The Lost Love of a Soldier (2 page)

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’d fallen hard for this girl in the summer when he’d 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’d ever seen in a woman. She’d 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’d not wanted to leave this girl 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’d 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 was brutality and madness.

He’d spent the last three years watching the few men who had their wives travelling with them, following the drum. It was not a pleasure filled life, but at night they’d 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’d 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’d given his life to society. Now he’d discovered something he wanted more than others’ good opinion. Ellen.

He’d had little to do with his father though anyway, since he’d gone to war. His father had paid for his commission, and then his duty had been done. He’d ensured his sixth son had an independent living.

At first Paul had kept in contact with them, but war was not a thing to write of, he’d grown distant from his family now. In the summer when he’d been with them at Pembroke’s, he’d had little conversation to share with them. 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 and returned to the clerk’s desk. “When may I hire a yellow bounder? I need a fast carriage.”

“I can find out for you, Captain. Are you dining? If so I’ll see what is free while you eat.”

“Yes, I’ll 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’d hardly been able to eat a bloody thing. He wanted this woman too much.

She’d stayed in his head since he’d left in August. She’d hovered in his dreams at night and walked with him in daydreams in the sunlit hours. She’d enchanted him, and he’d found her unfledged and ready for flight.

Thank God
he’d come to entertain himself when his father and brothers had visited Pembroke’s. He could so easily have stayed away and gone to London.

But his father and hers were going to be mad as hell.

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 go. But if there was no choice. “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’d 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 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 gripped before her waist, her back rigid and chin high, but her eyes downturned. It felt as though she was 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 needn’t 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’d never been able to see 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’d seen friends die, and killed others for the sake of freedom in Europe. He never spoke of it though, even when she’d 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 heated breast. Yes, she had thought, and she had made a choice – to leave. “Yes, Papa.”

Until this summer she’d thought her father was unaware of his daughters, they’d grown up in the hands of servants, with a daily visit from her mother. But last year she’d reached a marriageable age, and now he saw 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?”

Ellen took a breath longing for courage. She did not feel able to lie to that extent.

“Eleanor?”

Looking up, she faced his stern condemning glare. His expression was as unreadable as marble. “I cannot, Papa. I do not wish to marry His Grace.” Her father had a way of making other people seem small and insignificant – incapable. “Papa?”
Do you love me? Will you miss me?

“You do not have a choice, Eleanor. You will do your duty.”

His gaze held her at a distance, blunt and cold.

Hers reached out, begging for a sign of his affection. “I cannot, Papa. He is so old, and–”

“You are being wilful and defiant, Eleanor. You will do as I say and that is an end to it.”

The words inside her pressed to escape catching up in a ball in her throat as she longed to plead, to make him accept Paul, but her father did not like emotion. As children they’d always been taken from his presence whenever there were tears, or shouts or laughter. But today, today she could not quite hold herself back. “Papa, please… What would be so wrong with Paul? I love him and he loves me…”

He gave no obvious sign his anger had escalated, yet she knew. It was in the stiffness of his body, in the cut of his silver eyes as they glared at her. He was like her in appearance – or rather she was like him. She had his eyes and his jet black hair and pale skin. But she was nothing like him in nature, and she did not wish to be. What possessed a man to be so cold? He would be handsome if he smiled but he never smiled, merely glowered and growled.

“Do not be ridiculous, Eleanor. Love? What is love?”
Something you do not feel, Papa.
“You are talking nonsense. There is nothing in it. You are the daughter of a duke. You have a duty and responsibility, and that is what you must think of in a marriage. It seems you are unrepentant then, and you’ve learned no lesson at all. You will spend the next full day on your knees. Study the bible, ask for forgiveness and pray for guidance. You will learn, Eleanor. Your mother has been too lenient, letting you dream of such fanciful things. I’ll return tomorrow.”

I’ll be gone tomorrow.
She could continue to argue, she could beg and try to cajole, but her father would never change his mind; he had never done a single thing out of kindness.

Eleanor lowered in another curtsy. “As you say, Papa.”

“As I say indeed, Eleanor. It will be so. You will marry Argyle. I shall write to him today.”
You may write, Papa, but I shall never marry him.

“Kneel at your bed, child.” She turned and did so, she’d never disobeyed him and even now her heartbeat thundered at the thought of doing so in a few hours. Where would she find the courage? From Paul. Her father would be so angry.

As Ellen lifted her skirt and knelt, her father turned to the door and called to a footman. “Bring the bible from the chapel, my daughter needs time to search her soul.”

No she did not. She had found what her soul looked for. She’d found Paul.

~

“Ellen?” A quiet knock struck her bedchamber door.

“Penny?” Ellen stood. It was dusk, her family had probably just eaten dinner, and their father would be sitting alone at the table drinking his port.

The handle of her door turned but it would not open. Papa had the key.

“Mama said I must not speak to you, Papa has forbidden it, so of course
she
will not come, yet I had to know you are well. Are you hungry? Do you wish me to send you something to eat? Has he beaten you?”

Ellen rose from her kneeling position; she should not move, and yet she could not shout across the room in case someone heard and told tales on them. Then Penny would be in trouble too.

Ellen pressed her fingers against the door, leaning to whisper through it. “I know, and I know Mama cannot defend me, she must obey Papa. I do not want him to be angry with her or you. You should go, Penny…”

“Why?”

“Paul made an offer. Papa refused it. He is angry because I encouraged Paul. Do not become caught up in this or Papa will confine you to your room too.”

“Paul? Captain Harding? Oh Ellen. I like him.”

Resting her forehead against the wood, Ellen smiled. “As do I, but Papa does not. He wishes me to accept the Duke of Argyle.”

“Ellen… I shall come through the servants’ way and speak with you. You cannot marry that old man. He is awful.”

“No. Papa would be furious. Do not take the risk. I can manage, I am merely a little cold and hungry,”
and I will be gone soon…