The Lost Love of a Soldier (26 page)

When she set her spoon and fork down on the plate, he took another large swig of wine.

He was fortifying himself – building up courage.

Either that or he simply wished to be in his cups within the hour.

Ellen shut her eyes, searching for ideas – how to escape…

Once he had finished his dessert he let his cutlery drop sharply on the plate with a metallic clink against the porcelain, then looked at the butler. “Clear this.”

Immediately, the footman moved, taking away their empty plates, and the remnants of the meal. Ellen leaned back counting down minutes in her head to the moment it may not seem too early to rise and leave the man to his port, and when she went up to her rooms she would lock the door.

The footmen moved about her, and then finally walked from the room in a line. Ellen swallowed and stood. “I shall leave you?”

“No.” The answer was sharp. Looking from her to the butler, Lieutenant Colonel Hillier said, “Leave and shut the door.”

Ellen froze as her heart kicked into a rhythm of panic.

“Sit.” It was an order.

She did so as the door shut, too afraid to react before the butler, while internally she longed to run.

Too much of her life had been spent learning to show nothing of her emotions amidst servants and strangers. She had received constant warnings from her father to always appear serene. She did not feel serene – terror ripped through her middle.

Lieutenant Colonel Hillier stood and crossed the room to his decanters, then poured his own port.

Ellen’s heart thumped, the sound pounding in her ears as well as pulsing through her blood.

She looked at the door, longing to run.

But to where?

He did not speak.

What am I to do?

He turned and looked at her.

Fear chilled the blood in Ellen’s veins. It was a look of avarice – want.

“You know I love you, Ellen. I always have, and I have tried to make you love me, but I believe you will never let the ghost of Captain Harding rest. He seems to hover over us. Well I am bored with it. My patience has run dry. I have given you much, and you have given me very little in return.”

Her stomach tumbled over, bile rising in her throat.

He came towards her and stood over her, his fingers pressing on her shoulder to keep her seated when she would have stood. She looked up at him, only because there was nowhere else to look. His fingers swept a lock of her hair back behind her ear, then moved beneath her chin and embraced it. “Such a pretty face. Do you even realise how beautiful you are. I was envious of Captain Harding on the first day he introduced you. You are the grand prize, Ellen…”

She was just a woman, like any other.

Or perhaps
not
like any other – after the things he’d done to her.

“Do you not think you owe me more?” He said the words in a very low, quiet, voice, as if he was afraid of saying them.

More what?

He set his glass down on the pristine, starched white tablecloth beside her, then he bent.

As she realised he intended kissing her, she turned her head away.

His lips brushed her cheek.

“Not good enough, Ellen.” His hands braced her face, holding her head so she could not turn, as he had done before when he did that unspeakable thing. “I have waited while you mourned, but you have had long enough. Now I want to be kissed.” His lips pressed against hers, hard and firm.

It was not with love
…
It was not love… It was nothing like Paul’s kiss.

When he would have pushed his tongue into her mouth, she bit her lips and pulled back against his grip.

He freed her and straightened, staring down at her. For a moment he just stared.

She remembered all those times he’d watched her when Paul had been alive. Had he been thinking of this then? Had he been planning this from the moment Paul had died when he’d arrived to collect her, smelling freshly bathed? He’d paraded her through the streets on his horse.

“You know, Ellen, you have a choice. You can be my mistress and I shall continue to keep you. Or you may take your son and go and walk the streets, and perhaps become the mistress of a hundred different men to earn enough to feed and keep your son…”

She looked to the ceiling and prayed for help.

What can I do?

“Well?”

She did not speak. What was there to say? He could not really expect her to choose to be his mistress…

“It is your choice whether or not you stay. But if you stay with me now, Ellen. I expect you to be compliant. Do you understand?”

No, she did not.

“You must do all that I wish…”

A stone dropped from her stomach to the soles of her feet as she sat and stared at him again. She had a child who was only six weeks old upstairs. A child who needed a roof and a cot. She needed food to be able to feed him, and it was still winter; it was icily cold beyond the door.

Her heart beat harder.
What was she to do - get up and walk away? Walk where?

“Shall we try this again, Ellen?” He did not even wait for her answer. He knew her answer could only be acceptance. What other choice did she have? His fingers gripped either side of her face, and tilted it upwards as he bent again. “Open your mouth.” His words were spoken over her lips, hot and scented of wine. She did, and his tongue slid into her mouth, making her feel sick with hatred and dread. Her body shivered with disgust.

He broke the kiss and rose. “I said you must be compliant, Ellen. I also meant you must participate.”

No.

Tears burned in her eyes as he bent again and her arms hung limp, as his tongue pressed into her mouth. She moved her own tongue, not in a caress, she felt too sick, but just in answer…
Oh God.

How has my life come to this
?

His hand slid and touched her breast, then ran lower.

~

Ellen lay curled in a ball on the sofa in the downstairs drawing room, in the dark. She had not found the strength to rise. She had no courage.

She was an adulteress now, too. He had a wife in England. The Commandments she had been forced to read more than a thousand times the day she’d eloped with Paul, ran through her head.
Thou shalt not commit adultery…

But it had not been her choice.

Yet her first sin had been her choice.

Was this payment for that?
Honour thy father and mother.

What could she do?

How could she have let it happen and done nothing?

How could she leave without money or possessions?

What am I to do?

Tears had run down her cheeks the whole time Lieutenant Colonel Hillier had touched her, and when he’d done what Paul had done, she’d sobbed aloud until he told her to be quiet. Then she’d bitten her lip and wept silently again. She was unclean now. Filthy. She itched inside and she wished to scrub within her body.

