There was a travelling trunk in the middle of the hall. Charlie clasped the bannister and stopped on the stairs as she looked at Mr Rook, the butler. ‘Who?’
‘Colonel Hillier is travelling to London, Miss.’
It was not an arrival then, but Mark about to leave. He’d said nothing to her yesterday. Yet that was not abnormal. She was his servant as much as anyone else in the house; he had no obligation to tell her anything.
She walked down the last few steps as he walked into the hall. The front door opened and men came in to lift the trunk out to the carriage.
‘How long are you likely to be away?’
He looked over. ‘Hello, Charlotte. I am not sure, a few days perhaps.’
A few days. She would have the house to herself for a few days.
He came to her and held her hands, then leant forward and kissed her lips. She pressed her lips back against his because if she did not he complained. Yet Mark’s kisses made her wish to wipe her mouth afterwards. Harry did not make her feel like that. She liked his kisses.
The hall was busy as the final preparations for Mark’s journey were undertaken. She remained there and watched, leaning back against the newel post. Then when the door finally closed behind Mark, she looked at the grandfather clock. It was twenty minutes after she had walked downstairs, a little after eleven. Harry had said he could not meet her because he had to work through the night. But if he had been working through the night then in the day he was free.
Her feet carried her across the hall and into Mark’s office, where she found out some paper, a quill and ink. She was not very good at reading and writing, but she knew enough to write what she wished to tell Harry.
She took everything back to her room and sat at her dressing table, then picked up the small ink bottle to open it. Her arm accidently caught the top of her perfume decanter and knocked it over. She hastily pulled the paper out of the way and righted the decanter, then mopped up the spilt perfume with a handkerchief from the drawer. But a few drops had fallen on the paper and so it smelt of the essence of roses when she began to write.
The tip of the quill scratched out the words, then she let the ink dry, folded the letter and sealed it with wax so no one but Harry would open it. She put on her bonnet, but did not call for Tilly to accompany her on the walk. She had not taken Tilly with her on the days she’d met Harry at the inns and to take her again now would stir questions she did not care to answer.
She went to the inn she had gone to the last time she’d written to Harry and gave the letter to a boy who was clearing out the stables, with a coin to encourage him to take it immediately. Then she gave a groom, who tried to stop the boy, money to let the boy go on her errand.
The day was cloudy and the sea loud as it rolled up on to the pebbles while she walked back to the house. There had been a storm last night and it had stirred up the energy in the sea, making the waves higher and seemingly angrier as they charged up towards the seafront. Yet there were still a number of bathing carriages out in the water, where some of the wealthy had chosen to swim.
Her strides kicked at her petticoats in her haste as she hurried back to Mark’s. It was going to be an intolerable day if Harry did not come. She would be wandering about the house awaiting him and she would be so disappointed. He had to come.
~
‘There is a letter for you.’
Every muscle in Harry’s body jolted as the envelope landed lightly on his stomach a second after he’d heard Gareth speak. Ash barked at Gareth, leaping off the bed, startled too.
Harry lay back down and let his muscles relax now he knew it was not a deadly threat but his friend.
Gareth stroked Ash’s head.
‘Must you keep walking into my room when I am asleep.’ Harry’s forearm fell on to his forehead and he shut his eyes again.
‘The letter smells of perfume and was delivered by a stable boy, who said he was told to ensure you received it urgently. I am merely fulfilling the direction and I think it is fair to guess, as the letter did not come in the post or with the dispatches, it is nothing to do with your family, which the smell of it would indicate too.’
Harry picked up the envelope and smelt it, without opening his eyes. Roses. Charlotte. He opened his eyes. ‘What hour is it?’
‘Just past eleven.’
His duty had finished at six. He’d eaten and then come here to sleep. He’d barely slept. But he lifted the sheet and then turned to sit sideways on his bed and opened the letter. Then he looked up at Gareth. ‘Thank you for this, you may go now.’
‘Dismissed for a woman. You are not going to tell me who, then?’
‘I am not going to tell you who, no.’
Gareth took Harry’s hat off the peg on the wall and flung it at him, then turned and walked out of the door.
Harry laughed, picked up his hat and put it on the bed beside him, then looked at the letter as Ash rested her head on his knee. The black tip of her nose sniffed the paper as Harry read.
Dear Harry,
I have news. Mark, Colonel Hillier, is away. He is in London for a few days and so I hoped, thought, that you might like to come to the house.
Officers call here all the time, it would not be at all exceptional for you to call here as a friend. We can spend longer together here and you must bring Ash. We could take her for a walk along the shore after luncheon. If you will come for luncheon?
Tell me you will come. You must come. It is such an opportunity.
Yours sincerely
Charlie
‘Charlie…’ he said aloud, his eyebrows lifting. ‘Charlotte… Charlie…’ The shortened, less-formal name suited her. ‘Luncheon…’ He looked at Ash and stroked her neck, laughing quietly. Then shook his head slightly. He’d be a lunatic to go. Like everything about this affair with her it rang of oddness and imbalance. The etiquette of a relationship with another man’s mistress was something he did not understand.
Was it really appropriate for him to call on her at Hillier’s? Yet perhaps Hillier knew, perhaps he was allowing this. She had left his house on her own for several afternoons.
He sighed. He hated thinking about her and Hillier. He would go, for good or bad, whether it was right or wrong. He wanted to see her again, he’d not seen her for four days. The abstinence had opened a cavern in his chest that he knew would be repaired by a few moments of her company.
It had probably reached and passed midday when he knocked on Colonel Hillier’s door, with Ash sitting close to the heel of his boot.
‘No, do not worry. I will answer it. You can go back to the kitchen.’
