LITMIR.BIZ

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she would have known her father would never consider 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 seventeen – 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’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

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