“Ma’am… Forgive me, ma’am.” Ellen sat up instantly and looked towards the door, which had been left ajar but now stood open. The housemaid who’d become her own maid stood there. “The little boy is crying for you…”

Ellen stood and wiped away her tears, looking down, hiding the marks on her face as she swallowed. “I am coming…” She hoped the maid would go but she did not. Instead she came further into the room.

“Ma’am, if you do not wish for another child. I can show you things you may do to help. There are no guarantees, but…”

Ellen stared at her, a fire flaring beneath her skin to think this woman knew what had happened. But then perhaps it had happened to her too.

“Do you wish me to tell you?”

“Yes…” The word was whispered.
But now I need to go to my son.

Ellen hurried out of the room, rushing past her to escape the sense of shame.

“But I shall come then, ma’am, because if you are to do something to prevent it, you must do so now.”

The maid hurried up the stairs behind, Ellen.

Chapter Twenty One

Ellen knelt on the floor beside her son. John sat upright, playing with some wooden animals which the maid had bought him from a carver in the market.

Paris was still busy, flooded with hundreds of tourists, and people came to the city to make money from them – people whose property and land had been spoiled by war, as her own life had been. But her life was barren in a different way.

After the battle of Waterloo she’d seen some of the physical wounds stitched.

John was the stitches holding her together. She lived only for these moments of quiet peace, when they played together and she could pretend the rest of her life was not a tangled, jagged wreck.

“Ball, now.” John looked across the room, at the ball which they’d been playing with earlier, then turned onto one knee and set off for it at a fast crawl. He stirred her heart whatever he did. She had never thought it possible to love anything or anyone so utterly.

When he returned with it he held it up towards her. “Throw, Mama.”

She caught him up into her arms, without taking the ball from him, instead tipping him backwards. Then she blew a loud kiss on his neck, which she knew would tickle. He laughed. It was the most beautiful sound, like water running over rocks in a stream, and a wave washing over pebbles on the seashore.

“Mama, throw.” He lifted the ball again once he stopped laughing. He had a stubborn streak, and a strength of will like his father’s. She brushed back his black hair and looked into eyes the colour of her own.

“I love you…” she whispered and kissed his brow, before taking the ball from his hand, and tossing it upwards. He looked up and laughed again. Her heart ached.

“Mama.” When it landed, he crawled off to collect it and bring it back for her to throw again.

She heard the knocker strike the door downstairs. It hit hard, the sound running through the walls of the house.

“John,” she called in a low voice, urging him back to her. Lieutenant Colonel Hillier was not at home. If it was someone calling for him, they would be turned away. But even so, her instinctive reaction was always to keep John close.

Lieutenant Colonel Hillier was too unpredictable, especially when he’d been drinking. She was never sure when he would expect things from her, or what, or when he would be aggressive, or when he would be unbearably gentle, as if he truly thought it was love he showed her.

Whatever he did to her only made her feel sick. She did not wish him to touch her at all.

Footsteps echoed on the stairs, and then came along the hall, before someone knocked on the door to her personal sitting room.

“Ma’am.” It was one of the footmen.

“Yes.”

“There is a gentleman below; he wishes to see the woman living here.”

Ellen looked up and stared at the closed door.
The woman living here
… Was that all she was, a nameless being? A body used for the gratification of Lieutenant Colonel Hillier and nothing else. She stood, almost in a trance. Then John turned, with the ball in his hand, holding it up triumphantly. “Mama!”

She had a name.

“Come, John,” she bent and whispered, and once she’d lifted him to her hip, she stroked a black curl off his brow. He was a strikingly handsome child. Her child. She wondered what Paul would have thought of him.

Taking the ball from his hand, she bent and picked up one of his wooden horses instead. “Here, carry this and we shall go and see who is calling.” He immediately started chewing on his poor horse. He had six teeth so far. She checked them every day to see if a new one had come.

When she opened the door the footman stepped back. “Ma’am.”

“Do you know who it is?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Are they wearing livery or a soldier’s uniform?”

“No, ma’am.”

She frowned. “Is there a carriage outside?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Instead of leaving her sitting room she turned around, still carrying John, whose legs clung either side of her hip as she balanced his weight on her hand.

There was a glossy black carriage outside the house and the coachman still sat on the box, waiting in the street below. A footman in non-descript black livery held the horses’ heads, as another waited near the carriage door.

It would not be a servant bearing some message from Lieutenant Colonel Hillier then. It was someone of standing.

But why would they ask to see her?

She saw no coat of arms on the doors of the carriage.

“Horsees.” John, pointed down into the street with his wooden toy.

She looked at him, “Yes, darling, horses.”

“Ma’am, what shall I say?”

Ellen looked back at the footman. “Nothing. I will come down. Where is the visitor?”

“In the drawing room.”

“I’ll show myself in to see him. You may go.” The man turned and walked away as Ellen looked at John, her heart thumping. What was this now?

“I suppose we should go and see who our mysterious guest is then, John. What do you think?”

He smiled his lovely open-hearted smile. His affection for her shone in his eyes, even though he was too young to know what love meant, or to say it aloud, she knew he loved her as she loved him. “I love you…” she said it again, so he might learn, and then pressed another kiss on his temple before leaving the room, walking swiftly.

Her heart raced as she descended the stairs looking at the closed doors leading into the drawing room. The footman had not waited in the hall, but returned to the servants’ quarters, so it was silent, and there was no sound from within the room.

She looked at her son, who was busy entertaining himself with his wooden horse, his gaze transfixed upon it as he trotted it over her arm.

She took a breath, her heart pounding out the beat of the marching drum, and then turned the handle with the hand which was not balancing John’s weight and pushed the door open. She stepped in, looking up.

Ellen collapsed back against the door, and her fingers gripped John’s leg over tightly, causing him to squeal.