Page 14 of The Forbidden Love of an Officer (The Marlow Family #7)

Ellen stood on the ship’s deck clutching the rail at its edge, watching England disappear. It had been two days since she had first watched the regiment parade. Four days since they had arrived in Portsmouth.

It was midday. Paul had taken her aboard, then spent the last hour instructing his men and ensuring they were all aboard and their kit stowed away before the ship sailed on the high tide.

She had met the other four wives who were travelling with the regiment, all married to men of a lower rank than Paul. They were on deck too, keeping out of the way as the men worked below decks to organise the space the regiment had to share.

Only an hour ago, Ellen had learned she and Paul were to sleep in the open galley with his men. There would be no privacy. But they would reach Cork in two or three days. Yet when they sailed to America, there would be weeks with no privacy.

A longing for home caught in Ellen’s breast. Her fingers closed about the wooden rail, holding it tightly. She thought of Penny at home, possibly sitting before a warm fire working on her embroidery at this hour of day, or perhaps she was practising the pianoforte, or the harp.

Something touched her waist, a hand, and then a tall, strong presence settled behind her. Her husband. ‘You look sorrowful, Ellen.’

She looked up and back. She breathed out a breath she had not even known she had held in.

I am a little sorrowful – but only because she could not yet picture the future.

She was happy now, but there were so many unknowns, and she missed her sisters.

She did not admit her insecurity; that would be disrespectful…

‘I am well. It is simply odd to leave England when a month ago the farthest I had travelled was barely ten miles from home.’

His fingers tucked a lock of hair, which kept catching the breeze and blowing across her face, behind her ear. ‘This must be difficult for you.’

Ellen held his gaze. ‘I am not afraid.’

‘I think you are, if you take the trouble to say you are not.’ His fingers brushed over her cheek and tapped beneath her chin. ‘Remember, I have seen enough recruits preparing for battle to know the signs, Ellen.’

She swallowed, then licked her lips to stop them feeling dry and saw his gaze lower to watch the movement of her tongue.

‘I am a little afraid,’ she admitted. ‘But only of what I do not know – what life will be like.’ In recent days, he had become more the soldier she did not know well, and less the man she had met in her father’s drawing room.

‘Ask the other women. They shall tell you. Make friends. I know at times it will not be easy but I shall do my best to make you happy.’

‘I know I will be happy, I have you. I am not afraid of that.’

‘Then I am content. I must go and speak to the lieutenant colonel. You will forgive?—’

‘You do not need to ask forgiveness for fulfilling your duty, Paul.’

His palm cradled her cheek and he smiled, before walking away.

The beat of her heart thumped steadily. The other women had not really spoken to her, she presumed because they thought she was too wellborn compared to them.

Paul had not told anyone she was anything other than his wife, yet her voice, posture and clothing made her stand apart from the other women.

She was not and never would be a common soldier’s wife.

She was an officer’s wife, from a titled family.

She would never quite fit in. But she longed to, she missed the company of her sisters, their whispered conversations and laughter.

But Paul’s men did not seem to judge him by his birth, perhaps she could at least make friends with the women.

She looked back at the thin line of green and grey along the horizon, England.

If her father knew she wanted to be accepted among commoners, he would scold her.

* * *

The women dined with the men, clustered at the end of a long, scored, dark oak trestle table, giving Ellen an opportunity to speak with the other women as Paul sat among the men, further along.

Now was her chance to be accepted.

‘How do you travel with the men in general? I presume we must walk behind them…’ she asked of the woman beside her, before taking a sip of the watery broth in her bowl.

The woman glanced at her with uncertainty; all the women had been sitting stiffly since she had joined them. On deck earlier, they had talked easily with each other.

Ellen longed to say, you need not be afraid of me , but that would sound patronising when she was much younger than most of them. ‘I have no idea how I shall be living now…’ Ellen added, her uncertainty and fear slipping into her voice.

‘Simply, ma’am,’ a woman said, ‘we mostly ride on the baggage carts if the men are on the march, but sometimes we must walk if the terrain is too difficult for the horses, or the carts. When we travel by boat, then we must make do with whatever accommodation we can obtain.’ The woman lifted her spoon and ate another mouthful of the weak broth.

