He saluted her, in a teasing gesture. ‘I am here as ordered, Miss Cotton.’
She reached out and gripped the cloth of the sleeve of his scarlet coat. ‘Come in.’ Once he had been pulled inside, she whispered. ‘I am so glad you came.’ Ash paced about the hall sniffing everything as Harry took off his hat.
‘I have luncheon all laid out for myself in the parlour. I was going to eat alone but as you are here you must join me, Captain Marlow, with your dog!’ She spoke in an overly loud voice, he presumed for the ears of the servant who had been sent back to the kitchen. ‘You will, won’t you?’ This last sentence was said much more quietly, just for his ears.
‘I will, thank you. That is very kind of you to invite me to stay as the Colonel is not here!’ He smiled after he’d spoken for the ears of the servant too, then bowed slightly, in a gesture of habit, in the way he might have done had one of his sisters-in-law asked him to stay to eat.
Charlotte, or Charlie, turned and walked ahead of him, leading him to a room at the back of the house. It was relatively small and very feminine, very yellow. She held the door as he walked in with Ash at his heel, then shut it firmly, as though she shut out the world. ‘This is my room,’ her voice had become conspiratorial. ‘No one is allowed in here unless I invite them.’
There was an immediate difference in her. Her posture became less rigid and her movements more flowing and there was a hint of mischief in her eyes and her smile too. She was more relaxed here.
He glanced about the room. ‘This is a very pleasant space.’
‘It is, isn’t it. It is my hiding place.’
There was not much in the way of furniture, but there was a comfortable sofa and a chair.
‘Look. I am prepared.’
The food was on a table in one corner of the room.
She crossed the room, passing him. ‘Would you like something to eat?’
‘Yes, now you speak of it, my stomach is growling at me.’
She began filling a plate for him with sandwiches and small pies, then she held it out. ‘There.’
He stepped forward and took the plate from her hand. ‘Thank you.’ This was truly bizarre, when he’d thought this relationship could be no more peculiar.
‘Well, sit then, Harry, do, you are making me feel awkward.’
He smiled and did her bidding. Then put down the plate and took off his gloves. He dropped them on the arm of the chair before he began to eat. Ash lay on the floor before him, watching Charlotte, Charlie, filling a plate for herself. ‘You signed your letter ‘Charlie’…’ Would she prefer him to use the name?
She sent him a smile across her shoulder.
He would guess she did prefer it.
‘It is a nickname I have had since I was a child. I thought if anyone broke the seal they would think my letter from a man.’
He laughed. ‘They would not have. The perfume gave the intent of your letter away immediately and if that had not, your words would have done.’
She smiled as she came to sit next to him. ‘But no one intercepted it…’
‘No, no one opened it. Yet what would Colonel Hillier think of me being here, Charlotte? Charlie.’
‘I have no idea what Mark will think.’ Her chin lifted as she answered, in a way that denied any judgement. It reminded him of days when he had been challenged over his morals and behaviour by his father. He had always answered with an equally harsh dismissal; he had never cared for anyone else’s opinion.
But now he was older and wiser and her words made him less certain of his decision to come. He did not want any trouble with a Colonel, retired or not. ‘Is this sensible, then?’
Her chin lifted even higher. ‘If he complains, then I shall tell him that I am allowed to do what I wish, just as he does.’
The look on her face touched him, literally, as if her fingers had pushed into his chest. Her expression said do not deny me and do not judge me. How could he condemn her? He’d not led a wholesome life. And Hillier could not own her, as Harry had thought the other day; she was not a slave.
He smiled. ‘And send military men perfumed letters of seduction and tempt them into your parlour for luncheon. Am I to be snared in a web of deceit, then, Charlie?’ He joked to shatter the hard look of defence and defiance that had cast across her expression.
The words succeeded and the stiffness in her posture disappeared again as a laugh broke from her throat. ‘Yes, exactly that. I hope to snare you and I shall have you all wrapped up in my sewing threads.’
She stood then. ‘You do not have a drink.’ She poured him a glass of lemonade. ‘Since you introduced me to it, I have had a kitchen maid make lemonade every day.’
His smile widened when she handed him the glass. Once he held it, he lifted the glass in a toast. ‘To leading our lives as we wish.’
She raised her glass in the same gesture. ‘To freedom.’ Then drank when he did.
The sourness tingled on his tongue, then the sweetness flooded his throat.
He laughed a lot as they ate, because she did, and her laugh had an infectious quality.
After they’d eaten they walked Ash along the seashore as he’d always done alone. It had become normal now for her to be there. Even Ash seemed to think it right that she was there. The dog walked at her side not Harry’s.
He was tired still, and the world felt surreal with that strange sensation that was a symptom of being only half awake; it gave his hours with Charlie a dream-like quality. He was lucky, probably, that they met no one from the barracks, otherwise the men might have guessed the origin of his scented letter, yet she’d seemed convinced by her desire to do as she wished, as though it really did not matter if Hillier knew.
He accompanied her home after their walk, but he did not go back inside when she invited him. ‘No, I need to rest, I am on duty again tonight.’
‘But will you call on me again tomorrow?’
‘If you wish.’
‘Of course I wish.’
He smiled and bowed his head. ‘Then I will call here. At what hour?’
‘For luncheon again…’ she proposed.
‘Very well, for luncheon.’
For the first time, she did not curtsey to him when they parted; instead she simply turned and opened the door.
When she went inside, he walked away and something clasped in his chest with a hard sudden grasp. He leant and patted Ash’s head. ‘Women are the strangest creatures.’ Yet he’d thought he had mastered that knowledge years ago. Charlie was proving him wrong.
He had a sudden desire to break into a run, though. There was a lightness inside him,
