue-eyed, black-haired beauty.

Finding Ellen had been like finding treasure on the battle torn fields in his head. His sanity clung to her, something beautiful to remind him that everything was not ugly. She was someone to fight for. Someone to survive for…

The clerk arrived. “The day after tomorrow. Would that suit, sir?”

“Yes.” The sooner the better. Tomorrow would be torment. Now he’d made up his mind, and Ellen had agreed, he simply wished to go. But if there was no choice. “That will suit.”

“Thank you, Captain.” The man bowed.

~

Ellen’s stomach growled with hunger for the umpteenth time as she lay on her bed. She’d been confined to her room for four days, but this would be the last day… She was leaving. The thought clutched tightly in her heart. No one knew. In ten hours Paul would come to meet her.

She’d not even told Pippa, she was too terrified her father would hear it from someone if she said the words aloud.

Every detail of their escape, in Paul’s words, was safely tucked inside her bodice near her heart, pressing against her breast.

“Eleanor.”

Heavens.

“Eleanor!” The sound seeped through her bedchamber door; a deep heavy pitch that made her instantly wish to comply. Obedience had carved its mark into her soul – and yet she was about to disobey. Where on earth would her courage come from?

“Father?” The key turned in the lock on the outside and Ellen scurried off the bed.

When the door opened she stood by the bedpost, her hands gripped before her waist, her back rigid and chin high, but her eyes downturned. It felt as though she was one of Paul’s soldiers on parade when she faced her father. She did not feel like his flesh and blood.

“Your Grace.” She lowered in a deep curtsy sinking as far as she was able, in the hope he would think her penitent and be kinder. She did not look up to meet his gaze in case it roused his anger. But she needn’t even look at her father to know when he was displeased; displeasure hung in the air around him without him saying a word. Yet he never showed his anger physically, apart from barking orders and offering condemning dismissals.

Those cutting words and his exclusion were enough punishment though. He never looked at her as if he cared, never smiled…

What I am planning will horrify him …

Her father’s fingers encouraged her to rise, with a beckoning gesture.

“Papa.” She lifted her gaze to his.

Paul’s words, promising faithfulness, love and protection, pressed against her bosom as she took a deeper breath. A blush crept across her skin. She feared even the blush might give her away.

Compared to her father, Paul was water to stone, something moving and living.

Vibrancy and approachability – warmth – emanated from Paul.

Her father hid beneath coldness and disdain. If there was any warmth in his soul she’d never been able to see it. He most often communicated in a series of bitter glares rather than words.

Yet Paul had experienced awful things. Death. Illness. He had cause to be bitter. He’d seen friends die, and killed others for the sake of freedom in Europe. He never spoke of it though, even when she’d asked. He always spoke of good things. But she supposed his months in England were months to forget the Peninsular War.

“Well? Have you thought about your behaviour, Eleanor?”