Lady Violet Pays a Call by Grace Burrowes

Author:Grace Burrowes [Burrowes, Grace]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781956975239
Publisher: Grace Burrowes Publishing

Chapter Nine

HUGH

“I am not the problem.” I muttered these words in French to Charlemagne, who responded with a flick of his hairy ear as he plodded along the lane to the village. “Is this a good thing, that I am not the problem, or a bad thing? If I were the problem, I could fix me. But if I am not the problem…”

That meant Ann was the problem, and yet, nothing about my wife struck me as problematic. She was quick-witted in ways I was not. She was a devoted mother, and the staff at Belle Terre respected her. She was honorable—too honorable, perhaps, but no, one could not be too honorable.

She was attractive to me. She always had been. The years had added gravity to her Celtic good looks, and I had learned to value women for more than their strong stomachs in the infirmary or friendly smiles elsewhere.

Not just yet, she had said.

Charlemagne shied at an invisible rabbit, as was his habit when my attention wandered from the important business of riding my horse down a lane we’d both traveled dozens of times. He enjoyed a brisk morning hack, but trundling about in the afternoon heat tried his equine nerves sorely.

Or so he would have me believe.

“What tries Ann’s nerves?”

Crowds, bigotry, dishonesty, musty wardrobes, disloyal staff, drunken excesses, public lasciviousness, injustice. Ann had enjoyed our marital romping—as best I could tell—but she’d never been comfortable with the ribaldry that passed for soldierly good cheer.

Neither had I. I had seen that ribaldry become a loathsome evil when sieges broke, to the everlasting shame of the entire British Army.

A disquieting thought leaped out from the hedges of my musings. “Could Ann love another?”

Marrying me had been an alternative to what would have amounted to serial rape, a lowering recollection. Having been all but forced into marriage with me, wouldn’t Ann—thinking herself again a widow upon my supposed death?—relish the chance to choose a man on her own terms?

“I will have to ask her.”

Charlemagne snorted—at the dust of the road, of course. Summer was a dusty season.

When was a good time to ask one’s wife if her affections were fixed elsewhere? And what mental infirmity had prompted me to announce that I would voluntarily surrender my cot in the dressing closet for the pleasures of solitary insomnia?

The answer to that question was obvious: Arrogant stupidity had prompted my decision. I had been desperate for Ann to instead invite me into the marital bed, and she had called my bluff.

As the arched bridge came into view, I offered up a prayer for Lady Violet and Lord Dunkeld. May the good God spare them from stupidity. The child, which I was coming to think of as our child in a general sense, needed parents and step-parents in charity with one another.

The village appeared to be enjoying a peaceful afternoon nap. Mrs. Fletcher was watering the salvia that grew so prettily beside the livery barn, a sole equine hanging his head over a half door to watch her.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.