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

by Merline Lovelace

  Thoughts of the restraints her sister-in-law had attempted to impose on her banished Marianne’s incipient tears and replaced them with a militant sparkle. The face she raised to her husband was very different from the one he’d tipped up so gently a few moments ago.

  His thumb stilled. Surprise showed in his blue eyes. Surprise, and a sudden spark of interest.

  She should have moved away then, taken a step to the side and eased out from under the weight of his strong, warm hand. Instead, she stood like a starstruck fool while his hand slid to her nape.

  “I swore I wouldn’t do this,” he murmured, slowly drawing her forward.

  She’d made the same vow. Yet she could no more stop him than she could herself. One kiss, Marianne thought desperately. Surely she was allowed one brief kiss!

  She’d counted without the hunger fed by three years of yearning. At the first brush of his lips on hers, it leapt to life, raged through her veins, drowned out the warnings her mind tried to shout. With a sound halfway between a sigh and a moan, she rose up on tiptoe and fit her mouth to his.

  Hellfire and damnation!

  The moment his lips covered hers, Charles realized his mistake. He’d sworn to move cautiously during this long-delayed reunion. Had ridden up from Portsmouth determined to sort through the mess he’d made of things by plunging Marianne so precipitously into matrimony.

  He’d known at the time she was too young, too sheltered. Buried away all those years in that dank, echoing tomb her great-aunt called a home she’d barely tasted of life. Yet she’d shown herself so eager, so trusting. Her clear, moss green eyes had pulled at him, just as her cloud of toffee-colored hair had made his fingers itch to bury themselves in its fragrant mass. And her mouth, so soft and full, had tempted him.

  They way it did now…

  Warm and eager, her lips moved under his. Despite the promises he’d made to himself during the voyage home, despite every stricture of common sense, Charles tossed aside his shako, wrapped his arm around her waist, and pulled her up against him.

  Instantly, his senses registered the fact that slender bride he’d wed three years ago had matured in more than just age. Her layers of petticoats and corseting couldn’t disguise the ripe curves straining against him.

  This wasn’t the blushing, untutored miss he’d taken to bed and gently teased and taught. Nor the young wife who’d professed herself content to curl up in a chair by the fire and listen in wide-eyed silence while he instructed her in the matters that would require her attention after he sailed for war.

  This was a woman grown, with a woman’s need quivering through the body pressed against his. A hunger Charles hadn’t felt – hadn’t expected to feel! – since the day Abigail Warrington died raced through him.

  He was no callow youth, however. He hadn’t spent sixteen years in uniform and three years in the Crimea without learning how to bridle such unruly passions. Slowly, with a reluctance that staggered him, he raised his head. His wife stared up at him, her eyes so wide and bruised with emotion that Charles damned himself all over again.

  “Marianne, sweetheart, it’s all right. We’ll sort through…”

  “We must talk.”

  Her ragged whisper sliced into him like a Russian saber. “We will,” he said calmly. “Come and sit beside me.”

  “No." Tugging free of his light clasp, she retreated a step or two. “I’m so glad you’ve come home safely, Charles. I’ve prayed… I’ve been waiting… I must…”

  “You must what?” he asked prompted gently when she stumbled to a halt.

  Anguished green eyes looked straight into his. “I must ask you to divorce me.”

  Chapter Two

  Theirs not to make reply,

  Theirs not to reason why,

  Theirs but to do or die…

  The Charge of the Light Brigade

  The major stared down at his wife, stunned by her outrageous demand.

  Beatrix had warned him in her letters that all was not well at home. Marianne’s increasingly stilted communications had hinted at some inner perturbation. Yet Charles hadn’t realized things had reached such a desperate pass that his wife would call down the stigma of divorce on her head.

  She’d be an outcast, a social leper in this age where the Queen’s relationship with her beloved Prince Albert allowed only one view of marriage. Husbands might seek more exotic pleasures in the brothels that flourished in all parts of London. Wives might take a lover if they were utterly discreet and allowed no hint of scandal to get about. But divorce carried with it lifelong disgrace…particularly for women, as the law allowed only men to put aside their wives.

