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

by Merline Lovelace

  “I’m Major Trent. I live here.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I’ve been away,” he explained, smiling, “and only just returned. Aren’t you up rather late?”

  “I couldn’t thleep.”

  She must be the daughter of one of the servants. No doubt she’d slipped away from her quarters below stairs to warm herself by the library’s fire.

  “Shall I ring for Dunston?” Charles inquired, certain the butler would know which parent to deliver the sprite to. “He’ll take you back to your room.”

  She regarded him through wide, guileless eyes, then held up her arms. “I want you to take me.”

  Charmed, Charles bent and scooped her up. “Let’s find your mama or papa, shall we? I’m sure they’d be quite worried if they knew you were gone.”

  He’d taken only a step or two when the sound of running footsteps thudded outside the library. A scrawny youth of eight or nine streaked into the room. When he caught sight of Charles and the girl cradled against his chest, he skidded to an abrupt halt. His jaw thrust out belligerently.

  “’Ere! Wot you doin’ with ‘er?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Put ‘er down,” the boy demanded. “Annie ain’t for the loikes of you.”

  Charles hadn’t spent his youth in London without sowing a few wild oats…or catching an occasional glimpse of the city’s dark, twisted underbelly. Before he could respond to the suggestion that he harbored foul intentions toward the cherub in his arms, the thin-shanked youth bunched his fists and advanced into the library.

  “Put ‘er down.”

  “Save your gunpowder for another shot,” Charles advised the bristling youth calmly. “I don’t intend the girl any harm.”

  “So you say.”

  “I assure you, my word is good.”

  “So you say,” the tow-headed urchin repeated ominously. “’Hoo are you, will you answer me that?”

  “I’m Major Trent,” Charles explained for the second time in as many minutes.

  “Wot? Be you Lady Trent’s major?”

  “I am. And you are?”

  “’Enry ‘Ackett.”

  “Well, Henry Hackett, suppose you tell me why you and Annie are up so late and in my library?”

  “I can answer that.”

  Marianne’s agitated reply turned all eyes to the library door. She rustled in on a swish of taffeta to relieve Charles of his clinging burden.

  “Annie, darling, you promised you’d stay abed.”

  “I wasn’t thleepy.”

  “Yes, well, perhaps some warm milk will help. Henry, would you be so kind as to take Annie up to her room? I’ll have one of the maids bring her…and you…some milk.”

  “I don’t s’pose you’d make that beer?” the boy asked hopefully.

  “No, I wouldn’t.”

  “Cor, I thought as much." His thin shoulders lifted in a resigned shrug. “Com’on then, Annie.”

  Grasping the girl’s hand, he started for the door. He took a step or two, then halted and glanced down at the angelic face of his companion.

  “’Ere!” he declared. “You’d better give the major whatever you dabbled from ‘im first.”

  A thumb worked its way into the girl’s mouth again.

  “Go ‘on, now,” Henry admonished sternly. “Give it back.”

  With a soulful look, the girl turned and retraced her steps. She stood before Charles with wide eyes swimming in innocence. When she opened her fist, it held the diamond stickpin that had pinned his snowy neckcloth in place not two minutes ago.

  Disbelieving, Charles glanced down at his neckcloth, then at the girl, then at Marianne. His wife heaved a sigh.

  “I do apologize. Annie’s trying. Truly, she is. But her fingers are so nimble and quick, she can’t seem to resist practicing her, er, skills.”

  “She’s one o’the best,” Henry confirmed with a grin. “I couldn’t do better meself if I was to try me hand at the nimble-namble, which I don’t intend to, mind you. It’s a shop-dodger, I am.”

  With that obscure comment, he ushered the girl out of the room. Charles watched their progress as far as the curving staircase before turning to his wife.

  “A shop-dodger?” he inquired politely.

  “I’m not exactly sure all the term encompasses. I’m told it involves snatching wares from merchant’s shelves and making off with them.”

  “I see." Thoughtfully, Charles reinserted the stickpin. “You will explain, won’t you, why a pickpocket and a street thief are at present making their home here?”

