Page 4 of The Forbidden Love of an Officer
He asked for another tankard of ale and ordered the pork dish. He’d eaten enough bloody rabbit for a whole century during the Peninsular War. He would not touch the rabbit pie. It reminded him too much of the biting pain when hunger gripped inside you and you still had to march or fight. Yet he barely touched the meal, his hunger now was for a certain pale-blue-eyed, black-haired beauty.
Finding Ellen had been like finding treasure on the battle-torn fields in his head. His sanity clung to her, something beautiful to remind him that everything was not ugly. She was someone to fight for. Someone to survive for…
The clerk arrived. ‘The day after tomorrow. Would that suit, sir?’
‘Yes.’ The sooner the better. Tomorrow would be torment. Now he’d made up his mind, and Ellen had agreed, he simply wished to leave. But he had no choice but to wait for a carriage. ‘That will suit.’
‘Thank you, Captain.’ The man bowed.
* * *
Ellen’s stomach growled with hunger for the umpteenth time as she lay on her bed. She’d been confined to her room for four days, but this would be the last day… She was leaving. The thought clutched tightly in her heart. No one knew. In ten hours Paul would come to meet her.
She had not even told Pippa, she was too terrified her father would hear it from someone if she said the words aloud.
Every detail of their plan to escape, in Paul’s words, was safely tucked inside her bodice near her heart, pressing against her breast.
‘Eleanor.’
Heavens.
‘Eleanor!’ The sound seeped through her bedchamber door; a deep heavy pitch that made her instantly wish to comply. Obedience had carved its mark into her soul – and yet she was about to disobey. Where on earth would her courage come from?
‘Father?’ The key turned in the lock on the outside and Ellen scurried off the bed.
When the door opened, she stood by the bedpost, her hands clasped before her waist, her back rigid and chin-high, but her eyes downturned. It felt as though she were one of Paul’s soldiers on parade when she faced her father. She did not feel like his flesh and blood.
‘Your Grace.’ She lowered in a deep curtsy, sinking as far as she was able, in the hope he would think her penitent and be kinder. She did not look up to meet his gaze in case it roused his anger. But she need not even look at her father to know when he was displeased; displeasure hung in the air around him without him saying a word. Yet he never showed his anger physically, apart from barking orders and offering condemning dismissals.
Those cutting words and his exclusion were enough punishment though. He never looked at her as if he cared, never smiled…
What I am planning will horrify him…
Her father’s fingers encouraged her to rise, with a beckoning gesture.
‘Papa.’ She lifted her gaze to his.
Paul’s words, promising faithfulness, love and protection, pressed against her bosom as she took a deeper breath. A blush crept across her skin. She feared even the blush might give her away.
Compared to her father, Paul was water to stone, something moving and living.
Vibrancy and approachability – warmth – emanated from Paul.
Her father hid beneath coldness and disdain. If there was any warmth in his soul she had never seen it. He most often communicated in a series of bitter glares rather than words.
Yet Paul had experienced awful things. Death. Illness. He had cause to be bitter. He had watched friends die and killed others for the sake of freedom in Europe. He never spoke of those things, though, even when she asked. He always spoke of good things. But she supposed his months in England were months to forget the Peninsular War.
‘Well? Have you thought about your behaviour, Eleanor?’
Paul’s letter was warm against her blushing skin. Yes, she had thought, and she had made a choice – to leave. ‘Yes, Papa.’
Until this summer she had thought her father was unaware of his daughters, they grew up in the hands of servants, with a daily visit from her mother. Then, last year, she had reached a marriageable age and he had seen her – but only as a bargaining tool. He wished her to marry to secure a political alliance.
‘And are you sorry?’
Ellen’s gaze dropped to his shoes. She felt no regret. ‘Yes, Papa.’
‘You will take Argyle?’
