The Lost Love of a Soldier (12 page)

“
Paul
.” She could not prevent his name escaping.

“Hush, Ellen.”

She closed her eyes and bit her lip again, absorbing every heavenly sensation, and he moved more quickly.

She opened her eyes her fingers touching a hollow in his cheek. It implied he’d gritted his teeth.

Her thighs gripped about his hips involuntarily as the sensation inside her swelled, and then there was one deep last push and his seed spilled into her. She opened her mouth, her breath releasing – while his body shuddered. Then his weight came down onto her and she held him as he lay still for a moment.

When he moved, he brushed a kiss on her cheek before laying on his side, as she turned to hers. Her back brushed against his chest.

“I love you,” he whispered to her hair.

Tears slipped from Ellen’s eyes.

“Are you well?” He could not have seen her tears, though perhaps he sensed them.

“Yes, I am well.” She was. She was happier than she’d ever been, no matter the oddness of his world – she could still feel the intensity of his love for her.

“Sleep now.”

She understood there were two sides to Paul; here he must be the soldier, but he had wanted her to know the other half of him was still there. The man who loved and needed her.

She did sleep and she slept well, wrapped in his arms.

Chapter Eight

Ellen sat with a quill poised in her fingers and an empty page lay on the oak table before her. After four weeks in Cork, the weather had not been good enough to sail. She’d written to her mother and to Penny. She’d told her mother she was well, but impatient to complete their journey. To Penny she’d written a dozen amusing little stories of her adventures, describing Paul’s men and their atrocious ability to maintain polite language in her hearing – and about the women, who were kind and supportive yet kept their distance. She had a woman to help her now, as maid, cook, washerwoman and everything else, though currently, while they lived in the inn, her only duties were as a companion and ladies’ maid.

Ellen looked at the blank page. She’d no idea what to say to her father. She’d received no response to her last letters.

The quill twirled in her fingers. No words came.

She looked out the window at the busy street. She knew Paul was restless. He wanted to be on his way. The waiting was difficult.

Words came at last and she looked back at the paper and dipped the quill in the ink then wiped the nib clear of drops, before writing simply.

Dear Father,

I hope you will forgive me for marrying Paul. But I am happy. We are happy. I have told Mama how we are waiting to sail to America, but the winds will not calm enough to allow it. I think we shall be here another couple of weeks, if you wish to write to me before we leave?

Your daughter

Eleanor

She looked at the words for a moment, before blotting them and then folding the letter. She sealed it by heating the red wax over a flame lit from a flint, and letting a couple of drops fall onto the folded page.

Once she’d addressed it, she placed it with the others and moved to fetch her cloak. Then she went in search of her maid, to ask the woman to accompany her to put them in the post. She could have asked the woman to simply take them, but Ellen wished for air, and Paul would not be back until dinner.

~

Ellen stood on the edge of the harbour wall watching the waves crash against it. The sea was still too angry for the ships to sail. Foam and spray spewed over the top of the wall as the waves hit it, and tiny droplets of salty water blew into her face.

This was her favourite thing to do, to come down to the harbour and watch the sea. She liked to come during the hours Paul drilled his men because at this early hour, the harbour was less busy as long as the tide was out.

Another four weeks had passed and more since she’d written to her family, but there had been no reply. Each day she looked out across the sea thinking of her mother and her sisters, wondering how they were, and what they thought of her desertion. Were they angry with her? Was that why they had not written? Ships reached Cork from England every week but no letters came.

Ellen stood for a little while longer, just watching the tug of war the tide played with the waves, throwing them against the harbour wall, before pulling them back.

She felt like the sea. She was happy with Paul, and this life had become normal, yet when they left for America it would be abnormal again. The part of her which missed her mother and her sisters still tried to pull her back.

Ellen turned her back on the water and faced her maid. The woman stood a few steps back. “Jennifer, I’m sorry to leave you standing in the cold. We will go home.”
Home?
An inn was not a home – yet they’d been here so many weeks.

