The Tainted Love of a Captain
JANE LARK

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First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2017

Copyright © Jane Lark 2017

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is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are

the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to

actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is

entirely coincidental.

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Ebook Edition © May 2017 ISBN: 9780008139841

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PRAISE FOR JANE LARK

‘Jane Lark has an incredible talent to draw the reader in from the first page onwards’

Cosmochicklitan Book Reviews

‘Any description that I give you would not only spoil the story but could not give this book a tenth of the justice that it deserves. Wonderful!’

Candy Coated Book Blog

‘This book held me captive after the first two pages. If I could crawl inside and live in there with the characters I would’

A Reading Nurse Blogspot

‘The book swings from truly swoon-worthy, tense and heart wrenching, highly erotic and everything else in between’

BestChickLit.com

‘I love Ms Lark’s style—beautifully descriptive, emotional and can I say, just plain delicious reading? This is the kind of mixer upper I’ve been looking for in romance lately’

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Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Jane Lark

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Epilogue

Author’s Note

Also by Jane Lark

About the Author

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

Acknowledgements

I’d like to take the chance, before you begin, to say a thank you to the editor who discovered The Illicit Love of a Courtesan, the first of the Marlow Intrigues books, and believed in my writing and this series so much that she signed up all seven of the main books in the series.

When I decided to offer HarperImpulse The Illicit Love of a Courtesan, as it had already been published through a small independent publisher I wasn’t sure HarperImpulse would want it. My belief was that previously published books were often not wanted and so I only sent a tentative email saying ‘would you be interested in seeing it?’, it wasn’t even a submission. I can’t tell you how surprised I was to then receive an email saying, yes, with an expression of absolute excitement.

I was really surprised because I hadn’t sent the book, so Charlotte couldn’t have read it, but she’d said yes… I asked her then, ‘wouldn’t you like to read it before you say yes?’ The answer was, ‘I already have.’ Charlotte had bought and read the story. How wonderful! She has since then always believed in, and supported, my work and I cannot say how brilliant it has been to know I have had an editor who believes so wholeheartedly in my writing and is able to see what you see as readers.

Thank you, Charlotte Ledger, for fulfilling my lifetime dream and giving me this amazing chance to get my stories out into the world and bringing my work to life. Thank you too, to Suzy, who has taken up the baton of editor and polished off the last two books.

And thank you to my family for putting up with me spending all my time with a laptop in front of me!

Plus, I ought to remember in this, my great-uncle Baba, the black sheep of my Grandma’s generation, who lived in the small family cottage next to hers in Mobley, near Berkeley Castle in England, the namesake for Harry’s nickname.

Chapter 1

Gareth’s touch on Harry’s arm drew Harry’s attention away from his dog. ‘Is that not the woman we saw here yesterday?’

Harry looked across his shoulder and smiled. ‘I believe so.’

It was a blustery day and in the grey sky above seagulls called out as they played on the breeze, flying into it and then letting it sweep them back. The women’s skirts were blowing about their legs as they held onto the brims of their bonnets.

The dog barked because the stick had been lifted and not thrown yet. Harry looked at the waves and hurled the piece of driftwood he’d picked up to play their game. Ash turned and ran after it, all enthusiasm, inspired by the energy in the weather. A few minutes later the dog returned, with the stick in her mouth and her tail wagging violently Harry patted the Dalmatian’s head and took the stick from her mouth then hurled it into the sea again. The pebbles on the shore stirred with the movement of both the dog and the waves as Ash raced into the foaming water.

‘She is smiling broadly and my bet would be she is smiling at you.’

Harry glanced over his shoulder once more. The woman was speaking to her female companion, who from her appearance he would guess to be a maid. He looked at his friend. ‘Or you.’

‘No. Definitely you.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘I have neither the looks nor the reputation that make women whisper.’

Harry laughed as Ash returned. ‘You have a scarlet coat with epaulettes, the uniform works wonders, Captain Morris,’ he mocked his friend, then took the stick from the dog’s mouth and threw it into the shallow part of the waves again. Ash followed it.

‘The woman could not be more obvious. She has not taken her eyes off you.’

‘Then perhaps it is some young miss who has heard of my reputation and sees a monster to point at.’

‘She is not looking at you in disdain.’

Harry smiled at his friend’s amusement. He did not care why the woman was looking at him. Let her look. Ash came back and Harry threw the stick a few more times as Gareth continually glanced back and recounted how the woman continued to watch while she walked back and forth, beside her maid, along the path at the head of the beach.

When he’d had enough of being observed, like a spider in a jar, Harry looked at Gareth and suggested it was time to return to their barracks in Preston. He had to get back anyway. He was on duty later.

Harry walked off the pebbly beach as Gareth sent one last smile in the unknown woman’s direction.

They walked to the inn, where they’d left their horses side by side.

Ash kept close to Harry’s horse as they rode back, nipping at the horse’s hind legs on occasion if she had a chance.

Harry dismounted. The brick paved yard in the centre of the barracks was a huge square and the stalls about it held several hundred horses. He led Obsidian into one of the giant stable blocks, to her stall. He took off her saddle before brushing the horse down, while Ash retired to the corner of the stable and watched.

When Harry walked out of the stall the dog followed.

Ash slept under the desk by Harry’s feet as Harry served his hours of duty through the night and in the morning when Harry tumbled on to the bed in his quarters, Ash climbed up and lay beside him. Harry fell asleep as he stroked the dog’s ear.

A deafening explosion rang in his ears and it resonated through his chest. Then there were screams of retaliation and the thunder created by a cavalry charge. Harry awoke and sat up. His nose and mouth burned with the smell and the acrid taste of gunpowder and his mind was plagued with the sight of wounded men, blood and death. It was a relief to be awake.

He stroked Ash’s neck and the dog licked his cheek. ‘You, scallywag, Ash.’ He rubbed her stomach as she rolled onto her back.

Ash had come from a litter his sister Mary’s husband had bred for his son to choose from. Harry was offered one of George’s spares. The offer had been the gift of more than a dog, though. Harry had needed something to make him smile and his sister had spotted his need and given him Ash. He’d accepted the gift for the kindness it was and chosen the runt of the litter, although Ash’s playful character had grown beyond the weak puppy he’d carried away tucked inside his coat.

The dog sat up and licked his face again. ‘Good day to you too, you silly animal, Ash.’

Ash’s name had come from Harry’s niece, Iris; Ash for the sake of the black dots on her white coat.

Having Ash to amuse and pet had helped still his mind. It had quietened the sudden, violent visions during the day. The impacts of fighting a farcical war without enough equipment, ammunition or food and medicine were cut deep into his mind and the scars opened up whenever he was idle. His nightmares were of the tents full of wounded men as often as they were of the battles. He’d seen more men lost to infection and fever than cannon fire or bullets.

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 looked at the cards he held and then at the faces of those about the table, trying to judge which men were his competition.

‘Charlotte!’ 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…’ Harry’s eyebrows lifted.

‘She is his mistress. Not his daughter.’ Gareth laughed again.

His mistress… Lord. He’d had no idea. He swallowed and looked ahead. ‘She did not behave like his mistress.’ He thought of how regularly her colour had heightened and how she had looked away. Yet the fact the Colonel had used her to serve them fitted Gareth’s definition.

‘I have not seen her so I did not recognise her on the beach, but I have heard the woman is an outstanding beauty. Everyone comments on her when they have been to Hillier’s.’

