The Major's Wife (The Officer's Bride)

by Merline Lovelace

  THE MAJOR’S WIFE

  BY

  MERLINE LOVELACE

  copyright @ merline lovelace

  Print Edition

  Harlequin Historicals

  Officer’s Bride Anthology

  April 2001

  Electronic Edition

  August 2016

  Cover by Dawné Dominique

  The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by fines and federal imprisonment.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Dedication

  To my sister Pam, who shared my love of books. Like me, she proudly wore the uniform of her country and also became a major’s wife. I miss you so much!

  About the Author

  A career Air Force officer, Merline Lovelace served at bases all over the world. When she hung up her uniform for the last time, she decided to combine her love of adventure with a flair for story-telling, basing many of her tales on her own experiences in the service. Since then she’s produced one hundred historical, romance, and mystery novels, many of which have made the USA Today bestseller list. Over twelve million copies of her works are in print in more than thirty countries.

  When she’s not tied to her keyboard, Merline enjoys reading, hitting little white balls around the fairways of Oklahoma, and traveling to exotic locales with her husband, Al. Check her website at www.merlinelovelace.com or friend her on Facebook for news and information about her latest releases.

  Chapter One

  Half a league, half a league,

  Half a league onward…

  The Charge of the Light Brigade

  By

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  London, May, 1856

  Bright afternoon sunlight poured over Lady Marianne Trent as she devoured The Times. The report of the ceremonies held to mark the signing of the peace treaty that ended – finally! -- the war in the Crimea held her riveted. Her fingers trembled, rattling the thin sheets of news print. She was sure the names of faraway places like Sebastopol, Balaklava, and Inkermann would remain forever seared on her soul.

  Detailed newspaper accounts of the three-year war had both enthralled and appalled Lady Trent, as they had most of Queen Victoria’s subjects. For the first time, intrepid correspondents and photographers had followed Her Majesty’s troops right onto the battlefield. They’d captured in stirring prose and stark, black-and-white prints the gallantry of the British and French allies fighting to free Turkey and the Balkans from the tsar’s dominance. They’d captured, too, the agony of broiling summers and long, freezing winters, when incompetent leadership, hopelessly confused supply lines, and the shameful lack of medical care caused twenty times more British casualties than Russian cannonballs.

  One such account of the nightmarish medical situation had spurred Florence Nightingale to sail to the Crimea with nursing matrons she herself had recruited. Another had plunged Marianne Trent into relief efforts here at home. Those efforts that had earned her approbation from her sister-in-law and great admiration from the slender young man seated across the tea table.

  She lifted her gaze to him now, hope and anguish warring in her breast. “Oh, Edmond! It says here our troops should set sail for home immediately now that the treaties have been signed.”

  “Since the ceremony was only a formality, I would guess some contingents are already under way.” Removing his spectacles, Edmond St. Just set about polishing them with a handkerchief. “The first troop transports could dock at Portsmouth any day now…if they haven’t already.”

  “Surely we would have heard if they had!”

  “One would think so,” he replied in a carefully neutral tone. “Lady Beatrix has such excellent connections at the War Office, after all.”

  Marianne bit her lip. After three years of marriage, the mere mention of her iron-willed sister-in-law still roused sadly conflicting emotions.

  As a new bride, five minutes in Lady Beatrix’s company was enough to put her in a quake. She’d been so young then, so pathetically eager to please the formidable matron who’d plucked her from the dreary, tomb-like silence of her great-aunt’s home in Shropshire, rigged her out in silks and laces, and engineered a brilliant match with Major Sir Charles Trent.

  For weeks after the fashionable wedding, Marianne had trembled every time her Lady Beatrix sailed into the palatial Trent townhouse she still considered her personal domain. If the servants had moved a side table or a flower vase by so much as inch or two, the new bride could count on receiving a basilik-like stare and a glacially polite request that the object be returned to its proper position immediately.

  Yet those first, whirlwind weeks of marriage had been so thrilling in every other way that Marianne hardly minded her sister-in-law’s overbearing ways. When her husband wasn’t off readying his troops for war, his commanding presence filled both the townhouse and the days with bustling activity.

  And the nights… Dear Lord above, the nights! Heat rose in Marianne’s cheeks just thinking about the hours spent in the major’s arms.

  She was under no illusions about why Charles had married her. He’d been charmingly honest with her from the start of their brief courtship. After almost forty years of peace following the defeat of the French at Waterloo, war once again loomed on the horizon. It was his duty to ensure the Trent line didn’t die on some distant battlefield. In exchange for Marianne’s hand in matrimony, he’d offered her his name, an escape from her dreary incarceration in Kent, and a secure future should anything happen to him in the far off Crimea.

  Lady Beatrix had been brutally honest, as well. As she informed Marianne, her brother had buried his heart years ago with the laughing, beauteous Miss Warrington, whom he’d loved with all the passion of his youth. Now, he sought merely to make a sensible match with a lady of good standing and good breeding.