But when would she have a home again, if they were to always travel?

Home.

Paul was home – and so the inn was home – that was the answer. She did not need a place, just him.

To stave off boredom, she’d begun sewing shirts and cravats for Paul. The task filled the hours she sat alone. At home she would have embroidered, but embroidery had little purpose here; it would appear ostentatious. Sewing was the occupation she decided to return to as she walked back through the cobbled streets, with Jennifer keeping pace beside her.

The streets were busier than they would normally be and everyone seemed to be huddled together in small groups and talking in hurried whispers. A group they passed splintered and began another conversation with others. Ellen could not hear.

“What are they talking about, Jennifer?”

“I don’t know, ma’am.”

It had rained last night, and the cobbles were damp and glistening with a metallic glow as the grey stormy sky reflected back. A sense of doom, of eerie disappointment, settled over Ellen as she walked the last hundred yards. Something was happening, something ominous.

When she reached the inn instead of going to their room, she sat in the parlour Paul had hired for their use and gathered up her sewing, but her fingers shook, making it difficult to thread a needle. It was silly to feel anxious merely because people talked in the street, and yet after luncheon, as the afternoon turned to evening and Paul had not returned, her anxiety grew.

She kept looking towards the door of the parlour each time she heard footsteps on the flagstones beyond the door, her heart setting up a sharp rhythm…

He was late.

“Should I order your dinner, ma’am,” Jennifer sat in a chair across the room, also sewing.

“No Jennifer, I will wait for my husband.”

But half an hour later and Paul had still not come.

Ellen wondered if she should ask someone in the inn to send a message to the barracks. But surely he would have sent word if anything was wrong.

She put her sewing down on the arm of the chair, to go and ask. Then finally she heard familiar strong heavy footsteps in the hall.
Paul.

She stood just as the door opened.

The scent and chill of cold air seeped from his greatcoat. It had been trapped in the cloth. “Paul?” She moved towards him as his blue eyes settled on her. His whole body implied concern. Something was wrong…

“Ellen, have you heard?” He spoke sharply – the military officer.

“Heard?”

“You have not?”

She shook her head.

“Napoleon is free.”

“Free…” But the war with France was over. Napoleon was imprisoned.
We are to sail to America
.

“He escaped Elba at the end of February. He’s already gathering an army. We are no longer going to America. We have orders to sail to Ostend.”

“To Ostend?” A lead weight fell in her stomach. She’d heard how many men had been killed before. The papers spoke of crippled soldiers begging in the streets and announced the loss of husbands, sons and brothers in obituaries.

He took her hands. “You must pack tonight and make ready. I’m not sure when we will sail. As soon as we may.”

Such a sudden change.

“I’m sorry, I cannot stay to dine. I’ll eat with the officers. We need to plan. But I wished to let you know what is happening, so you might prepare.”

Fear rushed through her – a sense she would lose him. But how silly. He’d survived years of the Peninsular War. She knew he was capable. Even so she hugged him, her arms reaching about his neck. “I love you.”

“And I you, Ellen. I shall return as quickly as I can, but eat without me. Do not wait.” His arms came about her for a moment, but he held her stiffly, then set her away, smiling quickly, before he left.

Ellen turned and saw Jennifer look away. A warm blush touched Ellen’s cheeks. Her intimacy had been inappropriate before a servant, and it had hurt that he’d set her away. But he’d done it because he was a soldier today and he needed to focus on his work, not her. If they were to sail towards a war there would be many more moments like this. She would simply cling harder, to
her
Paul, when she lay in bed at night with him – the man she’d met first.

The pain of brewing tears hurt Ellen’s throat and pressed at the back of her eyes, but she swallowed them away and breathed. “Would you order dinner for me, Jennifer?”

After dining alone, and eating very little, Ellen retired to their chamber asking Jennifer to help her undress. Once the maid had gone, she slipped between the cold sheets and waited for Paul, and the moment the soldier became just the man to her.