Something scratched along Harry’s spine, like a knife on stone. It was the word, ‘everyone’ that had stirred the sensation. The image in his head was something he did not want to picture. ‘She is beautiful.’ She was. Her auburn hair and her eyes seemed even more attractive now he knew she was a touchable, attainable woman, another man’s, but only because that man paid for her keep. Yet the thought of being able to touch her conjured up more images he did not want to see.

She had asked him to meet her. He wanted to do so now. Would it be wrong for him to speak with her?

He debated the question internally during their ride back to the barracks and as he brushed Obsidian down. He was undecided when he ate his luncheon and he remained undecided even after that. It was not until half past the hour of three that he made up his mind.

He would go and he would speak to her. He saddled Obsidian again and took Ash with him as he normally would. Having Ash beside the horse quietened his doubt. If he changed his mind he could just walk down to the waves.

He left Obsidian at the inn, then walked towards the sound of the sea. The noise of the water washing up on to the pebbles began to ease his soul and he could taste the salt in the air.

She was there, with her maid. They were on the path at the head of the beach, a few yards away. He crossed the street. She walked towards him and intercepted his path. ‘Captain Marlow!’ she called. ‘Well met!’ She spoke as though she had not written and he therefore presumed the maid did not know that this interchange had been orchestrated.

He bowed, slightly. ‘Miss Cotton.’ What was the etiquette for a man’s mistress? He knew how to behave with whores and with respectable women, but a mistress was somewhere in between. ‘Would you care to walk with me?’ He lifted his arm, in the way he might have offered his arm to one of his sisters or cousins.

The maid held back to walk a few paces behind them as Ash looked up at him with eyes that asked why he had not walked on to the pebbles. Harry clicked the fingers of his free hand and tapped his leg to tell Ash to stay at his side.

‘I like your dog. What is her name?’ Miss Cotton said loudly. He presumed for the benefit of the maid as much as for an answer.

‘Ash. She was named by my niece.’

She looked at him as though the fact that he might have a niece was a bizarre thought. ‘Oh.’

He smiled. Her colour had been high since the moment they had faced each other, but now it became even redder.

‘Your dog has a very pleasant nature.’

‘Yes, she does.’

‘I am glad you came,’ she said in a quieter voice, leaning closer to him as he’d seen her do when she spoke to her maid. ‘It took me so much courage to write. But you have never looked at me here. Then you looked at me last night and I wrote in a rash moment because I have had a great desire to know the man with the lovely dog. I hope you do not think me too forward.’ Her back straightened when she had finished her conspiratorial whisper and her chin lifted high. There was a sense of dignity in her posture, no matter her status.

‘I was not sure that I would come.’

Her head turned and she looked at him about the rim of her bonnet, her fingers pulling on his arm a little. ‘I admire you as much as your dog. I have wanted to meet you as well as Ash.’

‘I am aware. I have seen you watching me.’ He breathed in. ‘It was flattering.’ He had not thought so a day ago and yet having seen the woman up close. Yes, the interest and attention of such a beautiful woman was flattering. Her large, expressive eyes, within the shadow of her bonnet’s brim, were particularly fascinating and the curls of her vibrantly coloured hair peeked from beneath the edges of the bonnet, providing a temptation to touch it.

She smiled. ‘I think it is lovely how you play with the dog. There seems such regard between you as you play. So, yes, I have been watching your games and admiring you and your affection for Ash, from a distance. It is very charming to watch. Your friend has looked back at me, but you have no more than glanced. You have given me no opportunity to compliment you before.’

‘I thought you were…’ He had been about to insult her and say that he’d thought her respectable, which would tell her that now he thought she was not. ‘I thought you someone different.’

‘Who?’

‘No one in particular, simply a young woman looking for a husband and I would make a poor candidate for that.’

Her colour had descended, but now it heightened again. It was strange to be with a woman who blushed so freely and frequently.

‘How long have you had Ash?’

‘Months only, since I returned from the Crimea. She was a gift from my family.’

‘Oh. You have a wife?’

He smiled at her. ‘No. She was a gift from my sister and her husband, which is why my niece named her.’

‘Oh. What is your first name, Captain? I did not hear it last night.’

‘Harry, Miss Cotton.’

‘That is a happy sounding name. My name is Charlotte.’

‘I know. You wrote it in your letter.’

‘Oh, I did, didn’t I?’ She laughed, with an embarrassed note, her posture was not as stiff as it had been, she had relaxed a little.

Her former stiff posture had possibly been a nervous stance rather than an expression of dignity.

He patted the hand that lay on his arm, in the way he might have done to reassure any respectable woman. ‘I have another name, I am Uncle Baba to my nephews and nieces. The nickname was first coined by my sister’s husband. He defined me as the black sheep of the family.’

Another brief laugh escaped her mouth; this was a sound of pure amusement. ‘That is an unusual name, how did you earn it?’

‘Do you really wish to know?’

‘Should I not have asked?’

‘Suffice to say I am from a rigidly good and respectable family and my older brothers were very well behaved. I… I prefer to enjoy life.’

‘How long is your regiment to be in Brighton?’

‘It is hard to tell. One never knows when orders or a crisis may draw us away.’

‘I hope it is for a while at least. I like watching you with Ash.’

He smiled.

‘Tell me about your sister and her family?’

Harry went on to tell her about all of his family. His eldest brother, who sometimes seemed more like a second father he was so severe, inflexible and demanding—though he did not mention that John was a duke. Then he talked of his brother Rob and Rob’s quiet wife and their precious daughter, Sarah. She was the only child Rob and his wife would be able to have and she was therefore precious to them all. Then he talked of his younger siblings. His sisters, Helen and Jennifer, had married while he’d been in the Crimea. They had married twins and so were now sisters and sisters-in-law. His brothers, David and Daniel, were just finishing university and beginning their lives. His sister, Georgiana, had only recently been launched upon London society and then there was Jemima, the youngest of all, at fourteen.

Charlotte, Miss Cotton, listened avidly, watching his face while he spoke, smiling and laughing as he talked of the antics of his younger siblings and nephews and nieces.

‘Have you any family?’ he asked at the end of his long description about his. He’d never asked a whore such a question. He’d never known anything about the women he paid to share a bed. But nor had he told such women about his family. Conversation was not normally a part of the exchange. But nor had he walked anywhere with a whore’s hand on his arm in this way, and he had never felt a need to reassure a woman of that background before as he’d sought to reassure Charlotte earlier.

‘Yes.’ She did not smile when she answered and her voice sounded flat.

Whenever he spoke of his family words babbled like the ripples on a flooding brook. He may have been an ill-behaved son, who was a constant nuisance to his father and at times an annoying brother, and he may have felt a stranger amongst them a few weeks ago but, even so, there would always be love between them. Ash was testament to that.

‘I have an older brother and a sister who is ten years younger than me.’ She did not go on. Thoughts of her family did not flow into her words.

‘Do you see them very often?’

‘No. I have not seen them for years.’

His eyebrows lifted. He was unsure what to say. The reply had been spoken so bluntly. He took a breath. ‘I did not see my family for two years during the war. But they wrote to me frequently and regaled me with tales of the things they did. My cousin too. Henry writes some very amusing letters about his bookish wife Susan and his daughter.’

She smiled. She seemed to like listening to him more than speaking and so he continued talking about his family; after all, he had so many brothers, sisters and cousins it was an endless subject.

