Page 45 of The Forbidden Love of an Officer (The Marlow Family #7)

Ellen picked up one of the small wooden horses and trotted it across the rug she knelt on beside John.

Her tongue clicked against the bridge of her mouth, making a clip clop sound to make him giggle.

John was sitting upright beside her watching this odd game that she had invented.

He loved looking at the horses pass in the street, so she had begged the colonel for some money to be able to buy things for John and had asked a wood carver in the market to make these horses. Of course, there had been a price…

After the battle of Waterloo, she saw wounds stitched to hold the skin together so it might heal.

John was the stitches in her heart. She only lived for moments with him.

And these hours, when they played together and he laughed at her silliness, were her most precious; she could pretend the rest of her life did not exist.

The wood carver was mostly making items for the tourists who still hung around Paris like a swarm of locusts, invading every part of life and devouring any souvenir they could find.

Every day she walked through the streets, hoping to see a face she knew to be able to ask for help, but she had not met anyone.

She refused to give up hope of escape, though.

‘Ball.’ John’s gaze reached past the horses to the leather ball they had played with earlier. John turned onto his hands and knees, and set off for it at a fast crawl. Her heart flipped as she watched him. She had never thought it possible to love anyone so utterly.

When he reached it, he pushed it towards her as best he could.

Ellen reached for it, her smile broad, and rolled the ball back to him, following it at a crawl.

She nudged the ball against him, tipping him backwards, then caught him up in her arms and blew a loud kiss on his cheek so it would tickle and make him laugh.

His laughter was the most beautiful sound, like water running over rocks in a stream, or a wave washing over pebbles on the seashore.

‘Mama.’ He pushed at her, saying stop. He had a stubborn streak, and a strength of will like his father’s.

She did stop, smiling and brushing back his black hair, looking into eyes the colour of her own. ‘I love you.’ She picked up the ball and tossed it upwards. He looked up, watching it with a smile; her heart ached with happiness.

When it landed, he crawled off to collect it and bring it back for her to throw again.

Clunk. Clunk.

She stopped still.

That was the front door knocker.

‘John,’ she called in a low voice, urging him back to her.

Lieutenant Colonel Hillier was not at home. If it was someone calling for him, they would be turned away. But even so, her instinctive reaction was always to keep John close in this house, where she felt as though Megan was the only person she could trust.

Lieutenant Colonel Hillier’s unpredictable nature kept her constantly fearful. Sometimes he was aggressive, or unbearably polite and gentle, as if he truly thought it was love he showed her. She had no trust for her son’s safety no matter which guise he showed her.

Footsteps climbed the stairs.

She sat still, with John braced in her arms on her lap.

The footsteps came along the landing, towards her bedchamber.

Tap. Tap. The gentle knock struck the bedchamber door. ‘Ma’am.’ It was one of the footmen.

‘Yes.’

‘There is a gentleman below. He asked to speak with the woman living here.’

Ellen looked at the closed door. ‘ The woman living here…’ What an odd thing to say?

Had she become a completely nameless woman?

She moved John from her lap and stood, almost in a trance.

John raised his arms, hands reaching towards her, asking to go with her. ‘Mama!’

I have a name.

‘Come along.’ She lifted him to her hip and stroked a black curl off his brow.

She picked up one of his wooden horses to take with them, to entertain him as she spoke to the man who stood at the door.

‘Here.’ He took the horse from her hand, and immediately put its head in his mouth and chewed on his poor horse.

He had six teeth so far. She checked them every day to see if a new one had come.

She opened the bedchamber door. ‘Do you know who it is?’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘Are they wearing livery or a soldier’s uniform?’

‘No, ma’am.’

She frowned. ‘Is there a carriage outside?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

She carried John over to the bedchamber window and looked out.

There was a shiny black carriage outside the house.

A coachman sat on the box, and a groom held the heads of two handsome grey horses, while a footman waited by the carriage door.

They were all dressed in nondescript black.

The carriage belonged to someone of standing, though, she could tell by the quality of the horses.

Why would they ask to see her?

‘Horsees.’ John pointed down into the street with his wooden toy.

