The Tainted Love of a Captain

‘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.