Page 35 of The Forbidden Love of an Officer
9
Paul carefully closed the door to their chamber, trying not to wake Ellen, who lay sleeping in the bed.
She had left a candle burning for him.
Quietly he slipped off his greatcoat and laid it over the arm of a chair. His heart thumped hard. It had been doing so all day. The news still shocked him. Napoleon had escaped when they had thought that battle won. It should be over. He had spent enough years starving and exhausted, battling his own men to keep them fighting when at times they would have rather turned and run, as well as battling the French and their allies. Memories of the horrors of war had been spinning through his head all day, the sounds of imaginary cannons deafening him at times.
He did not want to go back, and yet he would not allow that damned tyrant to have his way. The whole regiment was angry and ready to fight again to put the man back in his jail. But it was galling that they had to, though. Napoleon had already been defeated.
Paul’s fingers slipped the brass buttons of his military coat free.
He just wanted to be in bed with his wife, and feel her softness. She was his safe harbour, his sanctuary. His sanity. All he lived for now. Just as he had known she would be from the first moment he had seen her at her father’s house.
When he set his coat aside, exhaustion hit him. He ran his fingers through his hair. It had been a long day, but there would be many more long days in the next months. Napoleon was gathering an army to return to Paris. The message had said hundreds of men.
Paul pulled his shirt over his head and let that fall on top of his military coat. Then he unbuttoned his falls, watching Ellen in the bed they had shared for weeks.
Her dark hair rested across her shoulder in a braid and her breaths lifted it a little, as her bosom rose, lifting the sheets too. She looked so young.
He slipped off his pantaloons, underwear and stockings all in one.
She did not only look young, she was young. Perhaps too young to face the conditions on the Continent. They’d been bled dry by the previous years of war. But he had been her age when he had first left England – he had survived and trained recruits younger than him. They had to walk into battles, kill men and risk being killed.
She would cope. She was strong.He said the words to reassure himself. But still there was a fear low in his stomach that he had never known before; a fear for her, not for himself. It accused him of being juvenile himself, and therefore incapable.
When he moved across the room, he was careful not to let the floorboards creak. He blew out the candle, casting the room into darkness, before climbing into bed beside her. The sheets were cold at the edge of the bed, but near Ellen they were warm, so he moved closer. She lay on her side. He shaped his body to hers and gently rested his arm about her. She did not wake.
When he woke in the morning, Ellen turned beneath his outstretched arm, and as he opened his eyes, he faced the very pale blue of hers.
Her gaze was warm and welcoming. ‘Good morning,’ she whispered.
‘Good morning.’
‘What hour did you return?’
‘Past ten.’
Her fingers brushed across the stubble on his jaw. ‘As I have said before, you need not feel guilty for doing your duty.’
He smiled, his hand embracing the curve of her waist, beneath the sheets. ‘Things will become hard over the next few months.’
‘I know.’
‘And you will cope?’ he asked.
‘I will cope, because I am with you.’
Again, there was that clasp of fear, low in his stomach, the one he had never known until he met her. It did not trust his judgement, or his ability to keep her safe. But he was not the only man in the army and she would be in a camp away from the battle. There would be hundreds of men between her and danger – she would be safe.
For now, though, he needed to feel her security. The light in the room implied it was a little past dawn; there was time. ‘Let me love you,’ he said, already moving over her. Perhaps it was selfish to press straight into her when she opened her thighs, and yet it was what he needed.
The weight of her arms rested on his shoulders, crossing behind his neck, her fingers brushing his back. The rock of his hips as he moved slowly rocked her body too, making her breasts stir.
He adored her. There was a blissful intensity when they did this. Because it was lovemaking, it was nothing like any encounters he had known with whores. This was his wife he honoured, and she was warm and wet for his invasion. Little sighs left her lips, as colour scored her cheekbones. Her eyes had been open, looking up into his, but now they closed, dark lashes settling on her pale skin, and she bit her lip to keep her silence.
This is what she had learned from the time they had made love on the ship – to always be silent. He did not encourage her to be more vocal. There would be many times they must be silent. It was better she had this skill.
The heat between her legs increased as he worked harder, pulling out and pressing in, captured by the primal call of her body. Three. Four more strokes. And then…Oh. He firmed the muscles in his arms to stop his whole body from falling onto her, as her gentle fingers ran over his hair.