She looked at him. ‘Yes, darling, horses.’

‘Ma’am, what shall I say?’

Ellen looked back at the footman waiting outside the open door. ‘Nothing. I will come down. Where is the visitor?’

‘In the drawing room.’

‘Leave me to talk to him. You may go downstairs.’

He walked ahead of her on the stairs to the ground floor, then continued on to the basement level, to the kitchens and servants’ spaces. They called her ma’am still, but the servants thought of her as a servant now, she knew that, and behaviour like walking ahead of her expressed it.

‘Here we are to meet our mysterious guest, John,’ she said brightly as she turned the drawing room’s doorknob and pressed a kiss on his temple. Whoever this was, they could not bring any bad news.

As she opened the door, John’s gaze was transfixed on the wooden horse he trotted along her arm, as he tried and failed to make a clip-clop sound.

She took a breath, her heart pounding the beat of the marching drum as her fingers gripped John’s leg over-tightly, causing him to squeal.

‘Papa…’

He turned from the window and faced her.

As soon as she had seen the straight posture and black hair, she knew it was him.

His intent silver gaze studied her for a moment then fell to John. He stared at John as John stared at his toy.

Her emotions were a muddle of joy, fear and intense embarrassment. She could not remember who she was the last time she had faced him. Had it only been two years? ‘You came…’

‘Let me take the child.’ He reached out.

Relief embraced her sore heart. She had asked him to come three times and he had not… Now here he was – come for them, to take them home to safety. Tears brimmed in her eyes. She blinked them away. He would not tolerate such feminine emotions.

‘Oh, Papa, I am so glad.’ She let him lift John from her arms.

‘I do not expect your gratitude. I am taking him home…’

It was only then that Ellen realised there was someone else in the room – a woman. She came forward and took John from Ellen’s father.

Ellen’s brow creased in confusion. ‘I should pack.’

‘There is no need,’ her father said. ‘I have brought all he will need with me.’

He… Not you… Not me. ‘I don’t understand, Papa. Have you come for us?’

His eyes held no love, nor any other emotions. ‘I have come to fetch my grandson.’

‘Papa?’

‘Stop calling me that. I am no longer that to you.’ As he spoke, the woman carried John towards the drawing-room door. ‘I will have nothing to do with a soiled woman. You are an insult to the Pembroke name.’

Not understanding, Ellen answered, ‘I am your daughter.’

‘Not now. You are a whore and nothing beyond it. You are dead to me. But the child is my heir…’

The truth struck her like a slap. He intended to take John but not her. She rushed after the woman. She was already in the street, about to lift John into the carriage. Ellen reached for her son and snatched him from the woman’s arms. Thank God the woman did not fight her.

With tear-soaked cheeks, she pressed her head to John’s, holding him close and tight, even though he fidgeted because he hated to be coddled. ‘Mama.’

‘Nothing is wrong, my darling, you are safe,’ she whispered to his ear, rocking him in her arms and taking him back into the house.

The woman followed.

Her father stood in the hall.

‘You cannot… I will not let you take him.’ Ellen pressed John’s forehead to her shoulder as he gripped the precious toy horse, and she raised her chin and stiffened her back. If this was a battle she would fight for her son.

‘Would you rather raise him in this house of sin?’

The words pierced Ellen’s heart with a knife thrust.

‘This is not a place for a child,’ he continued. ‘I can, and will, give him a decent life, he will have an education and everything he will need to become a duke. I will protect him from this.’ His hand swung out.

She clung harder to John.

‘Have sense. This woman is a nursemaid, she can feed the child at her breast while I take him back to England, and there he shall have the house and grounds that will one day be his to grow up in.’ His expression hardened.

‘A duke cannot have a mother who has sold her body.’ He spat the words at her. ‘I will not leave him with a whore.’

‘I did not… I am not… Papa. Take me? Do not leave me here. He may go with you if you take me too.’

‘A duke cannot have a whore as his mother.’ He withdrew a folded parchment from an inside pocket of his coat. ‘This document says you have relinquished any right to the boy?—’

‘Why?’

‘You must have nothing more to do with him, else he will be damaged by your sin.’

