Temptation (3 page)

Percy looked away from the letter for a moment, his eyes filling with tears. Beatrice had written him a letter—simply because she thought he might want to hear news of home. It was more than any of his cousins had done, and they were young ladies of leisure with nothing more important than picnics and dances to while away their hours. Even his elder brother only ever wrote him the briefest of notes when he had some important information about the estate to impart.

Of course, he had not been on good terms with his elder brother for some years—it was a wonder Albert wrote to him at all. But the root of their quarrel was in the past. There was no point in picking at old sores and reopening old wounds. Beatrice, beautiful Beatrice, was his future.

He lay back on his narrow cot, the image of her face still strong in his mind. Her hair had been loose in the photograph, falling over her shoulders in a silky sheen. How he would love to run his hands through her unbound hair, his fingers tangling in its soft waves.

His imagination didn’t stop at touching her hair. He wanted to touch all of her. In his mind’s eye, he could see her standing before him, a naughty glint in her eye, and her hands at her throat slowly undoing the bodice of her dress. She was teasing him, tantalizing him with her nearness, egging him on to making love to her.

With a quick glance around him to make sure he was alone, he unbuttoned his trousers and took his cock in his hand. It was already engorged, and a few strokes made it hard and needy.

He felt a brief pang of guilt at his actions, as if he were betraying a friendship. Young Teddy wouldn’t like to think of him fantasizing over his sister Beatrice in such a manner, but the lad would never know, and what he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. Every soldier in the field deserved to take his pleasure where he could find it.

His eyes closed, shutting out the view of his tent and transporting him back to England in the springtime, in a glade in the woods on his brother’s estate. The sunshine was dappled through the trees, and he was there with Beatrice, the two of them, alone together. There was no sound but the rustling of the leaves and the occasional chirp of birdsong.

He imagined Beatrice slipping the bodice from her shoulders and stepping out of her skirts, leaving them pooled on the grass at her feet. Her drawers would be tucked and frilled and trimmed with lace, and her chemise would be cut low enough to show her breasts—a far cry from the plain nurse’s uniform she presented to the outside world. Her elaborate underwear showed the secret part of her that she showed only to him. Enticing. Irresistible.

He would touch her then. Her pink-tipped breasts would fill his hands. He would bend down to lick her nipples into tight peaks, and then he would pull her body against his hard cock, thrusting it against her stomach. She would be soft where he was hard, giving where he was taking.

Then, oh joy, he would slip his hands between her legs, through the slit in the top of her drawers, and stroke the soft mound covered in fine hair. She would be wet, and as he stroked her, she would clutch on to his shoulders and make little mewling cries of need.

Then she would ask him to take her. No, she would beg him to take her. She would get on to her hands and knees with her legs spread apart, and with one hand she would spread open her nether lips in invitation. Her cunt would be glistening with wetness and she would cry out that she wanted him inside her, that she needed him inside her.

He would discard his trousers with frantic haste. His cock would be huge and hard as he thrust into her from behind. She would scream as he penetrated as deeply as he could go, bucking with her hips to drive him in even harder. She would want him so badly she would be weeping with desire, just as he would be.

He was stroking himself frenetically now, as he imagined thrusting into her, pushing into her virgin cunt with his huge, engorged cock. She would love being fucked, and would urge him on with frantic cries. Then her soft pussy would clutch at his cock, convulsing around him, milking him of his juices.

His breath caught in his throat and time stopped for a moment, before it all came flooding back with a rush of orgasm. At the last moment he rolled to one side so the sticky stream buried itself in his blankets rather than shooting up into the air and splattering all over his dress uniform.

Once the tremors had stopped racking his body and his breathing had returned to normal, he gave a sigh and reached for a handkerchief to clean himself. He wanted to spill himself in Beatrice’s delicious wet cunt, not in his own damn hand.

He wadded up the handkerchief and threw it into the corner of the tent, then tucked his now limp cock away into his trousers again. While he was stuck out here in the wilds of South Africa without her, he would have to tame his passions by himself.

The sooner this damned war was over, the better. Then he could return to England and court Beatrice in person. In the meantime, he would dream about her when he was alone, and court her through his letters.

With just a few words written to a stranger, she had reminded him of everything that was good about England, everything that he had joined the army to serve and protect. He hoped his own letters would touch her heart in the same way as hers had touched his.

