Sweet Madness: A Veiled Seduction Novel by Snow Heather

Author:Snow, Heather [Snow, Heather]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-04-01T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

The young woman’s eyes went even wider as she slapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, a pox on it. I mean Lord Bromwich, o’course.”

Gabriel couldn’t resist a grin at her salty language. You could take the girl off of the battlefield . . . “Mary Finley,” he said warmly, coming to his feet to greet her. “Is that really you?”

As she bobbed her head, he marveled at the changes in her. She might still sound like the woman he’d known, but everything else had changed—and for the better. When he’d last seen Mary, she’d been gaunt and sallow skinned, her blue eyes dull and haunted. The woman who stood before him now looked as healthy as a country milkmaid, her cheeks full and rosy, and her eyes twinkled in a way that turned her rather plain features quite lovely.

She flashed him a happy smile. “Hard to believe, in’it?”

It was. Not that he was being uncharitable, but Mary had not lived an easy life as an unofficial camp follower, living, working—and sometimes fighting—alongside the army as they battled their way across the Continent.

She’d been a very young peasant girl who’d followed her beloved to Spain, but he’d fallen at Badajoz. Gabriel didn’t like to think of the things she must have done to survive unprotected. It was only several months later that Gabriel had come to know her, when she’d attached herself to his regiment and had become a regular fixture around their campfire. Eventually, she and one of his lieutenants had grown quite close.

“Whatever are you doing here?” he asked, still trying to reconcile the Mary of his mind with the girl before him.

Her cheeks flushed, and she twisted her apron between her fingers. “You’re not angry with me, are you, m’lord? I know you went out of your way to get me that position at the Silver Swan, and I appreciated it, I did. But I met a nice man there, and then he got on here at the mine and—” She shrugged ruefully.

So that explained how she’d gone from working at the inn in Birmingham where he’d placed her to a pub on the Earl of Stratford’s private estate in Shropshire.

“But I would hate it if you thought me ungrateful,” she finished, her face scrunched with worry.

“Don’t even think it,” he assured her. “I only ever wanted to make certain you had a roof over your head and decent prospects after . . .”

Mary pressed her lips together and nodded, neither of them having to finish the sentence: after Lieutenant Baker had fallen during that fateful mission at Waterloo and left her once again alone.

She breathed in and put a smile back on her face, even if her eyes had saddened with memory. “Well, I got a right fine roof over my head now.” She pointed out of the window at the row of cottages. “That third door is me and my husband’s. And by summer’s end, our baby’s, too,” she said, settling her hands over her middle.

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