  “Do you love him so much?” he asked, searching her heat-shaped face.

  “Him?” Confusion blanked Marianne’s expression, followed swiftly by a rush of red. “I see Beatrix has kept you well apprised. I presume by ‘him’ you refer to Edmond?”

  “Yes.”

  “I do love him very much." Her chin tipped. “As a friend and trusted companion.”

  The major’s brows snapped together. Neither his wife’s letters nor those of his sister had mentioned any other possible suitor, but he could think of no other explanation for her extraordinary request.

  “Is there someone else, then?”

  Anger flared in her eyes, sparking a green flame her husband had never seen in them before. “You could not know me very well if you would ask such a question!”

  “It appears I do not know you at all,” he said slowly.

  Her chin came up another notch. “I have never dishonored you or my marriage vows.”

  In the few seconds it took for the echo of her ringing declaration to fade, Charles weighed her words and the brief insight he’d gained into her character. In those same few seconds, he decided she spoke the truth. He’d spent too many years in command to doubt his instincts when it came to judging character. Although the shy, stammering young girl Beatrix had brought to his attention three years ago hadn’t roused in him the same wild passion as the willowy beauty he’d once loved with all his soul, he’d recognized immediately Marianne’s intelligence and integrity.

  Those qualities had led him to ask her to be his wife. The same qualities now shone as bright as a warning beacon in her eyes. Although logic and the dire hints in his sister’s letters might dictate otherwise, he believed her. Which didn’t explain her astonishing demand of a few moments ago.

  “If you don’t wish to be free to marry St. Just, would you care to tell me what this talk of divorce is all about?”

  The fire faded from her eyes. Turning away, she moved to the windows. Sunlight burnished her hair to honey-gold and shimmered on the taffeta covering her stiff-set shoulders.

  “I can’t conceive any more children.”

  Her voice lacked all inflection, yet the message it delivered drove into Charles like a Bengal lance. Stunned, he stared at her rigid back.

  “When I lost the babe, the physicians tut-tutted and patted me on the head and assured me I could have others. All but one. He didn’t spare me the truth.”

  The pain buried in her flat, colorless recital twisted his gut. Striding across the room, Charles gently turned her around.

  “Why does this one physician’s opinion carry so much more weight than all the others?”

  “It’s not just his opinion. I know.”

  “How?”

  A tide of red washed through her cheeks, but she refused to look away. “A woman’s body is governed by certain rules of nature. When those go awry… When she doesn’t follow the moon’s courses for months on end…” She lifted her clenched fist, let them drop. “She knows.”

  Charles swore a silent, savage curse. His conscience was already heavy with the knowledge that he’d rushed a young, inexperienced female into marriage after scant weeks of courtship. Yet the guilt that had nagged at him on intermittent occasions during their long years apart was nothing to the withering self-disgust that now seared him. He’d done his damndest to impregn
ate his innocent bride, then callously left her alone to suffer through the loss of a babe and the wrenching aftermath.

  “I’m sorry you or Beatrix didn’t write me about this. I would have arrived home better prepared to offer you comfort.”

  “Beatrix doesn’t know,” his wife said stiffly, surprising him once again. “I thought it a matter for discussion only between you and me. As is the matter of our divorce.”

  “Let’s speak no more of divorce. We swore vows to each other, Marianne. We’ll hold to them.”

  “No, Charles. You were truthful with me from the start, for which I’ll always be grateful. There’s never been any talk of love between us. Only respect and… And affection.”

  “Respect and affection are more than many couples bring to a marriage. You were well pleased to accept them three years ago.”

  “That’s true but our circumstances have changed considerably since then. You wanted an heir. I…” Her gaze wavered, turned away, came back to his. “I wanted what your name could give me.”

  He sensed there was more, but she plunged ahead before he could decide what.