  As a result, Marianne had gone to her nuptial bed a girl determined to do her duty. Unfortunately, she’d left it a woman quite hopelessly in love. To one long starved for affection, her husband’s teasing smiles, skilled kisses, and quite magnificent body had awakened in her a passion she’d never dreamed she possessed.

  Then Charles had sailed for the Crimea, his wife had miscarried his heir some four months later, and Marianne’s shimmering fairy-tale world had shattered.

  Now…

  Now she bore her sister-in-law’s strictures with calm fortitude. She had her work and Edmond’s friendship to sustain her. It was enough. It would have to be enough.

  Still, the thought that Charles might be on his way home at this very minute made her foolish heart ache. Blindly, she stared at the news print and tried not to think of what might have been.

  Edmond’s mild voice called her back from the brink of despair. “Did you read the article about the new medal the War Office has proposed?”

  Dislodging the painful lump in her throat, Marianne shook her head. “No, I didn’t. Where is it?”

  “On page four, I believe."

  The earnest young scholar and ardent reformer slipped his spectacles back onto his nose and tucked his handkerchief into his pocket before circling the back of the settee. Leaning over his hostess’s shoulder, he pointed out the tidbit of information she’d missed.

  “In the queen’s honor, they intend to call it the Victoria Cross. It would constitute England’s highest a
ward for valor.”

  “If such a medal is approved, Charles’ regiment should be among the first to receive it,” the major’s wife said fiercely. “Dunbar’s Dragoons lost one in every three men at Balaklava.”

  To this day, Marianne couldn’t recall the accounts of that brutal engagement without a shudder. According to the dispatches, the Light Brigade had been ordered to attack the Russian-held heights above the city. Six hundred and fifty mounted cavalry launched a gallant, desperate charge that took them straight through a murderous crossfire of cannon. Most had died within minutes. The survivors, Charles among them, had been forced to retreat after reinforcements failed to arrive. Maimed, injured, their faces blackened by gunpowder and eyes burning from smoke, they’d hacked and sabered their way back to the allied lines.

  That the Light Brigade been showered with praise for their magnificent charge in no way mitigated the magnitude of their losses…or the fact that they had failed to secure the heights. As Charles had sardonically noted in a letter home some months later, the Balaklava clasp on the Crimean War medal constituted the only military decoration the British government had ever awarded for ignominious defeat.

  “Dunbar’s Dragoon’s lived up to their motto of Truth and Valor that day,” Edmond remarked.

  “Yes,” Marianne murmured. “They did.”

  She might have known her friend would note the catch in her voice. “I’m sorry it pains you so to talk of him.”

  Helplessly, she looked up at him. Her ash brown hair, styled in a knot of the corkscrew curls so fashionable at the moment, spilled over the shoulder of her glazed taffeta afternoon dress.

  “I… I…”

  Reaching down, he took her hand and gave her fingers a sympathetic squeeze. She was still struggling for the words to describe her wrenching emotions concerning her husband when the sound of booted footsteps rang outside the parlor door.

  “I’ll show myself in, Dunston.”

  “Yes, sir." The butler’s reply was shot with unabashed happiness. “It’s good to have you home at last, sir!”

  “It’s good to be home.”

  Marianne’s heart stopped in her chest. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Her fingers clenched Edmond’s as the parlor doors slid open. Stunned, she stared at the tall, broad-shouldered figure in scarlet and green regimentals who passed through them.

  “Charles!”

  The cry ripped straight from her heart. Thoughts of her husband might generate raw, painful doubts. Seeing him again after so many long months produced only a wild, splintering joy.

  “Hallo, Marianne.”

  The major strolled into the sunny room where he’d bid goodbye to his bride so many months ago. Keen blue eyes fringed by gold-tipped lashes flicked from her to Edmond and back again.

  “I hope I’m not disturbing you,” he said in his deep, rich baritone.

  “Disturbing me?” Her voice rose to a squeak. “Disturbing me!”

  Snatching her fingers from Edmond’s, Marianne sprang up. Newspapers scattered across the rose-patterned carpet as she rushed forward, hands outstretched, hooped skirts swaying.

  “Oh, Charles, I don’t believe it! We were just speaking of you!”

  Tucking his black fur shako under his arm, the major caught her hands in his and bent to brush a kiss across her knuckles. When he raised his head, his blue eyes smiled down at her.

  “Were you?”

  “Yes! Edmond and I were discussing the account of the treaty signing in The Times and…and…”

  Her voice failed. Tears stung her eyelids, blurring the face that had haunted her dreams. He was thinner than she remembered, but every bit as handsome. No, more so! When first she’d met him, she’d thought him so big, so splendidly elegant in his regimentals. Now, with his tawny hair bleached by the sun, his skin tanned almost nut brown, and his face honed to lean planes, he looked like the war-tested officer he was.

  Or perhaps it was she who’d changed. She’d viewed him through a girl’s bedazzled eyes three years ago. Adoring. Trusting. So astonished that he’d chosen a meek little country miss as his bride that she’d barely been able to stammer out two sentences in a row. She was almost as incoherent now.