Ellen looked across the table at another woman. ‘And where do you sleep, and live, when the men are camped?’

‘Wherever we may, ma’am. We share our men’s tents, and they are put up and taken down often if the men are on the march. It is only if they are defending a place or preparing for battle that we camp in one place?—’

‘But the Captain will be billeted,’ one of the other women interrupted, looking at her friend, not at Ellen.

‘Yes,’ her friend agreed. ‘The officers, if we are to remain in any one place for long, will find an inn or a farmhouse to take them in, or anywhere they may be sheltered. They are only in their tents if the regiment is marching and there is nowhere close by.’

‘If the men are in barracks though,’ another woman added, ‘our husbands must find us accommodation nearby.’

Ellen looked along the table at Paul. He talked animatedly with the men, then laughed before he took a sip from a tankard.

Ellen swallowed another spoonful of the foul broth, then asked, ‘What have you seen of war?’ She looked from one woman to another, asking them all.

The women glanced at each other, expressing a silent unease.

Then one of the women leaned forward and answered in a whisper, ‘Many horrible things, ma’am.

Many things a woman should never see. But that is war, and I would rather be with my Michael here than in England alone, not knowing if he is alive or dead, or will ever return to me. ’

‘And I could not bear to let Tommy go to America and not see him for months or even years, ma’am,’ another woman chimed in, smiling nervously at Ellen.

She looked the closest to Ellen in age, perhaps a couple of years older. Nancy. Her name flew into Ellen’s head, plucked from all those she had been told in the last few days. She had been introduced as Mistress Bowman but had asked Ellen to call her by her given name.

‘And what do you all do to fill your days?’ The question came out on a breath of longing, as the life Ellen had left behind tumbled through her thoughts… a life very different to the one she would have where she sat now.

The women smiled, apparently amused by the question. ‘Why, we wash the men’s clothing and cook for them,’ the first woman who spoke answered. ‘There is little time for anything else, ma’am.’

The question proved Ellen’s naivety. Their needles would work on clothing not embroidery, and they had possibly never seen a pianoforte, and certainly never sat in the warmth of the sun engrossed in a book – they probably could not read.

A warm blush rising in her skin, Ellen asked what the men did when they were not fighting or marching.

When it came time to sleep, the trestle tables and benches were collapsed and secured along the sides of the galley.

The low-ceilinged room, which forced Paul to bend over constantly, then became a dormitory for a hundred or more men, all rolling out pallets. Ellen watched as Paul laid out theirs. The thin mattress was only wide enough for one.

‘Do you wish to undress, or sleep in your clothes?’ he whispered as he slipped the buttons on the coat of his uniform free.

Biting her lip, Ellen shook her head. ‘I will sleep in my dress, but I will remove the pins from my hair and plait it.’ She had shared a room with her sisters when she was younger, but sharing a bed in a narrow space with over a hundred men… She would suffer two nights in her dress.

She sat on the mattress as she withdrew the pins from her hair, and lay them into a handkerchief. The women’s conversation haunted her, they had spoken mostly of a harsh way of life. What if it was always to be like this? Must she endure such sleeping quarters all the way to America?

The crowded low-ceilinged space was too enclosed. Most of the lanterns hanging from the low beams had been extinguished, but a few still burned, one near the ladder leading to the upper deck and a couple beside some of the men’s pallets. They creaked as they swung with the rock of the ship.

All about her the men were in varying states of dress and undress as they retired, though none were naked; she tried to look only at the ship’s wooden planking.

She turned her eyes to Paul. He lay down, clothed in his shirt and underwear, and lifted the wool blanket for her to join him on the mattress.

Nervousness warring with embarrassment, she lay down with her back against his chest, and rested her head on his muscular arm.

His other arm surrounded her, and his palm settled over her stomach.

‘The women said that when the regiment camp, you are billeted,’ she whispered. ‘Do you share that accommodation too?’

‘Sometimes,’ he whispered back. ‘But that is only during war, when we are fighting. In America we will most often be in barracks, and then I will hire lodgings to share with you and not live among the men. America will be different to the Peninsular War. The situation is not the same.’

‘And the woman you said you will hire for me…’