  “We struck a bargain, you and I. One I can no longer honor. I must insist that you institute divorce proceedings.”

  “Well, I don’t intend to do anything of the sort,” he said roundly, “so you may put the idea out of your head.”

  “I cannot. You must see that I…”

  “The subject is not one I wish to discuss further.”

  Any of his subordinates would have recognized his tone and fallen back to regroup immediately. His wife, Charles discovered to his complete surprise, possessed a good deal more pluck than his battle-hardened staff.

  “Very well,” she replied after a moment of heavy silence. “We shall not speak of it further. You may confer with your solicitor and he can then explain to me what must be done to terminate our union under the eyes of the law. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go instruct the servants to draw a bath. You must wish to refresh yourself before dinner.”

  Head high, hoops swaying, she glided out, leaving Charles torn between exasperation and amazement. He wasn’t used to having his orders questioned, much less rebutted. That his slight, slender wife would dare to do so astounded him.

  He shoved a hand through hair bleached by the Crimea’s fierce sun. This wasn’t at all the homecoming he’d envisioned. Despite Beatrix’s hints and warnings, he hadn’t expected to walk into his home and find that twig, St. Just, mooning over his wife. Nor had he anticipated the hot, unbridled lust that had slammed into him when he’d taken Marianne in his arms.

  All these months, he’d thought of her only as the shy, blushing bride he’d tutored so carefully in the ways of love. That she could rouse such passion with one kiss astonished him…almost as much as the fact that she’d shrugged aside his refusal to so much as consider a divorce.

  He was still pondering the unexpected turn of events when he caught the rattle of carriage wheels on cobblestone. His batman, he guessed, arriving from the ship just docked at Portsmouth with his gear. Charles strode into the hall and reached the stairs just as the footman opened the door. Instead of his military aide, a matron dressed in rustling black bombazine sailed through the portal. She caught sight of him on the stairs and gave a joyous shriek.

  “Charles!”

  With a fond smile, he went down to greet his sister. She was twelve years his senior, fashionably stout, and, in her own words, very comfortably widowed. She was also so overbearing in her ways that her even closest friends shied away from her on occasion. But no one – Charles least of all – could deny that she held her only sibling in the deepest affection.

  “I was in Somerset! I came as soon as I returned home and read your note.” She held out her hands, her face wreathed in smiles. “My dear, dear boy, how good it is to see you.”

  “And you, Bea.”

  Dodging the towering plumes on her bonnet, Charles bent to kiss her cheek. Arm in arm, they went back up the stairs to the parlor. Beatrix stopped just inside, frowning as she cast an eye around room.

  “Don’t tell me Marianne wasn’t at home to greet you! If the dratted girl has gone haring off on another of her rescue expeditions, I shall be all out of patience with her.”

  “Dratted girl?” Charles lifted a brow. “Are you speaking of my wife, Bea?”

  The cool inquiry raised a flush in his sister’s cheeks. “You can’t know all Marianne’s been about in your absence,” she began portentously.

  “No, of course I can’t, but I’m sure she’ll tell me when we’ve had time to talk.”

  The warning wasn’t lost on Beatrix. Her cheeks went from bright red to an alarming purple hue. As much as he loved her, Charles had learned as a youth how to spike her guns when necessary. He’d never been the kind to let anyone, including his forceful sister, ride roughshod over him.

  Despite the clear warning, however, Beatrix forged ahead. She was obviously laboring under strong emotion. “As much as it pains me, I must speak to you about Marianne and Edmond St. Just.”

  “There’s no need, I assure you. St. Just was with my wife when I arrived home.”

  “After I told him he shouldn’t call here any more? The insolent puppy!”

  “That was my thought exactly,” Charles drawled, recalling the scene he’d interrupted. He’d trained enough subalterns to recognize the signs of a lovesick swain when he saw them. Whatever St. Just’s feelings for his wife, however, Marianne didn’t return them in kind. That much she’d made clear.