  Flushing, his wife pleated her skirts. “I intend to send them down to the home farm to join the others. Edmond…Mr. St. Just…is making the necessary arrangements.”

  “I see,” he said again.

  So this was the work she’d taken up, the cause she’d written him about. The obsession Beatrix had railed against.

  “Just out of curiosity, how many ‘others’ have you sent down to the home farm?”

  Her forehead creased. “I believe the last count was seventy-three.”

  “Seventy-three!”

  “It may only be seventy-two,” she amended hastily. “Henry has made the trip several times. Unfortunately, he has a tendency to run away. He claims he can only squeeze milk from a goat for so long before he gets a hankering for city soot.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Charles drawled, still struggling to absorb his wife’s astounding revelations.

  Her flush deepened at his sardonic tone. Lifting her chin, she answered with a bite of her own. “You needn’t think that I have allowed the children to run wild and harass your crofters. Nor have I squandered your estate to provide for them, as Beatrix so often suggests. I’ve found homes for most, and pay for the upkeep of the rest with the very generous allowance you arranged for me before you left.”

  “Neither the crofters nor the financial arrangements concern me,” Charles protested.

  “Something obviously does. May I inquire what?”

  “You, Marianne."

  Crossing the room, he curled a knuckle under her chin and tipped her face to his. She’d changed so much. A stranger gazed back at him. Mature, self-possessed, and so damnably attractive that Charles felt his lower extremities go tight once more.

  “You just gave me a hint of what you suffered after you lost the babe,” he said. “Do you have the strength for this kind of crusade?”

  “Yes,” she answered quietly. “I do. I’m not the girl you left three years ago. Nor the wretched, despairing woman who sobbed for weeks after she lost her babe. I’ve found a purpose. One that will sustain me after our divorce.”

  Charles gritted his teeth. In a tone of absolute finality, he spoke his last word on the subject. “There will be no divorce.”

  Chapter Three

  Cannon to the right of them,

  Cannon to the left of them,

  Cannon in front of them

  Volleyed and thunder’d…

  The Charge of the Light Brigade

  “Thank you, Hardwick." With a smile, Charles dismissed the valet who had served him since boyhood. “I’ll finish undressing.”

  The venerable Hardwick folded his lips in disapproval of the free and easy ways Charles had adopted during his years abroad. He might even have forgotten himself so far as to protest if the third party in the bedroom hadn’t advanced across the Brussels carpet, bristling with indignation.

  “Here, where are you going with the major’s boots?”

  The short, barrel-chested trooper who had served Charles as batman in the Crimea glared at his rival. Not ten minutes after Dragoon Sergeant O’Donnelly’s arrival with the major’s baggage, the two loyal servants had taken one look at each other, fired a few opening salvos, and promptly declared all-out war.

  “I’m taking the boots to polish them,” Hardwick replied in his loftiest manner, “as I do every night Sir Charles is in residence.”

  Sergeant O’Donnelly squared his sho
ulders. “Well, you kin just take yer mits off them leathers. I’ve been shining ‘em these past three years. I ain’t about to let no civilian ruint ‘em by rubbin’ on some bluidy mixture of cork soot and champagne.”

  “Champagne is for those who know no better,” Hardwick sniffed in disdain. “I use a blacking of my own recipe.”

  “D’ya now?” Still pugnacious, the banty legged sergeant followed the valet through the door. “And what’s in this here recipe, boyo?”

  “That, my good man, is no concern of yours.”

  Charles paid little attention to the exchange of fire as he tugged off his neckcloth and tossed it aside. When two combatants finally left his spacious, high-ceilinged chamber, his gaze went to the door that connected his bedroom with his wife’s.

  The panel was made of stout English oak, intricately carved and polished to a gleaming luster. It should have muffled all sound, but Charles had developed the acute hearing of a man who’d spent the past several years sleeping with one ear tuned for the distant booms that signaled an imminent barrage. Despite the thick panel, he picked up the murmur of Marianne’s maid counting out brush strokes.

