Page 2 of The Forbidden Love of an Officer (The Marlow Family #7)

When they met a week ago, Paul had taken her hands and said he loved her, that there was no other woman he wanted, or would want.

He had been ordered to go to America and wanted her to marry him and go with him.

He had asked for her agreement to speak to her father.

She had given it, her heart swelling and bursting with joy.

If she had stopped to think, she would have known her father would never accept a marriage offer from a Captain of the 52nd Regiment of Foot.

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 God he 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.

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.