They walked along the seafront for almost an hour as he talked continuously, while she listened.

But it was Charlotte who ended the conversation. ‘I am sorry, Harry, I must stop you, I have to go. Will you be here again tomorrow?’

‘I am on duty in the day tomorrow, but I will be here at five to exercise Ash.’ He had obligated himself then, when his hours here with Ash had become important to him. He did not particularly want to exchange them to entertain a woman with conversation. ‘But if you come here, then you may stand beside me, if you wish, as I throw the stick for Ash. But I cannot deny her the pleasure of the game for two days.’

She laughed. ‘If I am able to escape the house at that hour I would be happy to stand with you.’

Her fingers slipped off his arm and he bowed slightly. To a whore… But she was not that, not in the same way as the women he’d known. She confused him. ‘I shall meet you again tomorrow afternoon, then.’

‘I hope so, but I cannot promise.’ She smiled, in a way that expressed her liking for him, but with none of the open desire to attract his attention a normal whore would have deployed. Then she turned away.

His gaze followed her as she joined her maid. She glanced back at him. He smiled at her. The smile he received in return he would describe as flirtatious, but it was still not like the looks he received from the women in a gentleman’s club.

He looked down at Ash and stroked the dog’s head. ‘Come on, girl, let’s play for a while before we go back.’

He walked down to the shore.

Miss Cotton hovered in his thoughts for the rest of the day and when he retired to his bed she was still there. He was unsure of what to think, of whether he should allow himself to think anything. He had enjoyed her company and his fascination with her eyes had become a fascination for her character, her silences and blushes.

Chapter 2

When Harry collected his letters, there were three. One from his sister, which largely contained stories about the cleverness of her children and asked after Ash on behalf of Iris. The next came from his younger brother, Daniel, saying he was thinking of a military career and asking for Harry’s view.

God, how to respond on such a point to his little brother when his mind cried out daily with the haunting visions of men cut through by swords or lances or blown to pieces by cannon and shots from a rifle? He’d seen their bodies fall into the mud. Then there were the men he had visited lying in filthy sheets in makeshift hospitals, where the air had been foetid with the smell of their putrid flesh rotting on their bones. He could not encourage his brother to become a soldier.

The third letter was another invitation to Colonel Hillier’s. The men he’d played with probably wished to win their money back. He smiled, then took the letter to the mess room, where he could write back and accept. He did not accept for the benefit of a game, though, but for another opportunity to see Charlotte.

They had met twice more on the beach while he’d played with Ash. But he was still interested in seeing her at the Colonel’s house. He was trying to decipher how things stood with her. A woman who was paid for her bed sport and yet named as belonging exclusively to one man.

His lieutenant colonel was also invited and so they rode into Brighton together.

When they walked into the hall, as a servant shut the front door, Colonel Hillier came into the hall to greet them. It was unlike the previous occasion when Harry had visited the house.

He welcomed Harry’s lieutenant colonel first, then looked at Harry and held out a hand. ‘You have eyes remarkably like those of a woman I once knew, Captain Marlow.’ He shook Harry’s hand then turned away.

It was an odd statement and one that discomposed Harry to the point he made the decision not to accept any more invitations. The man had a mistress and yet perhaps he had a leaning either way and favoured men and women. Harry was not that way inclined. He looked at Charlotte differently, though, when she was called into the room to offer them a cigar from the wooden box.

She did not smile at him in the same open way she had done at the seashore. But as she walked about the men who were gathered at the unusual half-circle table her gaze favoured Harry, her eyes expressing the connection they had formed in the last few days as they’d conversed, a budding sort of friendship.

Harry’s eyes were continually drawn to her too; whenever she came into the room she pulled his attention away from the card game.

He had a very strong desire to bed her. Even the thought somewhat released the tension in his body and his mind, quietening the guilt that always hovered in his soul. If merely thinking about lying with her could make him feel better, then how much better would he feel if he did it?

He stared back at his cards. Why should he not accept the opportunity? She was not a virtuous woman and she had approached him, after all. Did it matter, then, that she was paid by another man?

Perhaps it would be stealing, in a way. Yet surely Hillier paid for her hours and not her body. She was not his slave. He did not own her.

Harry refilled his glass, losing focus on his cards and consequently as he refreshed the brandy in his glass again and again he lost hand after hand.

He left Hillier’s sixty pounds down but with a desperate desire for the hours until he was to meet Charlotte again to hurry past. His decision on the woman was made. She was desirable, she had made herself available and he wished to partake.

~

Charlie stood on the uneven pebbles waiting for Harry. He approached from the street that contained the inn where he kept his horse. Ash walked at a swift pace beside him, keeping up with the long strides of his master.

Harry always looked so handsome and very grand in his manner. He walked with a determined stride and his dark-blue trousers, with their outer yellow stripe, seemed to make him taller and his vivid scarlet coat made his slender, muscular figure more defined.

He was the prettiest man she’d ever seen; it was that which had made her watch him and his dog. He was fascinatingly attractive, almost too handsome to be real. Yet now she had spoken to him she knew he was real and as beautiful as he’d looked from a distance.

Before he had come to Mark’s she’d been longing to ask the other officers who played cards who the man who entertained his dog on the beach was? But she had never dared.

It was the dog that she had seen first and then she had watched Ash run up the beach and her attention had been drawn from Ash to her master. The closeness he seemed to have with Ash had made her want to stop and watch them and then she had noticed that Harry was even prettier than his dog.

Then he had come to Mark’s. Captain Harry Marlow. It was a wonderful name, too. It made her smile. Harry.

‘Hello!’ he called from a few feet away.

The pace of her heart beat lifted in a fluttering sensation.

Since they had been talking each day, her heart felt as though it had grown the wings of a butterfly. ‘Hello.’

‘How are you?’ he asked as he joined her.

Charlie glanced back along the path at the maid who’d walked with her. She had left Tilly a few feet away to mind her own business and Tilly had not come nearer to listen, which was what Charlie feared. But if anything had been said to Mark about her liaisons with Harry, which it probably had, he had not complained to her about it.

She looked at Harry, again, turning her back on Tilly. ‘I am well. How was your game last evening?’

‘Must you ask?’ He threw the stick out into the sea. ‘Do you not know?’

‘No.’

‘Then do not ask.’

She laughed as Ash returned with the stick.

Harry looked at her after he’d thrown the stick again. ‘I have a question to ask you, though.’

‘Then you must ask it.’ She was very forward with Harry. She kept surprising herself. But it was the atmosphere he exuded. He always spoke so liberally it made her more confident to reply. But she had been forward with him from the beginning because she had been desperate to know this man with his dog. So desperate she had dared to write. But she had told herself that a woman of her status need not worry over what was right or wrong or fear the judgement of others. She had transcended those things. It was the one benefit of her status—she might do as she wished and she had wished to meet Ash and speak to Harry. That was not a crime.

Her chin lifted and her back straightened in denial of the accusation of forwardness that continued charging at her in her head.

Harry turned and faced her fully as Ash ran into the shallow, frothing ripples, chasing the stick as the tide pulled it out on a retreating wave. ‘If I hired a room in an inn, would you come there with me?’

‘Now?’ To… Oh… She had not thought about where this might lead. She had thought of nothing other than that she admired him and she had wanted to know him. But. ‘My maid is with me.’ Her heart had jolted suddenly into a sharp pace.

‘Tomorrow. Would you meet me there?’

