The Major's Wife (The Officer's Bride) by Merline Lovelace

Author:Merline Lovelace [Lovelace, Merline]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-09-08T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

Stormed at with shot and shell,

Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaw of Death,

Into the mouth of Hell…

The Charge of the Light Brigade

Had he taken leave of his senses? Had a cannonball grazed his skull and left him prey to deliriums? Did Charles really intend for them to maintain a façade of marriage for another year? Could she bear it if he did?

The questions tumbled through Marianne’s whirling mind in the days that followed. One repeated itself with ever increasing urgency.

Had Charles been speaking the truth when he said he’d changed his views on posterity, or was he merely attempting to make the best of his wife’s failings?

The Queen’s frequent accouchements and very pointed views on matrimony set the standard of the times. Rather conveniently ignoring her own regal status, she made it clear that women had a single, overriding purpose in life, and that was to fulfill the destiny of their womanhood. The knowledge that she couldn’t bear a child cut Marianne to her heart. More to the point, the certainty she couldn’t bear Charles a son or daughter left her swinging between resignation and despair.

The fact that her heart pounded every time she heard the door slam and his boot heels ring on the oak stairs didn’t matter in the least. Nor did the ridiculous leap in her pulse when she heard him moving about in the bedchamber adjoining hers long after they both should have been asleep.

Her only refuge, her only check on her wild emotions, was her work. And her first order of business, she decided after returning the under-gardener’s watch to the wooden-faced butler one afternoon, was to find homes for Annie and Henry Hackett. The two had become quite inseparable, which added another challenge to her task.

“If you don’t wish to live in the country,” Marianne said firmly after the city-bred Henry balked yet again at making the trip to home farm, “you must tell me what trade you wish to learn. Perhaps I can apprentice you with a good, kind master.”

“Cor, that’s easy,” the boy replied, brightening. “I’ve always ‘ad a ‘ankering to jiggle the bits.”

“Jiggle the bits?”

“You know, slap the ‘indquarters.”

Faintly alarmed at the image that evoked in her mind, Marianne looked to Annie.

The girl slipped her thumb from her mouth. “He wants to drive carriage horthes.”

“Oh. Yes, of course." She eyed the boy doubtfully. “Do you have any experience handling horses?”

“I knows just how to ‘andle ‘em,” he bragged, puffing out his thin chest. “I onct jumped on coal seller’s ‘ack what was kickin’ up the traces. Give ‘im a good thump atween the ears with an axe pole, I did. Dropped ‘im in his tracks.”

Somehow, Marianne didn’t think that particular technique for quieting a fractious equine would impress a stable master.

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