  In his mind’s eye, he saw his wife’s long, shining sweep of honey-brown hair. Saw, too, the sloping curve of her shoulders above a lacy nightdress. His groin tightened as memories of the few nights they’d shared a bed crowded into his head.

  He’d handled her so gently. Soothing her maidenly fears. Taking great care not to bruise her creamy flesh. She’d been an apt pupil, but when Charles had thought of his young bride during his long years in the Crimea, it was with a sort of affectionate regard.

  There was nothing affectionate in the heat that raced through him now. And it wasn’t his young bride he craved with an urgent, growing desire, but the woman Marianne had become.

  “Goodnight, ma’am.”

  “Sleep well, Judith.”

  The indistinct murmurs drew him toward the closed door. He’d tell Marianne about his change of heart, he decided, his pulse quickening. Explain how siring an heir had lost it’s significance in the senseless carnage of war.

  They were wed. They would hold to their vows. Maintain a household. Share their lives. And share a bed, assuming Charles could convince her to pick up where that gut-wrenching kiss had left off this afternoon.

  Wrapped up in the remembered heat of that kiss, he almost missed the snick of her bedroom door opening again. A plaintive cry stopped him with his hand on the brass door knob.

  “I had a bad dweam.”

  Annie. A wry grin tugged at his mouth. He’d have to watch his pockets until Henry Hackett and the little girl departed for the home farm that supported the Trent country estate.

  “Oh, poor darling,” his wife murmured. “Here, climb under the covers. You can sleep beside me.”

  The major’s grin slipped. He stood with one hand on the knob, his body tight and aching. The sound of scampering feet made him slowly, reluctantly retreat.

  That Marianne would share her bed with a street urchin added another, surprising dimension to the woman he’d married. That she wasn’t sharing it with her husband kept Charles awake long after the rest of the household settled into slumber.

  Somewhere in the dark hours of the night he realized that his slender, stubborn wife had completely erased the memory of the vibrant beauty he’d once loved to distraction. It was Marianne’s piquant face that filled his mind. Marianne’s emergence from her chrysalis that fed his curiosity as much as his desire.

  After several sleepless hours, Charles concluded that he’d have to do what he hadn’t had time to do during his hurried courtship. He’d have to woo his wife.

  Like the well-trained cavalry officer he was, he clasped his hands under his head and began to lay out a campaign. He’d take matters slowly, he determined. Learn her likes and dislikes. Gift her with flowers and pearls and other trinkets to wear at the parades and balls that would commence to celebrate the victory in the Crimea once the full contingent of troops returned home. In the process, he’d convince her to lay aside her absurd idea of a divorce once and for all.

  Unfortunately, his military duties precluded immediate implementation of his campaign to win his wife. Charles spent the next week attending to the thousands of tasks incumbent on an army’s return from war.

  Dunbar’s Dragoons, founded when Lord Dunbar raised mounted levies for service in 1685, boasted a long and distinguished record of service. They’d fought in the American Colonial Wars from 1776 to ‘79. Had won honors at Talavera and Salamanca before participating in Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo in 1815. Had faced formidable artillery at Allwal in 1848, during the Second Sikh Wars. But the regiment had suffered some of its most grievous losses in the Crimea.

  The troop transports arriving each day at Portsmouth disgorged hundreds of wounded and ill men who required immediate care. Their mounts demanded similar attention. Supplies and equipment had to be inventoried and marked for repair or replacement. Troops recruited specifically for service in the recent war grumbled constantly in the way of all soldiers while they awaited demobilization.

  Charles left the house early each morning and returned late each night, when his duties allowed him to return at all. Whatever hour he arrived home, he found a cozy fire and a collation of cold pheasant or chicken breast, rare roast beef, fruit tarts, and cheeses waiting for him in the library. Even more welcome was the selection of ale, wine, and prime French brandy.