Her heart was pounding as hard as her father had used to pound a hammer on a straight bar of iron to twist and curve it to make a horse’s shoe. She had not imagined, and yet she had in daydreams sometimes thought about what it would be like to kiss Harry.

But to make this a sin…

Ash shook the sea water off her coat, spraying them both. Then Harry took the stick from Ash’s mouth, lifted it and held it out of Ash’s reach. The dog barked and leapt around, waiting for it to be thrown again, then it was and Ash went racing after it.

Harry looked at her. ‘Will you?’

‘Yes.’ She spoke without thought. She spoke from longing. Yes, she would like to be with a man like Harry. If she must share a bed with a man, then why could it not be with a man like Harry? She was being forced into sin anyway.

When Ash returned next, Charlie took the stick and threw it out again, though it did not go as far as it would have if Harry had thrown it. She spoke about the dog, commenting on Ash’s ability to swim in the waves, to hide her awkwardness and move the conversation away from more personal, embarrassing things.

She had agreed to share a bed with him. She would not be able to sleep this night. She must think of a reason not to bring Tilly tomorrow. Tilly might have laughed with her over the pretty dog and the attractive officer Charlie had pointed at in the distance, but she had not approved of Charlie speaking with Harry. She would certainly not approve of her going to an inn with him and if she told Mark that… She did not want Mark to know. He would spoil this. She was sure he would.

When Harry told her it was time for him to return to the barracks, he also said, ‘Shall I meet you in the street outside the inn tomorrow?’

Her heart thundered in her chest as though a bolt of lightning had struck her. ‘Could we not meet at the corner, there?’ She pointed to the street he usually appeared from. ‘I would feel uncomfortable standing outside an inn alone.’

‘Of course, forgive me. I did not think. Yes. Let us meet on the corner.’ He bowed slightly and when he straightened his very pale-blue eyes looked directly into hers, as though looking for an answer to something.

He had beautiful eyes. They were his most notable feature. His hair was dark and his eyelashes and eyebrows dark and against those his blue eyes were a striking contrast.

He took hold of her hand, lifted it and pressed a kiss on the back of her kid glove.

Warmth rose in her skin, no one had kissed the back of her hand before. She pulled her hand free, bobbed a curtsey, which was silly, smiled and then turned away.

He would think her a fool now.

She glanced back. He was walking away with Ash at his side.

She held the hand that he’d kissed. She could still feel the heat of his grip as he’d held it. Her heart beat out the rhythm of a hammer strike once more. Tomorrow…

When she had written to ask him to meet her, she had not thought things through; she ought to have realised where it might lead. Yet perhaps she had known, really. She had wanted to know the handsome man and his dog with a desire that had become an obsession and she had dreamed of him. Now she pictured him in her imagination instead of seeing Mark when they did that.

Hush mind! She did not want to think of that. She would not think about it outside of the room in which it must be done.

But with Harry…

Do not think! She ordered herself. She would do it to preserve their friendship. She would do it because she enjoyed his conversation and she liked looking at him and playing with his dog.

When she returned to Mark’s house she found a reason to remain in her room until dinner and she hoped she did not have to go to Mark’s room later.

He did not ask for her.

~

Once Harry had completed his hours of duty, he let Ash run in the barracks’ yard, then took the dog to the stable. He left him there when he walked Obsidian out of the stall.

He had dreamed of Charlotte last night. But then he had not lain with a woman for a couple of weeks and the need to do so was flooding his blood. The sense of escape achieved was as addictive as it was to gamble or drink.

He patted Obsidian’s neck, then set his foot into the stirrup and lifted up, swinging his leg across the animal’s rump to take his seat in the saddle.

‘Where are you off to without Ash?’

Harry looked across the yard at Gareth, who strode towards him. A strange sensation tightened the muscle in his stomach. Fear. He did not want his plans for the afternoon disrupted, and yet—there was guilt too. An emotion he knew well. But it was a guilt he could not really explain. Perhaps it was because he wished to keep this secret and keeping secrets meant that there was a sense of doing wrong. ‘For a ride.’ Was all he said in answer. They all had hours when they wished to be alone, Gareth would not think it odd.

His friend nodded, then turned away.

Harry rose up from the saddle, gripping Obsidian with his thighs, urging the horse into a trot and then he rode out of the stable yard. Leaving the barracks and the army behind.

The inn’s groom took Obsidian as he had every other day, only today there was no Ash and Harry did not immediately leave the inn but walked inside to ensure there was a room available. He had not checked yesterday. There was.

He walked along the street, his heart pulsing faster than it normally would. She was not waiting for him on the corner. Yet it was better that he awaited her rather than her being left to loiter. It would have been awkward for her. As she had made him aware yesterday, she was not a street prostitute.

She appeared after about five minutes, walking quickly towards him. She lifted her hand and waved when she saw him. He lifted his hand and acknowledged her. His heart began to pulse harder, it had never raced at the thought of bedding a woman before. Or perhaps it had happened the first time, but that had been a long time ago.

‘Hello,’ she spoke first and smiled in a shy way.

Another undefinable emotion twisted around in his chest, aching not clasping. ‘Hello. Shall we?’ He lifted his arm, as he would have to a woman he’d asked to dance at a ball. She wrapped her fingers about it, gently holding his coat sleeve.

They walked the short distance to the inn in silence. He had no idea what to say.

When he opened the door of the inn for her, her hand let go of his arm and she walked in ahead of him. He did not stop to speak to the clerk, but directed her up to the room through the press of his palm against the curve of her lower back above where the skirt of her dress flared out.

He pushed open the door of the room. She walked in, then stopped about eight feet away from him. He locked the door, then faced her. ‘So…’ Where did he begin with this woman? With every other woman he’d lain with there had been no hesitation. They had agreed a payment or the price was already set by the club or the brothel and they had come to a room and begun.

‘I feel so awkward,’ she said, then laughed in a self-conscious way. But her laughter broke the ice that had settled over the moment.

A sound of humour escaped his throat too. He laughed at himself. ‘I do too. Isn’t that silly?’

‘Yes.’

‘I should have ordered food, or something to drink, chocolate for you…’ Why? They were here for one thing. This was being truly ridiculous.

She shook her head slightly. ‘I am neither hungry nor thirsty.’

God. He was both, but not for food or water. ‘Let us begin by removing our hats and gloves, shall we?’

He took his hat off and set it on a chest near the door, then stripped his gloves off and left them there too. When he looked back at Charlotte she was untying the bow of her bonnet. Her pale hands shook.

He had not even seen her hands naked before.

What a strange thought.

She slid her bonnet off.

He walked across and took her bonnet and gloves from her. Then carried them over to the chest to set them down beside his hat. She was watching him when he turned back. He smiled. ‘Will you take the pins out of your hair? It is a very pretty colour. I would like to see it down.’

She began pulling the pins out at once, her hand still trembling. He walked over there and helped, looking only at her hair, searching out the silver and pearl heads of the pins.

Her hair was such a vibrant copper colour and a mass of tight curls that tumbled on to her shoulders as the pins came free. He collected the pins in the palm of one hand. Then walked over and put them beside their other items.

Bedding a whore had never been like this. Charlotte engendered a need to be solicitous.

Yet he still wanted to be in the bed with her.

He turned and walked back, his hands lifting. He wanted to touch her hair. He held the curls and rubbed the strands between his fingers. The colour glistened in the sunlight from the window, changing as amber did when the sun shone through it. His gaze turned to her face and then his fingers clasped, closing about her hair, at her shoulders, as he leant to kiss her.

