Brothers in Arms by Iain Gale

still in a sling. Although it had been almost a month since the battle his muscles were only now beginning to regain their strength and the damage to the tendons had still not fully healed. He swore again, louder this time. ‘Dammit. Darling, will you please come and help? I am such a cripple that I cannot even tie my neckerchief.’
    Henrietta hung by her hands from the cross-beam of the bed frame, stretching until the skin was taut across her pale body, save for the heavily rounded orbs of her breasts. Seeing her reflection, she smiled with pleasure and held the pose, and spoke to him with deliberate languor. ‘Jack, I do think that you might have found us something a little less rustic than these rooms. I mean, look at this bedchamber. Did you ever see such hangings and such curtains. Simple calico? And look at the floor. Bare boards, Jack!’
    Steel pretended not to have heard her and continued to struggle with his tie. But she was not to be ignored. ‘Jack, can you hear me? Do you perhaps not see me? Can you see me now, Jack?’
    Steel, desperately trying not to see what she might be doing to gain his attention, but conscious of it all the same, found his attention diverted from the cravat. ‘Yes, I can see you, my darling. But I wish that I did not. Not now. I have to be with the Captain General. You know that.’
    In fact, while he was finding it hard to look away, she had also pricked a nerve. Steel had found them a pair of mean rooms in a little inn which quite clearly was not up to Henrietta’s exacting standards, particularly to judge by the opulent apartment which she had taken care to lease for them in Brussels and on which he now continued to pay the rent, even though away on campaign.
    Henrietta laughed and, stepping lightly off the bed, crossed the floor to him with deliberate slowness, all the while using her body as only she could, in the full knowledge of the effect it would have on her husband. Henrietta knew that she was beautiful. Probably, she thought, the most beautiful of any woman in court circles at St James’s, and certainly at present the most lovely woman in all of the Low Countries.
    She stood on tiptoe to reach his tie, pushing her face deliberately close to his and her naked body against his clothes and pulling him down towards her so that his eyes were level with the nape of her neck. She smelt of lavender and musk and faintly of sweat. It was a heady mix, so much so that Steel almost succumbed. He had known in his heart that it had been wrong to allow his wife to follow him here. Not merely on account of her own safety, but precisely because it would result in moments like this, when the call of duty hung in a tenuous balance with the all-too-evident temptations of the flesh.
    He had not agreed at first when she had asked to come here to Menin to join him from Brussels. This was in effect the front line of the army, albeit a fortfied town held by the Allies and encircled by the entire army. But Henrietta had pleaded with him and Steel was hardly the first man to have been compelled to give in to her abundant charms. So here she was in all her nakedness, and here he was being diverted once again and already late for an appointment with the Captain General.
    He snapped back to the moment. ‘Darling, perhaps I had better try to tie it again myself.’
    He was too late. ‘There, it’s done.’ She stood back to survey her work, straightened the tie one last time and allowed Steel to look at her again.
    He shook his head. ‘I am sorry, Henrietta. You know that I must go.’
    She scowled and stuck out her tongue at him.
    Steel moved to the door, opened it and shouted down the hall to his soldier-servant: ‘Sykes. My horse.’
    Closing the door he moved across to his wife and gave her a deliberately fleeting embrace. ‘I don’t think that the Duke will keep me too long. And then, once I’ve finished, my love, we can spend all the day together.’
    ‘All the day? Are you sure? Jack,