The Tainted Love of a Captain. Jane Lark

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      He’d joined the army as an eager young man, keen to discover the thrills of the life of a soldier and leave the stifling safety of his family home behind. For years he’d lived carelessly, supported by them, with a casual disregard for anything but his own pleasure. He’d been a flippant young man, breaking all his righteous father’s rules, even when he’d first become a soldier. But that was not the man who had returned from the war. War had tainted him and his family had seen it. But good God, he did not even recognise the man he’d once been now. That innocent, foolish man was a stranger to him as much as this man had been a stranger to the family he had rebelled against for no other reason than to express his individuality.

      ‘Come along, let us go for a run.’ Harry shoved the dog off the bed, then climbed out of it himself. He washed and shaved, then picked up his dark-blue trousers and pulled them on. Next he put on his shirt, tucked it in and drew his braces up over his shoulders before putting on his black neckcloth. Lastly he slid his arms into his scarlet military coat. That last garment was the thing which defined him as a lancer, a cavalry man.

      His fingers ran over the epaulette, which announced him as a captain, then brushed down the sleeve, knocking off any lint. He swept off the dust from his other sleeve and then secured the brass buttons in their regimental button holes, following an upward pattern. The routine of dressing each morning and returning himself to the man who was ready and prepared to fight, had become a ritual. He clothed his soul and his thoughts, hiding them to ensure they were never exposed.

      He sighed out a breath. ‘Ash,’ he called the dog to his heel. They left his room together and walked to the stable to prepare Obsidian. The horse and the regiment were a family that understood him and they were his home now. The Crimea had set him apart from his family. The knowledge, the wounds in his head, were things he could never share with them, or his old friends. But everyone lived with such memories here.

      Yet the dog had been a good thought of his sister’s. Ash was in his military family too. War may have set him apart, but his family still sought to reach out to the stranger they had found amongst them on his return. As his family could not look after him from a distance. Ash’s role was to watch him and lift his spirits when they were low.

      Fifteen minutes later he was riding at a trot, with Ash beside the horse, as they travelled the two miles towards Brighton’s beach.

      He could have ridden in another direction, but the sea always seemed to pull him towards it.

      The taste of salt filled the air. He breathed it in and kept breathing slowly. It cleansed his senses of the haunting stale smells of the gunpowder and blood and the foul odours of death. He could see the sea in the distance through the avenue of houses.

      He left Obsidian at the inn he regularly used for that purpose, then walked on with Ash, and a stick for Ash, ignoring the bustle of passing carriages and people in the busy street. Yes, the dog was a very good addition. Without Ash he would not have come to the beach each day. His visits to the beach had become his moments to escape—they would have felt like running away without Ash to entertain. With Ash these moments had become the sanctuary he ran to.

      ‘Fetch!’ he yelled as he walked out on to the pebbles and hurled the stick. Ash barked with loud excitement and her eyes followed the stick’s flight through the air.

      Harry watched it too, isolating his thoughts and himself, shutting out his awareness of the bathing carts and those managing their occupants and the others walking on the beach, letting his thoughts slip out of the past and the echoes of the nightmare he’d dreamed.

      He’d been invited to play cards with a retired colonel tonight. Colonel Hillier. He presumed because those playing believed he would bring money into the game, with a Duke for a brother. The truth was that he had already spent, or rather gambled away, most of the arrears of his allowance that had been given to him by his brother on his return to England. Equally, most of his pay that had built up during his months abroad had been lost at the tables.

      But not all the money had been lost since his return; there had been many nights during the regiment’s progression towards the battlefields in the Crimea in which bets had been made and promissory notes written. Gambling on the outcome of a hand of cards had been the closest thing to freedom there.

      The notes had all been called in and paid on his return and now he was poor until he received the next payment of his allowance from his ducal brother, or his next wage.

      Laughter rang out behind him, in a woman’s tone, from the walkway along the head of the beach. The familiar sound pierced through the dustsheet he’d thrown across the world to separate himself from it.

      He looked back.

      The woman, who kept watching him, was there again. For the fifth day. With the same maid. He looked away, out to sea. He was not interested in any young misses. His life was not a life for an English wife.

      Ash returned with the stick. Harry took it from her mouth and threw it again, ignoring the woman, despite her desire to obtain his attention as she spoke in an overly loud voice. He continued playing with Ash and disregarding her, as he had done every other day, until she ceased promenading back and forth.

      Once she’d gone, he left the beach and walked to a coffee shop in the town. The coffee shop was close to the Royal Pavilion, with its bizarre Indian-style architecture. The Palace made him smile. It seemed to be laughing at its grandeur. Ash came inside with Harry and sat beneath the table as Harry drank the dark, bitter coffee. It gave him a renewed boost of energy. He and Ash walked back to the inn, collected Obsidian, then returned to the barracks.

      He dined in the mess room with the other officers and then it was time to ride back into Brighton for this unknown retired colonel’s card party. His Lieutenant Colonel and two other officers Harry did not know particularly well, accompanied him, as they were also invited. Gareth had not been included, probably because he did not have wealthy origins.

      Harry was the one who stepped up to the door of the tall terraced property and knocked.

      The door was opened by a male servant, who held the door wide. Harry handed his hat over to the servant as he stepped in. Masculine laughter rang from a room off the square hall.

      When Harry entered the room the laughter had come from, the other men were not in uniform, nor were they men Harry knew.

      It was going to be an odd evening. He would rather have drunk and played cards with the officers who were his friends. But he had agreed to this; flattered by the invitation and out of a desire to play cards with a seriousness that would grasp the attention of his mind and silence other thoughts. His heart raced at the idea of holding the cards as he saw the money lying on the table and recalled the challenge of the game. He could also do with winning.

      ‘Colonel Hillier.’ Harry bowed to his host as the grey-haired, old, portly man acknowledged his new guests with a gesture of his hand. Chairs were pointed to at a strange semicircular table; it was half of a table, which stood before the fireplace and it had an open middle, presumably so it did not burn. Harry had never seen one like it before.

      When Harry sat, the heat from the fire touched his legs. It was May and there had been the aftermath of the storm yesterday, yet it was not particularly cold, he was going to sweat in his coat. A contraption attached to the table bore a decanter; it swung on a runner, which meant it could be passed about without the need to be lifted. It was swung to those who had joined the table as a new hand of cards was dealt for each man and then passed along.

      Relief filled Harry as he picked up the cards. This was a constant that had been with him since before the Crimea. He’d spent hours at card tables with his cousins during their dissolute years and the pleasure to be found in a card game had lasted throughout the war. When he’d returned, playing cards had provided a base for normality. He was once again in a place in which he could face reality.

      But those he had previously played with, his cousins, were wed now and happily settled with their wives and children. Life had progressed without him. Everything had changed here. He was a soldier and nothing besides that now.

      He