Her mouth opened as his did and her tongue reached forward to play with his while her hands came to the back of his head.

He pulled away and looked down at the buttons on the front of her dress, then began undoing them.

She started working the brass buttons on his coat free. Her hands were still trembling but they worked with the haste that he felt in his blood as he hurried too.

This was more like the encounters he was used to.

When she had undone his coat her fingers slipped beneath it and ran over his cotton shirt. The sensation was abrasive on his skin in a way that was arousing. It was the first time a woman had touched him like that while his clothes were on.

He undid her buttons to below her waist, then pushed her dress off her shoulders. ‘Help me take it off.’

She smiled in that shy way she had on occasion as she pulled her arms free from the sleeves, then he helped her get the dress over her petticoats.

‘Turn,’ he requested.

She did so, and then he undid the tapes holding her petticoats in place and once she was free of those and they were set aside he began unlacing her corset. She breathed heavily as he worked, sounding anxious as well as awkward. Yet she had kissed him just as any whore would kiss and unbuttoned his coat with a haste any whore might have.

When her corset was put aside he took off his coat and his shirt. She stripped off her stockings.

‘Take off your underwear and jump into the bed,’ he said as he sat down on the end of the bed to remove his boots.

A nervous sound escaped her throat that seemed to pretend laughter as she slid down her drawers and pulled her chemise off quickly, before lifting the sheet and blanket and slipping beneath them. Her body was pink with what he guessed was embarrassment. So odd for a whore.

She smiled at him with that essence of shyness as she held the covers up to her neck, no matter that it was a warm day.

He smiled too and continued smiling as he pulled off his boots, hoping to ease any anxiety she had. Then he stripped off his trousers, underwear and stockings all in one, so that he was naked too, before turning to find his sheath out of his coat. He slid it on, then smiled even more broadly as he climbed beneath the covers with her. The feeling in his chest was warm and full. It was no longer tight or painful. It was ready to know freedom and pleasure—with this woman.

He had never cared about it being with any particular woman before. But there was a sense of excitement that the woman would be Charlotte.

Her hand lifted to the back of his head and braced his skull through his hair as his hand reached to the place between her legs. He stroked her there as they kissed. He had never been selfish with women; he’d always ensured they had pleasure too. The experience was better for them both if that was the case.

~

Harry had dressed himself in something, but he had not immediately turned her on to her back and invaded her, neither with his body nor his fingers. He was just touching her, stroking.

His mouth lifted from hers then his head lowered and he kissed the edge of her breast.

‘What did you put on?’

He looked up. ‘A sheath.’

‘Oh. Why?’

His smile said she was being foolish and that she ought to understand. ‘To protect you from the risk of a child and us both from disease.’

She wanted to ask what disease, but he had thought her naïve for asking about the sheath and now was not the moment as his fingers continued to gently stroke the place between her legs.

Warm, nice, feelings skimmed through her nerves and across her skin.

He started sucking her nipple. That was done very gently too.

She shut her eyes, shutting out the room and the world as her fingers combed through his hair. Life had been cruel to her. But Harry… She had seen Captain Marlow and wanted to know him and this was her choice. For the first time in years she was doing something that was her choice, with no sense of persuasion or force.

His fingers slipped inside her and stroked, just as he’d stroked on the outside of her body. She let the feel of that, and only that, fill up her mind. Her fingers pressed into the skin and muscles on his back.

The emotions and feelings that rose from the points he touched spun like a whirlpool in a river. She had never felt such things when Mark touched her. When Mark touched her she felt cold and empty. But all those things were left in the room, in his home and pushed out of her thoughts.

She rocked up against Harry’s hand, enjoying every sensation, longing to feel them more strongly as his tongue pressed against her breast while he sucked her nipple and his fingers stroked in and out.

Harry’s lips lifted off her breast, pulling it as he sucked her nipple one last time, then his hands dented the mattress on either side of her.

She opened her eyes as he moved over her and her hands traced the contours under his skin, over his chest and arms, then settled on his shoulders as his gaze met hers.

When he pressed into her, it was done slowly, and still gently.

‘You are very pretty,’ he said as he began to move.

‘And you are very handsome.’

He smiled at her as he continued working. It was still nice, even with him inside her. He had sweetened it with gentleness. Enchanting sensations swirled through her lower body, gradually rising in intensity, grasping her attention. She did not think of other things as she did with Mark. It was impossible to think of other things with Harry.

Her fingers combed back Harry’s short hair, then trailed over his skin again, following the bulges of the muscles on his arms and his chest, as she rocked up against him, while he pressed into her with a slow enthralling pace.

With Mark it was always hurried and forceful, and often painful, but this… there was no pain, and no force—it just was. And it felt… beautiful. She had never thought she would say that about joining with a man, but he was even more beautiful without clothes and this was wonderful.

The feelings in her body spun higher, as though Harry’s movement whipped them up like a strap flicking at a spinning top. These feelings had risen from her stomach to her chest and were in the back of her throat and then they broke like a wave on the shore, frothing and washing out into her arms, her mind and her legs. She cried out with the pleasure of it.

Harry’s pace did not change, but his head lowered and he kissed her neck, her collarbone and her shoulder. She sighed and inside—writhed. The sensations danced through her continuously, racing over each other like waves tumbling on top of one another as she was thrown about in their white foam.

After a while, although she had no idea of how long because she had lost all sense of time, he clasped the back of her thighs and rolled on to his back, pulling her on top of him. Then his hands lifted and pressed either side of her head, his fingers curling into her hair as she knelt over him and he pushed up into her. His pace then was quicker and more powerful. Though even then he did not rush but moved in a way that seemed to focus on his pleasure. But the movement brought her pleasure too.

He turned again, tipping her on to her side.

It was like a sensual dance. Their arms and legs were all tangled up as they moved about the bed, in various positions that brought up different feelings inside her.

Harry knew how to do this in a way Mark did not and all the time her fingers ran over his skin, touching and appreciating as she looked at his beautiful eyes and face and her body grasped at every sensation and let wave after wave of pleasure wash over her.

Then finally Harry rolled her on to her back once more and pushed hard into her over and over, his pace quick and sharp, and then she felt his release throb inside her. Only it did not spill inside her, it spilled into the thing that he wore.

He withdrew from her body and lay on his back.

She rolled to her side and her arm reached across to hold on to him. The emotions still swayed inside her. ‘I have never enjoyed it before.’

He laughed. She could feel and hear the rumble of it in his chest.

‘How many men have you lain with, then?’

‘Only Mark.’

‘Colonel Hillier is the only one?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then how many years have you been with him?’

‘Seven.’

He breathed out a long breath, as though her answer had disturbed him. Then his hand rested on her head and his fingers began playing with her hair.

~

Charlotte sat up suddenly, her hand pressing on his stomach. The motion woke him.

Lord, he’d fallen asleep. ‘What hour is it?’ He sat up too, throwing back the covers.

‘I have no idea. I fell asleep.’

They had slept together, then. He walked over to fetch his pocket watch from his coat. ‘Six.’

‘Oh dear.’ When he looked back she was already hurriedly pulling on her underwear.

There was a jug of water and a washing bowl on a stand in the corner, he washed out the sheath and then began to dress.

She turned with her corset in her hand. He had only succeeded in putting on his underwear. ‘Will you help me?’