Truly, his Beatrice was a sweetheart. He did not know what he had done to deserve such kindness, but he would not quibble with his good fortune. With a simple letter out of the blue, she had won his heart. Absolutely and irrevocably.

He struck a match and lit a lantern, then took up his pen. He would answer her right away, and let her know how much she meant to him. He might have lost his heart to her, but he would win hers in return. He would make her as in love with him as he was with her.

She was an angel.

She was
his
angel.

Beatrice sat in the communal parlor of her lodging house, letter in hand, surrounded by a gaggle of the other nurses who boarded there. Even the matron of the lodging house, Mrs. Bettina, who could be quite severe and stern when she thought her charges were being too flighty, sat forward in her chair, listening to her read.

“‘…your letter touched my heart. Please, write to me again.

‘Yours in eternal gratitude,

‘Percival Carterton’”

As she drew to a close, one of the girls sighed happily. “He sounds so dreamy. I would love to have a soldier for a sweetheart.”

“He is not my sweetheart,” Beatrice protested, with some alarm. “I have never met him. I only wrote to him because Teddy said he never got any letters from home and seemed rather blue. You know I am walking out with Dr. Hyde.”

Maybe it had been a mistake to read the letter out to her fellow lodgers, even though she had judiciously expurgated it as she went. She didn’t want anyone to get the wrong impression, or to read more into their exchange of letters than it merited. She was merely consoling a lonely soldier with a few idle words, and pretending that her letters could make a difference.

“You have all the luck,” Lenora said, her voice tinged with envy. “I wish Dr. Hyde had chosen me to go out walking with.” She reached for another piece of shortbread and took a contemplative munch. “But with hair the color of mine, and a bottom the size of an omnibus, it’s no wonder he chose you instead.”

“You have a perfectly normal-sized bottom,” Beatrice protested, elbowing her friend in the ribs. Though Lenora had generous curves, she had a small waist—a perfect hourglass figure. The lumpish uniform they had to wear at the hospital hid the finer points of her figure, but then it hid everyone else’s, too.

Lenora pulled a face. “Yes, for an omnibus,” she muttered through a mouthful of shortbread. “Dr. Hyde clearly thinks so.”

“Hang Dr. Hyde—he’s a dry stick,” said another. “I wish I could write to your soldier, too, and get such a letter back. There’s nothing quite like a redcoat to make a girl happy.”

Even the matron looked a little misty-eyed. “Our poor young men. They are sent over to foreign countries to protect us and our way of life, and expected to live there without any of the comforts of civilization. How they must miss their friends and family back home.”

By now Beatrice had tucked the letter safely away in her pocket. “Teddy says that some of them don’t have any family at all. Or none that care enough about them to send them letters or to knit them new socks when their old ones wear out and the army has none to give them.”

“It’s a crying shame, the way they are treated.”

“They shouldn’t send our boys to war if they can’t look after them properly.”

“Then we should be their family,” the matron said firmly. “We should write to them and let them know they have not been forgotten, even though they are far from home. If the army has no socks for them, we shall knit them. I am sure they will be grateful for the attention.”

The girls all perked up at this suggestion and a mutter of approbation ran through the group.

The red-haired Lenora gave a rare smile that lit up her face as if a gaslight had been turned on behind her eyes. The radiance made her look almost pretty. “My uncle is a hosier. He will give us wool at a good price if we explain it is for the soldiers. He fought in the Crimean War when he was younger.”

Her suggestion had the ideas flowing thick and fast.

“I have heard that their rations are poor. Maybe if we asked people for donations we could send them some tinned food as well as knitted socks.”

“We can do a collection around the hospital.”

“One of my relations imports tea and coffee. We could ask him to give us some coffee.”

“But how will we know where to send our letters and parcels?” one of them cried.

Beatrice smiled at their enthusiasm. Who would have thought her sudden impulse to write a letter to a lonely soldier would have led to all this? “I will ask Teddy, and he will tell me.”

Later that evening, Beatrice sat in her bedroom and smoothed the letter out on her lap. She had not been entirely open with her friends. Captain Carterton had written a postscript that she had not shared with them—it had been altogether too personal to read out in company.

Reading his words again caused a tingling in her limbs that she didn’t altogether like. She was sure it wasn’t the sort of feeling that a well-bred woman ought to have.