  He assumed his ever-efficient butler had arranged the late night feasts until he strolled into the library a little before midnight the second week after his homecoming and found Marianne frowning over the tray. At the sound of his footsteps, she tapped a finger against her chin.

  “Perhaps we should include one or two of the beef and kidney pies Cook made for Henry, Dunston. They’re not quite as good cold, but perhaps the major will like them.”

  “If Cook made them, I’m sure I will.”

  Startled, she spun around. A quick flush stained her cheeks. That she’d mistaken his approach for that of the butler was obvious. What wasn’t as obvious was the reason for that intriguing blush.

  Tossing his hat aside, Charles unbelted his sword. It landed on a chair with a clatter that echoed loudly in the late night quiet.

  “I thought you were Dunston,” she said, recovering her composure, although a delicate rose hue still tinted her cheeks. “I sent him to instruct Cook to cut into a fresh wheel of Stilton. This wedge has dried a bit.”

  The mere thought of the creamy, blue-veined cheese produced at dairies in Derbyshire and Leicestershire had been enough to make Charles salivate during the worst months of deprivation at the front.

  “Lord, I missed the bite of the blue,” he confessed, reaching past her to crumble off a morsel. “Stilton’s always been my favorite.”

  “Yes, I know."

  He paused with the tantalizing bit halfway to his mouth. “How could you know that?”

  “From your letters." Her lips curved. “You made mention of it rather frequently.”

  The small, surprisingly sweet smile started a quiver in his stomach, but the fact that she’d gleaned such an accurate understanding of his tastes from his hurried letters humbled Charles. Just a few nights ago, he’d decided to resort to a formal campaign to get to know his wife. Marianne, apparently, hadn’t required any such elaborate plan.

  “I tried to send you a wheel of Stilton, you know.”

  “No,” he replied, hitching a brow, “I didn’t.”

  “I sent a number of boxes packed with foodstuffs and warm stockings and other items, as a matter of fact. I guessed they never reached you when you didn’t remark on them in your letters.”

  “The re-supply lines to the front became somewhat tangled.”

  With that magnificent understatement, Charles dismissed the nightmare of incompetence that had stockpiled ton after ton of desperately needed food and equipment at Balaklava harbor, while British troops just six miles away starved and
stole out in the dark of night to retrieve spent cannonballs.

  “I read about the supply problems in the dispatches in The Times,” Marianne said, shaking her head. “However did we win the war, when the foodstuffs we shipped in rotted right there at the harbor or were stolen by dockhands and sold to the very Russians you were sent to fight!”

  As impressed by her detailed understanding of the situation as by the fierce light that sprang into her eyes, Charles grinned. “Perhaps you should come along the next time we go on the march,” he teased. “Several of the officers’ wives follow the drum and very ably manage their husbands’ mess.”

  Popping the bit of cheese into his mouth, he bent to examine the rest of the tray’s contents and missed the look of longing that swept over his wife’s face.

  He wasn’t serious, Marianne knew, but she couldn’t imagine anything more thrilling than accompanying her husband on the march. The long years spent catering to her cantankerous old great-aunt had subdued her spirit but hadn’t destroyed it by any means. She allowed herself a few magical moments to imagine stepping ashore beside her husband in some far-away port, filled with exotic sights and scents, before reality crashed down on her. By the time the major sailed off with his regiment again, Marianne would no longer be his wife.

  Ignoring the pain that lanced into her breast, she forced a smile. “You’ve yet to recover from the last campaign. I sincerely hope you don’t embark on a new one any time soon.”

  A small smile played at the corners of his mouth. “Do you?”

  Wondering at the odd look he gave her, she dipped her head and bid him goodnight. “It’s late, and I know you must be fatigued as well as hungry. I’ll leave you to enjoy your supper.”

  “Won’t you join me? If you’re not too tired?”

  “Well…”

  “I should enjoy the company…and the chance to hear of Henry Hackett’s latest exploits,” Charles added casually. “From your remarks a moment ago, I take it the boy hasn’t yet left for the home farm? Or has he been and already made his way back?”