‘Yes. Turn around.’

She held her corset against her stomach as he threaded the laces at the back. It was far easier undoing the thing than it was doing it up. He had never done that before. When he’d left women before he had left them in a room in a bed or at the door, placing money on the bed or into their hand.

This was a very strange affair.

When he was done, she glanced across her shoulder. ‘Thank you.’ Then she stepped away and picked up her petticoats.

He attended to himself. Put on his stockings, then his trousers, then pulled on his shirt and tucked that into his trousers as she buttoned up the front of her dress. He was tugging on his boots as she came across the room to fetch her hair pins.

He slid his arms into his scarlet coat and then secured the buttons watching her, fascinated, as she deftly twisted her hair and then stuck pins into it to keep it up. Her hair was a magnificent colour. So bright. If it was dressed formally, as his mother’s and sisters’ hair was at times, she would stand out in any ballroom.

She picked up her bonnet, then realised he’d finished dressing and was watching her. She smiled with that hint of awkwardness and the shy nature that had been there before they’d used the bed. When she put on her bonnet and tied the ribbons her hands trembled as they’d done when she’d come up to the room. ‘I think I will be in trouble.’

He did not know what to say to that. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It is not your fault we fell asleep.’

No. It was not. But it had been a very odd thing to do.

‘I must hurry.’ She walked past him and opened the door before he could reach it. Then she hurried on down the stairs ahead of him.

He breathed steadily, keeping the pace of his breaths calm, even though his heart pumped harder in an uncommon way as they walked through the inn and then out into the street. He walked as far as the corner with her, though she did not give him the chance to offer his arm because her steps were so quick.

At the corner she looked at him. ‘Thank you. I enjoyed it. Will we do it again?’

Lord… Will we do it again? The words echoed through him. ‘Yes.’ The answer came from his tongue without thought, but now it was spoken the thought followed, and yes… He wanted that. ‘I am on duty until the evening tomorrow, but the day after I will be free.’

‘Shall I meet you here at the same hour?’

‘Yes.’

‘Goodbye, then.’ She bobbed a ridiculous little curtsey at him.

‘Goodbye, Charlotte.’

She turned and walked away, hurrying once more. He watched her until she was out of sight. Then he returned to the inn to collect Obsidian.

Everything felt strange, different. Which was absurd. Sleeping with a woman changed nothing. Yet certainly he was calmer than he remembered being in a long while and his mind continually reflected on images and sensations from the time he’d spent with her, it did not recall images of war.

It had been different from any other encounter he’d had with a woman, though.

She had been… He did not even know how to describe it. Refreshing, certainly. But it was not that; it was the way she had performed, or rather not performed at all. When they had been in the bed she’d done nothing like a whore. There had been no sound, or movement, that had felt forced, acted or exaggerated. It had simply been what it was—the only honest encounter he’d ever had with a woman. And he had not even paid her, when he would have paid triple for the service she’d given him. He felt so relaxed.

Guilt pierced through his ribs with a sharp pain that resembled the sudden lance of the tip of a sword. He had not paid her. Ought he to have given her something? Yet she had not asked, nor acted as though she expected payment. But unlike the other women he had been with, she was in the constant care of one man. Kept. For Hillier’s attentions. For seven years… For seven years she had only lain with one, old, man.

The thought stirred strange emotions Harry did not care to define.

When he rode into the stable yard at the barracks, Gareth was there.

‘Hello.’ Gareth called out. ‘I have been looking out for you. Are you in the mood for a drink?’

‘Yes.’ Harry suddenly had a desperate need for a drink.

He dismounted, then walked into the huge block of stables with Gareth beside him.

‘You were a long time. You had me worried,’ Gareth stated as Harry undid the saddle’s girth strap.

Yes. He could not believe he had fallen asleep. With every other woman, when the deed had been done they had thrown him out through the door, their money earned, no matter how pleasurably.

‘I mastered a few demons,’ Harry answered. He had. Harry gave his friend a twisted smile as he took the bridle off Obsidian. He could tell Gareth, but he would not. He had a desire to continue keeping his liaisons with Charlotte a secret.

Gareth fetched a curry comb, so did Harry, and together they brushed Obsidian down as Ash watched from the corner of the stall.

Ash was at Harry’s heel when they walked back into the barracks. Harry stroked the dog’s ear. He ate in the mess room and drank with Gareth, using the liquor tonight not to blur the images of war but to blur his memories of Charlotte.

The liquor failed in its task. When he retired to his bed, thoughts and memories still flooded his mind. He saw money being set into women’s hands, by him, and recalled the tremble in Charlotte’s hands. He felt the movement of her body and heard her breaths. Then he saw her holding open the cigar box for him to take one and then he saw Colonel Hillier welcoming him into his home.

You have eyes remarkably like those of a woman I once knew…

He had probably done something foolish today.

Yet nothing in his thoughts or emotions cared if there were consequences.

Chapter 3

He did not take Obsidian to the usual inn on the day he had agreed to meet Charlotte and nor did he hire a room at that inn. It had probably been foolish to meet her at the usual inn he used, the inn most of the officers used. He ought to keep their association more discreet—she was under the protection of another man.

Instead, once he’d met her, he walked farther along the sea front with her and then led her into a quiet, narrow street. They walked along that, talking and laughing, then turned right, into an even narrower street. In that street he took her into an inn, where he’d hired a room.

The room was smaller than at the last inn. But on this occasion he had thought to order fresh lemonade for her and some small, sweet currant buns topped with icing.

She turned and smiled at him as she took off her bonnet and then her gloves. ‘The refreshments are a very nice gesture; it was kind of you to think of that. What is the drink?’

‘Lemonade.’

‘I have never had it.’

That was a ridiculous notion. Who in the world had never tried lemonade? He crossed the room and poured some for her. Then held out the glass.

She took the glass from him and sipped from it. ‘It tastes sour and sweet all at once.’ Her expression spoke of the difference between sour and sweet too.

His lips pulled up into a smile and then he laughed before picking up an iced bun. There had been no blushes or hesitation in her movements or her conversation today.

He took a bite of the bun, then held it out to her. ‘Here, eat this, it will reduce the sourness.’

She bit into the bun as he held it, then he let go and let her hold it.

‘Mmm. That is nice.’

He picked up another and ate it, then poured himself lemonade and drank the glass down. The lemonade brought back memories of his childhood home and that sense of love that came with thoughts of his family, which then brought back the vivid images of battles and their aftermath. God he hated the shame and guilt that attacked him with the bombardment of cannon shells.

He set the empty glass down, then unbuttoned his coat, raising his eyebrows at her in a gesture to tell her that he was looking forward to what would come next. That would taste sweet too.

With a cheeky smile she started undoing the buttons of her dress, hurrying to get her clothes off as last time she had hurried to get them on before they had separated.

She stepped out of her dress as he pulled off his shirt, his braces hanging loose at his sides.

She untied the tapes of her petticoats as he took off his boots. Then she sat beside him and rolled down her stockings as he took his off too. She stood, then, and turned her back to him, so he could pull the lacing free from her corset and after he’d completed the task she stripped off her chemise while he stood to take off his trousers and underwear.

When she’d taken off her drawers, he looked at her. It was a hot day, there was no need to rush for the warmth of the bed. But there had been no need for her to do so last time, yet she had done.

She looked at him and did not move, seemingly trapped in his gaze. She had a perfectly proportioned body, small breasts, a curve to her hips and long limbs.