Dr. Hyde would never say anything so personal to her—more’s the pity. Though she had gone out walking with him for some weeks now, he had always been scrupulously polite and had never so much as kissed her glove. He
was
a bit of a dry old stick, she supposed, but he was at least a gentleman and he treated her with great courtesy. He had no bad habits that she knew of, but was spoken of by everyone as a respectable person.

Besides, she had to admire a man who made it his life’s work to heal the sick and discover the nature of disease. He was not only respectable—he was a good man.

Captain Carterton, for all that he was Teddy’s friend and captain, did not seem like such an estimable man as Dr. Hyde indubitably was. What kind of a man would write such words to a woman he had never met? They were almost the words that a lover would write to his sweetheart.

Men like the captain were two a penny—they would court a girl passionately for a few weeks, and then throw her over without so much as a by-your-leave. They were fly-by-nights, will-o’-the-wisps, as insubstantial as dandelion seeds.

As a nurse, she’d seen firsthand the damage that such passionate courtship could do to a foolish young woman. She was too canny to be caught in such a trap—no husband and a baby on the way.

Still, she could not resist reading through the postscript again, and the tingling intensified. Teddy would surely not be happy if he knew what his captain had written to her. Mrs. Bettina would be terribly shocked. And as for Dr. Hyde? He would doubtless think twice about his invitations to walk out with him were he to know of it. Dr. Hyde was a respectable man, and the man she was planning to build a future with. It was folly even to think of writing back to the captain and giving him any encouragement.

Of course, no one but Captain Carterton himself need ever know. If she were to write to him and ask him to keep her letters private, he would surely heed her request. He was an officer and a gentleman—not some common riffraff of an enlisted man pulled out of the gutters of Manchester or York to be enrolled as a simple foot soldier.

Besides, he was far away in South Africa, and with the Boers on the brink of declaring war, his regiment would not be posted back to England any time soon. What harm was there in keeping a lonely soldier happy, and giving him something to look forward to on the long, cold nights on the high veld?

A thrill of the forbidden ran through her.

He could be her secret fantasy, her foray into tabooed territory. She could write back to him as warmly as she dared—as naughtily as her mind could devise—and Dr. Hyde need never find out.

With that comforting thought, she unscrewed the top from her bottle of ink, and began to write.

She hesitated for a long moment after she had signed her name to the bottom of the page. Then, quickly, before she could change her mind, she scrawled a postscript.

There, it was done. If he did not reply to her letter, she would refuse to be disappointed. That would show he was only a man made of flesh and blood, and not worthy of her dreams.

But she hoped her fantasy man was up to the challenge.

Sergeant-Major Tofts rolled out of his army cot, his every joint creaking in protest. Though he had spent his life in the army, he was starting to wonder if he was getting too old for it now. His poor bones weren’t the same as they used to be. Even just getting himself up in the morning was getting more difficult. Sometimes he felt that he would trade in his whole kit for a week’s sleep on a soft feather bed.

But if he were to leave the army, what then? He had no family, no home to go to. He knew nothing else, had learned no other trade to keep him from starvation. No, it would be his fate to wear his uniform on his back until the day he died, leaving a small sum in the four percents to his second cousin. Few would even notice his passing, and fewer still would mourn.

It was a depressing thought for such a fine morning. He gave himself a mental shake as he fetched a bowl of cold water and shaved the stubble from his cheeks. He had a job to do, and the lives of his men might well depend on how well he did it. The army had no time for malingerers. He wouldn’t tolerate it in his men, and he wouldn’t tolerate it in himself.

A few minutes later he was sitting at the mess table with his men, shoveling food into his mouth. A shipment from England had just arrived and the men who had received letters or parcels from home were in high spirits. Their jocularity infected the whole table, and though he grumbled at them to keep the noise down, everyone knew they were good-natured grumbles and no one took any notice of him.

He was sipping the last of his coffee when Private Willis wandered over to him and tossed him a small packet. “Letter for you, Sir,” he said, as he wandered off again.

Sergeant-Major Tofts almost dropped it in his surprise. Who would be writing to him? He looked at the address on the envelope, but it was not one he recognized. Carefully, as though it might blow up in his face if he mishandled it, he opened the envelope. Experience had taught him that good news didn’t generally come in unsolicited messages.

The paper wasn’t edged with black. That was a relief—it wasn’t a note to inform him that any of his friends or relatives had died. But the handwriting wasn’t familiar and when he scanned the signature, he didn’t recognize that, either. With a growing sense of curiosity, he began to read.