he left the beach and walked to a coffee shop in the town. The coffee shop was close to the Royal Pavilion, with its bizarre Indian-style architecture. The Palace made him smile. It seemed to be laughing at its grandeur. Ash came inside with Harry and sat beneath the table as Harry drank the dark, bitter coffee. It gave him a renewed boost of energy. He and Ash walked back to the inn, collected Obsidian, then returned to the barracks.
He dined in the mess room with the other officers and then it was time to ride back into Brighton for this unknown retired colonel’s card party. His Lieutenant Colonel and two other officers Harry did not know particularly well, accompanied him, as they were also invited. Gareth had not been included, probably because he did not have wealthy origins.
Harry was the one who stepped up to the door of the tall terraced property and knocked.
The door was opened by a male servant, who held the door wide. Harry handed his hat over to the servant as he stepped in. Masculine laughter rang from a room off the square hall.
When Harry entered the room the laughter had come from, the other men were not in uniform, nor were they men Harry knew.
It was going to be an odd evening. He would rather have drunk and played cards with the officers who were his friends. But he had agreed to this; flattered by the invitation and out of a desire to play cards with a seriousness that would grasp the attention of his mind and silence other thoughts. His heart raced at the idea of holding the cards as he saw the money lying on the table and recalled the challenge of the game. He could also do with winning.
‘Colonel Hillier.’ Harry bowed to his host as the grey-haired, old, portly man acknowledged his new guests with a gesture of his hand. Chairs were pointed to at a strange semicircular table; it was half of a table, which stood before the fireplace and it had an open middle, presumably so it did not burn. Harry had never seen one like it before.
When Harry sat, the heat from the fire touched his legs. It was May and there had been the aftermath of the storm yesterday, yet it was not particularly cold, he was going to sweat in his coat. A contraption attached to the table bore a decanter; it swung on a runner, which meant it could be passed about without the need to be lifted. It was swung to those who had joined the table as a new hand of cards was dealt for each man and then passed along.
Relief filled Harry as he picked up the cards. This was a constant that had been with him since before the Crimea. He’d spent hours at card tables with his cousins during their dissolute years and the pleasure to be found in a card game had lasted throughout the war. When he’d returned, playing cards had provided a base for normality. He was once again in a place in which he could face reality.
But those he had previously played with, his cousins, were wed now and happily settled with their wives and children. Life had progressed without him. Everything had changed here. He was a soldier and nothing besides that now.
He looked at the cards he held and then at the faces of those about the table, trying to judge which men were his competition.
‘Charlotte!’ Colonel Hillier called.
Harry was aware of the woman walking into the room, but he did not look, his mind was on the cards and the game.
‘Bring my box of cigars, would you?’
‘Yes.’ It was a young woman’s voice that answered.
When she returned, a rose perfume scented the air. The perfume was very like the one his mother used. The scent increased in intensity as the woman came closer, circulating about the half table, holding out the open box of cigars as each man then helped himself.
When she reached Harry, he looked up. My God. The woman from the seashore. She had the most striking auburn hair, full of rioting curls, and she had remarkably large, beautiful hazel eyes that hinted at the colour of bracken in autumn. He had noticed neither thing from a distance, but then her hair had been beneath a bonnet.
‘Thank you.’ He took a cigar from the box.
She smiled at him as colour tinted her pale skin a deep pink while her eyes opened wider, as though she was also shocked to encounter him here.
His invitation had not been due to her, then; the thought had crossed his mind.
He looked back at his cards, but his thoughts and attention were now partly drawn to the woman.
When she finished handing out the cigars, she walked back about the men with matches to light their cigars. He watched her face when she lit a match for him. She looked only at the task, and yet when he sucked on the cigar, holding it to the match to draw the flame and light the end, he sensed her staring at him.
Did her father know that she walked with her maid along the shore each afternoon and watched him?
She left the room once her task was complete. But some of his thoughts remained with her even then. She was a very attractive woman. He had never really looked at her when he’d been on the beach. Yet his mind’s focus on her was involuntary; she was a young miss and he was not interested in such women. His mind, however, begged to differ on that point this evening.
She returned to the room five times to circulate with cigars or refill the decanter. All tasks a servant might have completed, but the Colonel called for his daughter to undertake them. Perhaps this odd collection of men had been invited not solely to play cards but to obtain a suitor for his daughter and this was his version of a shop window to sell her attributes.
Harry smiled as he won his fourth hand.
He leant back in his chair as the money on the table was passed along to him and his gaze clashed with the woman’s. Their gazes had met several times. She coloured and looked away.
If this card game had been played in a gentleman’s club, where the women were available, she would not be colouring as she met his gaze but looking alluringly and by now he would have beckoned her over and invited her to sit on his knee as he played, effectively claiming her for the night. Perhaps he would go in search of a woman after this. The escape that could be found in a bed with a woman had been the other constant surviving from his old life.
He did not seek a woman when he left the Colonel’s, richer by the grand sum of fifty pounds; the Colonel’s auburn-haired daughter was still too much on his mind. If he lay with a woman it would be the Colonel’s daughter in the bed in his mind and that felt sordid. Instead he returned to the barracks and climbed back into the narrow bed that he shared with Ash.
~
‘You have a letter, my friend.’
Harry awoke and sat up instantly, his hand reaching for his sword, which lay on the floor beside his bed. Instinct. But the instinct was overridden when he saw Gareth. ‘Must you walk in without knocking? One day I will not awake fully and your throat will be cut.’ Harry turned to sit on the edge of the bed. The letter was thrown on to the covers beside him.
Gareth merely laughed as Harry picked the letter up.
He expected it to be from a member of his family. All of his brothers and sisters wrote to him on occasion, along with his mother and father. Even his cousin and friend, Henry, had kept in contact and sent him amusing anecdotes while Harry had been away. But Harry did not recognise the writing and when he turned the letter over there was no imprint of a seal in the wax.
‘Do you want to come for a ride with me, for a proper gallop, without the dog?’ Gareth asked