A crushing emptiness dragged through her, urging her to fall, she would not.

‘Have sense. Think of the child.’

Her palm cradled John’s head, the tears dripping from her chin wetting his hair.

He fidgeted and fought to be free. How could she let him go?

Yet she knew her father. He would not relent.

If he had made up his mind he would not help her, he would not, no matter what she said. Yet he was willing to rescue John.

‘Think of the child…’ ‘A Duke cannot have a mother who has sold her body… in a house of sin.’ ‘I can give him a decent life…’ He could.

If she kept John, how would she hide what she had become from him as he grew?

She was not even sure he was safe in this house.

When he was older, he would at some point discover who she was, and what then?

If he remained with her she would have to educate him herself, and she knew very little because her father had not paid for her to be educated.

She held him still. ‘Mama loves you. Mama loves you so much…’

But if she really loved him then she would do the best thing for him, and her father was right – the best thing for John was to let him go.

New tears flooding her eyes, she nodded at her father, unwilling to say the word yes.

The woman came forward, her hands reaching out to take John.

Unable to speak for the pain in her throat, Ellen let her take him.

‘Where may we sign this?’ Her father raised the parchment.

She led him back into the drawing room and sat at a small table where there was an ink pot and quill. Her father stood behind her as she signed her name. Mrs Eleanor Harding. She did not know who that woman was now, she no longer wanted a name.

She blotted her signature and moved aside, leaving the quill in the inkwell for him.

He signed the paper too. Then called the nursemaid forward to make her mark as a witness.

Ellen reached out and took John back to hold him one last time.

Her hand stroked over his hair. His gaze lifted to her eyes.

‘You are to be good,’ she whispered. ‘And you are to always remember how much I love you. I am not letting you go because I do not, but because I do.’ The breath of her quiet words stirred locks of his hair.

‘I know you will grow up to be a clever and wise man, John, and you will be kind and honourable because you are Paul’s son… ’ Her voice broke.

His fingers lifted and touched her lips, then the tears on her cheeks. He did not understand. He would not remember her.

She swallowed back more tears, though more still leaked from her eyes.

‘Take the child,’ her father barked.

Ellen’s heart broke, shattering into tiny pieces, as she let the nursemaid lift him from her arms.

This will not be the last time I see you, she swore to herself. I will come and take you back.

‘At least you are sensible,’ her father stated coldly.

An urge to slap him lanced through her arm, but she did not. This anger, this grief, were merely more emotions to be buried deep and locked somewhere within. Lieutenant Colonel Hillier had taught her how to do that.

‘That is resolved then,’ he said, as matter-of-factly as though he had just bought a horse, not taken his daughter’s son from her.

‘Please take me with you? I am not… Papa, I am scared here…’ She begged in a quiet voice.

His cold, emotionless expression ignored her. ‘Take the boy to the carriage.’

He followed the nursemaid out of the room.

Ellen followed them outside and into the street. ‘Let me hold him again.’ Her voice expressed the desperation ripping her apart.

He waved a hand, telling the woman he would allow it.

Ellen held John as tightly as she could, breathed in his sweet scent, ran her fingers over his face and pressed kisses on his soft cheeks, trying to make sure she remembered what it felt like to hold him.

His large eyes stared at her. ‘Mama?’

‘I will miss you. I love you. You will have my heart with you, John.’

‘Mama…’ he said again as the nursemaid took him back.

The nursemaid held the footman’s hand and ascended into the carriage with John balanced on her hip, and her father climbed in after the woman.

The footman closed the door as she heard John say, ‘Horsees…’ from within. Then he ran to the plate at the back of the carriage and hopped up onto it. The groom ran from the horses’ heads to the perch on the other side.

‘Mama?’

A vicious pain lacerated her heart as the carriage pulled away.

‘Mama?’

She had thought when Paul had died she had felt as empty and heart sore as it was possible to feel, but now…

Her arms crossed over her chest and her hands clasped at either elbow, as she stood, deserted in the street, and watched until the carriage containing her beloved son disappeared out of view.

‘I will get you back, John!’ she called after the carriage. ‘We will be together again!’