The Tainted Love of a Captain. Jane Lark

Colonel Hillier called.

      Harry was aware of the woman walking into the room, but he did not look, his mind was on the cards and the game.

      ‘Bring my box of cigars, would you?’

      ‘Yes.’ It was a young woman’s voice that answered.

      When she returned, a rose perfume scented the air. The perfume was very like the one his mother used. The scent increased in intensity as the woman came closer, circulating about the half table, holding out the open box of cigars as each man then helped himself.

      When she reached Harry, he looked up. My God. The woman from the seashore. She had the most striking auburn hair, full of rioting curls, and she had remarkably large, beautiful hazel eyes that hinted at the colour of bracken in autumn. He had noticed neither thing from a distance, but then her hair had been beneath a bonnet.

      ‘Thank you.’ He took a cigar from the box.

      She smiled at him as colour tinted her pale skin a deep pink while her eyes opened wider, as though she was also shocked to encounter him here.

      His invitation had not been due to her, then; the thought had crossed his mind.

      He looked back at his cards, but his thoughts and attention were now partly drawn to the woman.

      When she finished handing out the cigars, she walked back about the men with matches to light their cigars. He watched her face when she lit a match for him. She looked only at the task, and yet when he sucked on the cigar, holding it to the match to draw the flame and light the end, he sensed her staring at him.

      Did her father know that she walked with her maid along the shore each afternoon and watched him?

      She left the room once her task was complete. But some of his thoughts remained with her even then. She was a very attractive woman. He had never really looked at her when he’d been on the beach. Yet his mind’s focus on her was involuntary; she was a young miss and he was not interested in such women. His mind, however, begged to differ on that point this evening.

      She returned to the room five times to circulate with cigars or refill the decanter. All tasks a servant might have completed, but the Colonel called for his daughter to undertake them. Perhaps this odd collection of men had been invited not solely to play cards but to obtain a suitor for his daughter and this was his version of a shop window to sell her attributes.

      Harry smiled as he won his fourth hand.

      He leant back in his chair as the money on the table was passed along to him and his gaze clashed with the woman’s. Their gazes had met several times. She coloured and looked away.

      If this card game had been played in a gentleman’s club, where the women were available, she would not be colouring as she met his gaze but looking alluringly and by now he would have beckoned her over and invited her to sit on his knee as he played, effectively claiming her for the night. Perhaps he would go in search of a woman after this. The escape that could be found in a bed with a woman had been the other constant surviving from his old life.

      He did not seek a woman when he left the Colonel’s, richer by the grand sum of fifty pounds; the Colonel’s auburn-haired daughter was still too much on his mind. If he lay with a woman it would be the Colonel’s daughter in the bed in his mind and that felt sordid. Instead he returned to the barracks and climbed back into the narrow bed that he shared with Ash.

      ~

      ‘You have a letter, my friend.’

      Harry awoke and sat up instantly, his hand reaching for his sword, which lay on the floor beside his bed. Instinct. But the instinct was overridden when he saw Gareth. ‘Must you walk in without knocking? One day I will not awake fully and your throat will be cut.’ Harry turned to sit on the edge of the bed. The letter was thrown on to the covers beside him.

      Gareth merely laughed as Harry picked the letter up.

      He expected it to be from a member of his family. All of his brothers and sisters wrote to him on occasion, along with his mother and father. Even his cousin and friend, Henry, had kept in contact and sent him amusing anecdotes while Harry had been away. But Harry did not recognise the writing and when he turned the letter over there was no imprint of a seal in the wax.

      ‘Do you want to come for a ride with me, for a proper gallop, without the dog?’ Gareth asked as Harry opened the letter.

      Harry looked up. ‘Yes.’ It was Sunday and neither of them had any hours of duty.

      ‘I’ll give you forty minutes precisely,’ Gareth answered, before turning and walking out of Harry’s room.

      Harry’s hand settled on Ash’s head and stroked behind the dog’s ear as he looked at his letter, which came from an unknown source.

       Dear Captain Marlow,

       I am so glad I have discovered your name. I have been longing to know it for three whole weeks and now I know it I can write to you.

       I have seen you on the beach with your beautiful dog. It is charming the way you and she play your game of fetch.

      The woman from the shore. The Colonel’s—very forward—auburn-haired daughter. She should surely not be writing to him.

       I wonder, that is I hope, that you might be willing to walk with me along the seafront one day, perhaps today. I can be there at four. If you are going to the beach today? There is no need to write back, simply meet me if you can.

       Yours sincerely,

       Charlotte Cotton

      Cotton… A frown pulled at his brow. It was not the retired Colonel’s surname. A step daughter then? Perhaps?

      She was in Harry’s mind again, then, as he dressed. With her large, fascinating hazel eyes and her vivid hair.

      He let Ash accompany him to the stables, then left the dog in Obsidian’s stall before leading the horse out into the middle of the huge stable block full of whinnying and neighing horses.

      Gareth was waiting outside, sitting astride his horse. ‘Are you ready?’

      ‘I am,’ Harry answered as he mounted. The weather today was bright, warm sunshine.

      They smiled at one another before they turned the horses. Then left the barracks at the pace of a trot, talking as they rode. They rode out to the hills at a canter before letting the animals have their heads in a gallop. It was as good for Harry as it was for Obsidian to feel the wind whipping at him as Obsidian cut through the stillness of the world at a raging gallop.

      At the top of the cliffs they stopped and looked down, watching the sea.

      Harry looked back towards Brighton and thought of the woman who would be waiting there for him at four. He had no intent to go, or rather, he might go to exercise Ash, but he would not communicate with the woman… He said aloud, ‘The woman on the shore—’

      ‘The one who has been watching you?’

      ‘Yes.’ Harry looked over at his friend as they walked their horses farther along the cliff path.

      ‘What about her?’

      ‘If you give me a chance I will tell you.’ Harry laughed, then continued. ‘I know who she is.’

      ‘You have spoken with her? When? What did she say?’

      ‘Last evening at Colonel Hillier’s. She is his daughter. Or perhaps his step-daughter. They do not have the same surname.’

      Gareth broke into laughter that came from deep in his throat.

      ‘Why is that amusing?’ Harry charged.

      His friend drew in a deep breath to quell his mirth. Then smiled broadly. ‘You fool, Harry. I never had you down as a naïve man.’

      ‘Naïve…’