She took a pin out of her hair. Some of the copper spirals fell down and touched the top of one pert breast. She pulled another pin out. More hair fell. He walked forward and began taking out pins too, until all her hair had fallen.

He held her hand and tipped the pins from her palm to join those in his, then set them aside with their clothes.

When he returned to her, he looked at her hair, touching it as he’d done the other day. It was such an unusual colour. He had lain with women with red hair before but not with such a rich colour as this. He wound it around his fingers and drew her closer, tilting her head back so that he brought her lips to his.

She opened her mouth instantly and their tongues began to dance. But their interaction still felt nothing like it had with other women.

Truth and honesty. That was what made her different from the women he’d bedded before her. She seemed to hide nothing of her nature or emotions.

He let her hair go and instead squeezed her breast as they continued kissing.

In answer, her fingers stroked along his erection, before closing around it.

He continued kissing her and let her touch him. It was the usual way for a whore to reach out and arouse him quickly. But this was not that.

After a few moments he ended the kiss and stepped away from her. He was still unsheathed. She climbed on the bed as he found his sheath and put it on, then he joined her.

She lay on top of the covers, not beneath them. It was too hot and she was clearly less shy today. He knelt between her open legs and slid his fingers inside her, watching his fingers work as she reclined. Her arms lifted and lay above her head, and her eyes shut. Even her eyelashes and eyebrows were a beautiful copper colour.

The expression on her face was one of focus, her mind was concentrating on the movement of his fingers, and her breaths were shallow and slow.

With her eyes shut and her arms relaxed and resting above her head she soared to her height and sighed as Eros’s bliss swept over her. Just that. Just a quiet sigh of pleasure. No writhing or crying out to make him think he was the best lover ever known. Just a short sigh of breath and sound.

He leant forward, resting the weight of his body on his hands beside her shoulders, then he looked down, angled himself and pressed into her.

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.

Chapter 4

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.

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.’

His smile widened when she handed him the glass. Once he held it, he lifted the glass in a toast. ‘To leading our lives as we wish.’

She raised her glass in the same gesture. ‘To freedom.’ Then drank when he did.

The sourness tingled on his tongue, then the sweetness flooded his throat.

He laughed a lot as they ate, because she did, and her laugh had an infectious quality.

After they’d eaten they walked Ash along the seashore as he’d always done alone. It had become normal now for her to be there. Even Ash seemed to think it right that she was there. The dog walked at her side not Harry’s.

He was tired still, and the world felt surreal with that strange sensation that was a symptom of being only half awake; it gave his hours with Charlie a dream-like quality. He was lucky, probably, that they met no one from the barracks, otherwise the men might have guessed the origin of his scented letter, yet she’d seemed convinced by her desire to do as she wished, as though it really did not matter if Hillier knew.

He accompanied her home after their walk, but he did not go back inside when she invited him. ‘No, I need to rest, I am on duty again tonight.’

‘But will you call on me again tomorrow?’

‘If you wish.’

‘Of course I wish.’

He smiled and bowed his head. ‘Then I will call here. At what hour?’

‘For luncheon again…’ she proposed.

‘Very well, for luncheon.’

For the first time, she did not curtsey to him when they parted; instead she simply turned and opened the door.

When she went inside, he walked away and something clasped in his chest with a hard sudden grasp. He leant and patted Ash’s head. ‘Women are the strangest creatures.’ Yet he’d thought he had mastered that knowledge years ago. Charlie was proving him wrong.

He had a sudden desire to break into a run, though. There was a lightness inside him, a strange emotion that expressed a sense of escapism—and the feeling had not come on the back of a physical encounter; they had not gone near a bed. This feeling was due solely to Charlie’s conversation, her laughter and her smiles.

The next day he arrived at midday. With a smile on his face as he and Ash waited on the doorstep for the door to be opened. His heart had a full feeling, as though he’d just eaten a very rich meal. He had completed his duty and now he had two days to do as he wished.

Charlotte, Charlie, opened the door.

‘Hello. Come in.’ She took hold of his coat sleeve and pulled him over the threshold once more. Then her other hand lifted his hat off his head, before he could do it himself. She put it aside on the hall table. ‘We have the whole house to ourselves, I told all the servants to go out.’

‘You will have me strung up,’ he said as he stripped off his gloves.

She only smiled. Then took his gloves from his hand and dropped them on top of his hat. ‘I have luncheon ready in my parlour.’

‘And lemonade?’

‘And lemonade,’ she confirmed with a nod, holding his hand and then pulling him towards her parlour.

‘This is your lair I am being lured into again. Am I to be the luncheon today?’

‘No, you will be dessert.’

Uncertainty lifted his eyebrows, although his smile still broke, yet that twisted a little. He was still unsure whether or not it was wise to call on her here.

They ate their luncheon in her little parlour and drank the lemonade, just as they had done yesterday, talking and laughing together. Then she stood suddenly and took his empty plate from his lap. ‘Shall we go up to bed?’

He glanced at Ash, with a desire to laugh at himself whipping at his chest as his eyebrows lifted again. He was in a strange play. The set for it was perfect; in a feminine parlour. And the scene; the demise of a lustful, sinful soldier. He was still tired from the hours he’d worked through the night, though. For two days he’d had only a couple of hours’ sleep and it made his thoughts disjointed.

He looked up at her as she stood before him, trying to search for some common sense in this. ‘And what will be said by the servants?’

‘They are all out.’

‘I know, but if anyone returns?’

‘I have locked the door between the downstairs and the upstairs and only I have the key,’ her pitch was proud and self-satisfied and her chin tilted upwards, just as it had done yesterday when he’d questioned her judgement.

Damn. The laugh escaped his throat. He could not help himself. The woman was so confusing and enchanting. The Charlotte he had met here, Charlie, was an entirely different person to the trembling woman who’d joined him in a bed in the inn for the first time.

He reached out and held of her hand, without standing or making his decision to accept. Her fingers closed about his as her large eyes looked earnestly at him, asking him why he had not moved yet.

He might be tired but he had learned to ensure his decisions were not slanted by fatigue. ‘Are you certain this is a good idea?’ Perhaps they both needed to come to their senses and stop this now. But his desire to do that was weak, his mind urged him to continue it as much as she did. He wanted to go upstairs with her.

‘Yes. I am. It is the best idea,’ her answer was spoken in her voice that said she intended to live her life as she wished. Her stance reminded him of his youthful self again and his constant refusal to conform to his father’s and older brother’s moralistic view of life. Ah. Damn the world and its judgement.

He stood up.

Damn an army that would make its soldiers march into a battle with a pitiful ration of bullets, let alone food. Damn the infections and diseases that killed the men who had survived the battles and died in filthy beds. Nothing in this world was fair or right.

Who had the power to be a judge over them for choosing to share a bed? No one. They were free to do as they wished.

The emotion that rushed through his body had him lifting a hand to embrace her neck. He wanted this as much as she did. The servants’ or Hillier’s interference be damned. He brought her mouth to his for a long moment.

When they walked upstairs, he led her by the hand as Ash followed them, looking at him with doubt.

If this was a wrong thing to do, then Harry was now cursed, but he would go to hell smiling.

‘Where?’ he asked on the landing.

‘There.’ She pointed to a door in the corner of the landing.

God, he had to ask. ‘Is it the room you share with Hillier?’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘It is my room, as the parlour is my room.’

