Page 3 of The Forbidden Love of an Officer
She did not want to marry anyone else, though, and if she wished to marry Paul, she had to leave. That was her father’s fault.
Paul was one and twenty, but she was ten and seven – old enough to know her own heart but not to marry without the consent of her father, unless they went to Scotland.
* * *
‘Captain, there is a letter waiting for you at the desk,’ a maid said.
Captain Paul Harding crossed the bare boards of the inn’s entrance hall to collect it, his gaze running over the wooden racks. ‘My letter?’ The clerk turned to pick it out from a pile.
‘Thank you.’ Paul turned away and headed to the taproom, his boots brushing over the beer-scented sawdust spread across the floor. Looking at the maid who served there, he said, ‘May I have an ale?’ The girl nodded and moved to pour it. After accepting the full tankard, he occupied an empty table in the corner of the room, ignoring the general conversation of the local labouring men.
His heart clenched at the sight of the familiar flow of letters forming his name.
Ellen had written them. Lady Eleanor Pembroke.
He had fallen hard for this girl in the summer when he had never fallen for a woman before. But Ellen was uncommonly beautiful. Her hair was raven black, and her skin like porcelain, while her eyes, which shone bright as she spoke, were the palest, most striking blue he had ever seen. She had captured his attention in the summer, like a siren.
Perhaps he’d been at war too long and now he just wished for peace and beauty to surround him, to shut out the bitter memories and images of blood and corpses strewn across fields. Who knew? But he had not wanted to leave Ellen behind in August, and now he had to go back to war he did not wish to leave her in England. He craved this girl, as he craved water after hours of fighting, dry-mouthed, thirsty and heart-sore.
She was young. But if he waited someone else would snap her up by the time he returned. To keep such a beauty, he had to take her with him. The girl could keep him sane, when all about him lay brutality and madness.
He had spent the last three years watching the few men whose wives had travelled with them, following the drum. It was not a pleasure-filled life, but at night they had each other, before and after a battle.
His choice had been the comfort of a camp whore or the camaraderie of jaded war-beleaguered men.
Not that he did not like his men; they had survived too much together. But there were times a man wanted a woman, and there were times only one woman would do.
He wanted solace, someone to take to bed and escape war with – someone who would help him shut out the visions of the death he’d left behind.
Of course more fool his heart – picking the daughter of a Duke.
He’d held little expectation Pembroke would welcome his proposal, but Paul had known he had to try to do things properly.
God. His father would go mad when he heard of this. It would set Pembroke against him for years, when his father sought a political alliance. But self-sacrifice be damned. He had given his life to society. Now he had discovered something he wanted more than others’ good opinion. He wanted Ellen.
He had little to do with his father though anyway, since he had gone to war. His father had paid for his commission, and then his duty had been done; he had ensured his sixth son had an independent living.
At first Paul had kept in contact with his mother, but war was not a thing to write of, so he had grown distant from his family now. In the summer, when he had joined his father at Pembroke’s, he had little conversation to share. He was not interested in politics, and they would not have been interested in his tales of survival and death.
He cracked open the seal on her letter and read it quickly, drinking his ale as he did. She’d said,yes. Not that he’d doubted she would, he’d known since the summer the girl was attached to him. But before he’d felt guilty. Now he did not. Argyle? God, her father was a bastard. Paul would be rescuing her from a life of hell.
Her father, and his, could go hang. This girl was meant for him, and he was right for her. He needed her too much.
He couldn’t remember the point attraction had become love. At some point between catching her staring at him across the room the first day he’d arrived at Pembroke Place and hearing her sing as he sat beside her turning the pages of her music, while her thigh brushed against his through a thin layer of muslin, her cotton petticoats and his pantaloons.
Any day soon this girl would be his, and she may have to learn how to endure the hardship of an army camp, but regardless he would make sure she never regretted eloping. Determination to make her happy gripped in his gut, and determination to love the girl so she’d never feel she lacked a thing.
Setting his empty tankard sharply back on the beer-stained table he rose, left the taproom and returned to the clerk’s desk, where they sold tickets for mail coaches and hired out horses and carriages. ‘I need a fast carriage, have you any yellow bounders to hire?’
‘I can find out for you, Captain. Are you dining? If so I will see what is free while you eat.’
‘Yes, I will dine.’ Paul turned away and returned to the taproom. Not that he was hungry. His stomach had been tied up in knots for more than a week. Ever since he’d received his orders to sail and decided to come back and get Ellen, he had hardly been able to eat a bloody thing.
She had taken over his thoughts since August, hovering in his dreams at night and walking with him in daydreams in the sunlit hours. She had enchanted him, and he had found her unfledged and ready for flight.
Thank Godhe had joined his father and brothers on that visit to Pembroke Place. He could so easily have stayed away and gone to London.
But his father and hers were going to be mad as hell.