  “After reading about the ceremonies, I knew… I hoped… I thought you must come home soon. Now you’re here,” she finished breathlessly.

  “Now I’m here,” he echoed with one of the teasing smiles that had captured her heart. “Didn’t you get my note? I dashed one off to both you and Beatrix when our ship docked at Portsmouth.”

  Mutely, Marianne shook her head.

  “It appears I caught you all unawares,” he said lightly. Dropping another kiss on her knuckles, he released her hands and addressed the man watching them in silence. “You, I would guess, are St. Just.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ve heard a great deal about you from my wife’s letters…and those of my sister.”

  Marianne’s soaring joy faltered, dipped, plummeted to the earth like a wounded dove. She could imagine the scathing terms Beatrix must have used to describe the radical intellectual who, in her considered opinion, had led the new Lady Trent seriously astray.

  “I’ve heard a great deal about you, too, sir." Squaring his shoulders, Edmond came around the settee and held out his hand. “It’s an honor to meet the hero of Balaklava.”

  “My men are the heroes,” Charles answer gravely, taking the proffered hand. “Not I.”

  “The dispatches indicated otherwise.”

  “Even eye-witness reports can become hopelessly distorted during battle. It would be a mistake to believe everything one reads in the dispatches.”

  “In letters, too, I would guess.”

  Charles leveled a quick, hard look at the younger man. Unblinking, Edmond returned his stare.

  Marianne’s stomach sank. Her friend was only trying to help, she knew. Attempting to blunt the acrid disapproval Lady Beatrix had no doubt relayed to her brother. Yet Edmond of all people must know Marianne would have to answer to Charles herself.

  Her husband appeared to think so, too. He dismissed the younger man with the same brisk efficiency he might one of his staff officers.

  “You’ll excuse us, I know. My wife and I have a great deal to catch up on.”

  Edmond’s gaze went to Marianne. She dipped her head in a small nod.

  “Your servant, sir. Lady Trent.”

  Executing a stiff bow, he withdrew. The parlor doors slid closed behind him with a snick. Silence descended, broken only by the call of a pie seller on the street outside and the shrill of finches feasting in the mulberry trees that shaded the mullioned windows.

  Nervously, Marianne swiped her hands down her wide, hooped skirts. Beneath her corset, her breasts rose and fell in swift, painful little breaths. It had come. The moment she’d anticipated for so many sleepless nights. The moment she’d dreaded. Now she must unburden her soul of the secret she’d carried for too long. She was staring at the uniform that filled her vision, trying to summon her courage, when her husband’s deep voice broke the quiet.

  “I’m sorry about the babe, Marianne.”

  “I, too,” she whispered.

  She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t!

  “Beatrix wrote that you had a hard time of it.”

  A shudder wracked her. The scarlet uniform blurred before her eyes, became a sea of blood. It had soaked her, drenched the mattresses, stained the carpet. She hadn’t thought she could lose so much and survive. Nor had the surgeons Beatrix rushed to her bedside.

  Given a choice, though, Marianne would have gladly exchanged her life for the babe’s. She’d wanted a child so badly, had longed to lavish on its small, warm person all the love she’d lost when her own parents had died in a carriage accident and left her consigned to her great aunt’s care. She’d longed, too, to present Charles with the heir he’d wed her for.

  A knuckle curled under her chin and tipped up her head. The regret in the blue eyes gazing down at her slashed in
to her soul.

  “I’ll never forgive myself for the way I rushed you into marriage, knowing I must leave within weeks. I’m sorry I left you alone for so many years.”

  Pride kept her tears at bay. Pride, and the knowledge that he couldn’t possibly regret their hasty wedding any more than she now did.

  “You didn’t know the war would last so long. No one expected it to.”

  “No one ever does.”

  His grim reply stiffened her resolve to have it all out now, before she lost her nerve.

  “I wasn’t alone these past years. I made friends here in London and…” She drew in a steadying breath. “And I have my work.”

  “Ah, yes. Your work." He traced the line of her jaw with his thumb. “You mentioned it in your letters, but very modestly. If even half of what Beatrix wrote is true, I understand you’ve become quite absorbed in your efforts to help the children orphaned by the war.”

  “Not just by the war. We’ve expanded our efforts a bit.”

  And ‘absorbed’ hardly described her passionate activities on behalf of the urchins she and Edmond rescued from London’s slums. Some had been left in the care of relatives when their fathers marched off to war, only to be lost or abandoned in the streets. Some had been stolen from their homes and sold to brothels to satisfy disgusting sexual desires Marianne had heard whispers of. Many, like the tousle-haired imp currently residing in a cozy attic bedroom above-stairs, were small and quick and much sought after as pickpockets and chimney sweeps.

  If Marianne couldn’t hold a babe of her own in her arms, she could at least help these poor, wretched children find homes. And if some of her methods for rescuing them put her outside the pale of the Royal Society for the Care of Foundlings and earned her frequent scolds from Lady Beatrix, so be it!