Chapter Nine

Ellen lay asleep in the bed. Paul carefully closed the door to their chamber, trying not to wake her.

She’d left a candle burning for him.

Quietly he slipped off his greatcoat and laid it over the arm of a chair. His heart thumped hard. It had been doing so all day. The news still shocked him. Napoleon had escaped when they had thought that battle won. It should be over. He’d spent enough years starving and exhausted battling his own men, to keep them fighting when at times they’d have rather turned and run, as well as battling the French and their allies. Images and memories of the horrors of war had been spinning through his head all day, the sounds of imaginary cannons deafening him at times.

He did not want to go back, and yet he would not allow that damned tyrant have his way. The whole regiment was angry and ready to fight again to put the man back in his jail. But it was galling that they had to. Napoleon had already been defeated.

Paul’s fingers slipped the brass buttons of his military coat free.

He just wished to be in bed with his wife, and feel her softness. She was his safe harbour, his sanctuary. His sanity. All he lived for now. He’d known she would be from the first moment he’d seen her at her father’s house.

When he set his coat aside, exhaustion hit him. He ran his fingers up over his face and through his hair. It had been a long day, but there would be many more long days in the next months. Napoleon was gathering an army to return to Paris. The message had said
hundreds of men
.

Paul pulled his shirt over his head and let that fall on top of his military coat. Then he unbuttoned his falls, watching Ellen in the bed they’d shared for weeks.

Her dark hair rested across her shoulder in a braid and her breaths lifted it a little, as her bosom rose, lifting the sheets too. She looked so young.

He slipped off his pantaloons, underwear and stockings all in one.

She was young. Perhaps too young to face the conditions on the continent. They’d been bled dry by the previous years of war. But he’d been her age when he’d first left England – he’d survived and he’d trained recruits still younger than him. They’d had to walk into a battle, kill men, and risk being killed.

She would cope.
She was strong.
He said the words to reassure himself. But still there was a fear low in his stomach that he’d never known before; a fear for her, not for himself. It accused him of being juvenile and incapable.

When he moved across the room, he was careful not to let the floorboards creak, and then he blew out the candle, casting the room into darkness, before climbing into bed beside her. The sheets were cold at the edge of the bed, but near Ellen they were warm, so he moved closer. She lay on her side. He shaped his body to hers and gently rested his arm about her. She did not wake.

When he woke in the morning, Ellen turned beneath his outstretched arm, and as he opened his eyes, he faced the very pale blue of hers.

Her gaze was warm and welcoming. “Good morning,” she whispered.

“Good morning.”

“What hour did you return?”

“Past ten.”

Her fingers brushed across the stubble on his jaw. “As I have said before, you need not feel guilty for doing your duty.”

He smiled, his hand embracing the curve of her waist, beneath the sheets. “Things will become hard over the next few months.”

“I know.”

“And you will cope?”

“I will cope, because I have you.”

Again, there was that clasp of fear, low in his stomach, the one he’d never known before. It did not trust his judgement, or his ability to keep her safe.

But he was not the only man in the army and she would be in a camp away from the battle. There would be hundreds of men between her and danger.

She would be safe.

For now though he needed to feel her security. The light in the room implied it was a little past dawn; there was time. “Let me love you,” he whispered, moving over her. Perhaps it was selfish to press straight into her when she opened her thighs, and yet it was what he needed.

The weight of her arms rested on his shoulders, crossing behind his neck, her fingers brushing his back. The rock of his hips as he moved slowly rocked her body too, making her breasts stir.

He adored her. There was a blissful intensity when they did this. Because it was love making, it was nothing like any encounters he’d known with whores. This was his wife he honoured, and she was warm and wet for his invasion. Little sighs left her lips, as colour scored her cheekbones. Her eyes had been open, looking up into his, but now they closed, dark lashes settling on her pale skin, and she bit her lip to keep her silence.