He breathed out the disturbed sensations that began spinning in his blood on a frothing wave. He did not think he could have lain in the bed with her if Hillier had been there before him. Which was a stupid thought because when he’d slept with other women potentially hundreds of men had been in those beds before him.

He clasped the door handle, turned it and pushed the door open. She took over and led him into the room. It was another small room, like her parlour, and the bed was plain and narrow. Beyond that she had a dressing table, wardrobe and a set of drawers, and that was all. There were none of the fancy things like the jewellery boxes and ornaments he knew were in his sisters’ rooms.

She stood before him smiling proudly and they still held hands as Ash walked around the room sniffing at everything. Ash had known where the letter had come from just as Harry had.

Harry’s free hand lifted and stroked Charlie’s neck, then he kissed her.

She kissed him back as her hand pulled loose from his, then reached to release the buttons of his coat.

It was hurried and urgent when they came together; there were still pins in her hair and the dog lay on the floor beside the bed.

It was the first time they had done this in the way he might have done it with a whore, yet it still felt entirely different. The setting and the hours they’d spent together changed everything. And Charlie… Charlie was simply different—she felt different from every other woman in the world.

When he’d finished, he rolled on to his back, content, and his mind was peaceful as it had not been peaceful for more than a year. He closed his eyes and let that peacefulness enfold him.

Chapter 5

Charlie sat down on the edge of the bed. Harry did not wake, even when the mattress dipped as she sat. He’d slept all afternoon.

She had risen and taken Ash out for a walk about the garden, before any of Mark’s servants returned, and since then she had been busy sealing her new friendship with Ash in the parlour, playing games. She’d taught the dog tricks for the benefit of some treats from their left-over luncheon; to bark when ordered and lift her paw for a shake and to roll over.

But now the others had returned and it was time for dinner and she had decided that she ought to come and wake him.

His arms rested on top of the sheets and he breathed steadily, his chest rising and falling. Her fingers stroked down his cheek.

Suddenly his eyes opened wide and he grasped her arm as he sat up. The grip hurt.

There was a moment like that and then his eyes looked at her face when he fully woke and he recognised her. Letting go of her he tumbled back on to the bed with a sigh, his arms lifting and his hands then pressing on to the top of his head.

She rubbed her aching wrist.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It is better not to wake me.’

‘But it is getting late, I thought you must be hungry.’

‘Lord. Yes. I am hungry. What time is it?’

‘Nearly seven.’

‘Really.’ He sat up again. ‘The servants—’

‘Have returned. But they have said nothing about your hat in the hall. Mark invites other women here, though, sometimes. That is why I have my own rooms, so I can stay out of his way when he wishes. So perhaps the servants do not care and why should I not have a man here, when he is entertained by other women?’

He smiled, but not widely, and his hand lifted, then the back of his fingers ran over her cheek. ‘Do you think we have taken a risk we should not have? Will you be in trouble? I suppose I should not have fallen asleep.’

‘You should have done, you were tired, and this is my house when Mark is away. I have the run of it and the say of it in Mark’s absence.’

A quiet sound that expressed amusement escaped his throat. ‘There is so much conviction in your voice that I shall let myself be convinced by you.’ He sat up and she stood, moving out of his way so he could get up. ‘You are right, I am hungry, but we will go out and eat at an inn. I am not inclined to ask the Colonel’s kitchen to cook for us.’

While they ate, in the inn he’d taken her to on the second day they had shared a bed, with Ash at their feet, she persuaded him to come back with her and remain for the night. This was what she wanted, to be with Captain Harry Marlow. She had delighted in his company at the seashore and she enjoyed being in a bed with him and yesterday and today she had appreciated his companionship. This was what she wanted.

When they returned to the house, she fetched one of Mark’s cigars, lit it herself as she did sometimes for Mark, and handed it to Harry. They shared it as she sat on Harry’s lap while they also shared a few glasses of Mark’s whiskey.

She asked Harry about the places he’d travelled to with the army and the things he’d seen of the world. He told her some horrible stories about the war and spoke of the men he’d sought to comfort as they’d suffered with their wounds and men he had seen fall upon, or carried from, battlefields. He also spoke of men who were his friends; men who had done miraculous things. Harry was a good man. Everything he said to her screamed of it. Then he told her about his horse, Obsidian. She could tell from his voice that he was fond of the horse and as kind to her as he was to Ash and as he had been to his men.

When he’d finished speaking, she said, ‘Would you introduce me to Obsidian one day. I’d like to meet her.’ Then she held his hand and stood up. ‘But let’s put Ash out into the garden now, for a moment, and then retire to bed.’

This was very different to the way she had lived for the last seven years with Mark. She had talked and laughed with Harry and now they walked upstairs for a second time holding hands, only this time it was her leading him. In her room she looked immediately at the brass buttons on his coat and began undoing them as Ash found a place on the rag rug beside her bed.

Harry let her take his coat off, smiling indulgently at her. Then she pushed his braces off his shoulders so she could pull his shirt up and over his head.

When he stripped his shirt off his arms, she began undoing her dress. He did not try to help, but instead sat on the bed and watched her as he pulled off his boots.

He seemed slightly intoxicated, but so was she and the taste of the cigar still filled her mouth. She felt naughty, as she had as a child when she’d sat on top of a hayrick chewing on a liquorice root, when she had run away and hidden when she was supposed to be in Sunday school.

She was hiding again, with Harry—she wanted to hide away with Harry forever.

When she remembered the days she had lain on hayricks, she always longed to go back in time, then she would never climb into Mark’s carriage and she would hide on a hayrick forever. She hadn’t known what would happen then. But now she knew the future and she wanted to stay in this moment and stop time.

When she turned her back to him, so he could unlace her corset, Harry was sitting on her bed, in only his trousers, stocking-less, with his braces hanging by his hips. His fingers tugged the lacing free, jolting her body. The assurance with which he performed the task pulled strings inside her as well as pulling the lacing loose.

When her corset fell off she turned and held Harry’s head, the heels of her palms pressing against his cheeks as she bent and kissed him.

His hands grasped her chemise at the hem and lifted it, then he drew it over her head and off her arms. When she straightened, his gaze dropped to her navel and his hands settled at her hips over her drawers. He pulled them down, leaned forward and kissed her stomach, then the place between her legs.

‘Oh.’

Her hands rested on his head and her fingers combed through his hair as his fingers spread and pressed into the skin and the flesh of her bottom, holding her against him as his tongue explored. He moved her hips as he wished, while the movement of his tongue stirred up the pleasurable sensations she’d discovered with him. Then his fingers slid into her and the rush of emotion rolled over her. She clung to his shoulders.

He looked up at her, his eyes hazy with liquor, yet saying he was proud of his success.

She took control, pushed him back on to the bed, straddled him and undid his trousers, so she could get at him, then freed him from his underwear and put him inside her. It was her turn to control the movement, moving up, backward and forward. Seeking to catch him out with unexpected movements as his hands slid over her thighs, gently, with the flow of her motion. But he did not try to take control from her.

She moved more determinedly, her palms resting on his chest, her fingers splayed. She wanted to feel successful too, to feel as smug as he had looked when he’d brought on the rushing waves of the little death in her. She wished to make the waves crash over him, as though there had been the wildest storm.

His pale-blue eyes looked directly into hers and his lips parted slightly as he breathed more heavily, in a quick rhythm of breaths, even though it was not him who was moving.

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