  “St. Just is a pup, Bea, and one who doesn’t particularly concern me. Nor need he concern you.”

  Even the strong-minded Lady Beatrix couldn’t fail to heed that steely note of command. She bit back whatever she’d intended to say and folded her lips into a tight line.

  Now, Charles thought on a wry note, he’d have to teach his surprisingly strong-minded wife to heed his commands, as well.

  “Marianne’s upstairs,” he informed his sister, smiling to take the edge from her scowl. “Come, take off your bonnet and shawl and be comfortable while I ring for Dunston to bring some sherry. You must tell me all the latest London happenings before I go up to change for dinner. You’ll join us, won’t you?”

  Four hours later, Charles acknowledged silently that he’d committed two rather serious tactical errors since returning home. The first was sweeping Marianne into his arms when common sense and three years of separation dictated a more deliberate pace for their reunion. The second was inviting Beatrix to join them on his first evening home.

  He recovered from his second blunder easily enough. After changing into black britches, a snowy linen shirt, and one of the cutaway frock coats his valet had kept under covers during his long absence, he entertained his wife and sister with a highly edited account of his years in the Crimea. Despite the obvious constraint between the two women, the meal passed tolerably well.

  Correcting his first blunder took a good deal more effort, however. The lust that had slammed into Charles earlier that afternoon kicked him square in the gut again each time his glance strayed to the woman seated opposite him at the long, polished table. Her dinner gown of emerald silk bared her shoulders and gave him a tantalizing glimpse of high, full breasts. In the glow of the oil lamps, her skin carried the luster of pearls. Her maid had dressed her brown hair into a complicated arrangement of tiny braids and long, shoulder-teasing curls that caught her husband’s eye whenever she moved.

  All through dinner he battled urges better suited to a barnyard than to an elegant room papered in flocked red damask and hung with portraits of long-dead ancestors. Thus it was with a feeling of decided relief that Charles escorted Beatrix downstairs to her carriage after an hour spent over sherry in the library.

  “Good night, dear boy.”

  “Good night, Bea.”

  “See that you get some rest,” she instructed, settling a carriage rug over her lap to ward off the April chill. “You must be exhausted after your long journ
ey.”

  Rest was the last thing on his mind when Charles remounted the stairs. His body tightened painfully at the thought of the woman he’d left in the library.

  What a damnable coil, he thought wryly. He’d returned home expecting to gently re-introduce his bride to the delights of the marital bed. Now here he was, hard as the regimental flagpole and aching for a sensual, seductive wife who wished for a divorce.

  He could blame no one but himself for this tangle, Charles admitted. As Marianne had so bluntly reminded him, he’d been honest about his reasons for marrying her. A puffed up sense of his own worth had translated into a desire for a son or daughter, someone to carry on the Trent line if he didn’t return from the Crimea.

  Against all odds, he had returned. He’d survived three years of war, pestilence, and disease…not to mention the suicidal charge at Balaklava. And now, for reasons he had yet to fully understand, the primitive need to propagate that had spurred him into marriage seemed to have lost its potency.

  Perhaps those three brutal years had taught him the preposterousness of such human vanity, Charles thought. He’d seen so many of his comrades die. Wondered at the incomprehensible twist of fate that would cause a cannonball to sever one man completely in two while another merely knocked a second trooper from his horse, leaving him dazed but otherwise unhurt. Making a mark on posterity now seemed far less important to Charles than simply living each day as it came.

  And each night.

  His belly tightened at the thought of the hours ahead. Surely, he could convince Marianne to forget this absurd notion of divorce. Explain that he viewed the matter of an heir differently now than he had three years ago. His step quickening, he thrust opened the library doors and strode inside.

  It wasn’t his wife he found curled up on the hump-backed sofa, however, but a golden-haired nymph of four or five with limpid blue eyes and a thumb stuck firmly in her mouth.

  “Hallo,” he said, checking his stride. “Who are you?”

  The thumb slid out. “My name isth Annie,” she replied solemnly. “Who are you?”