Coulson's Wife (The Coulson Series) Read Online Free PDF

hillbilly. Before she could respond
a second house maid entered the room carrying a tray of food. Both women wore
matching uniforms and crisply starched aprons.
    The new bride didn’t
feel like the mistress of the house the way the two young maids were ordering
her around, pulling her from her bed and shoving her to the small table with
the tray of food. Reluctantly sampling the breakfast, she warily watched the
two maids remove her bed linens, giggling as they did so. By the time she
finished breakfast they had remade the bed and were turning their attention to
her. It was obvious they intended to dress her as if she was a small child.
    “Stop!” Mary Ellen
shouted as one maid started tugging on the nightgown, attempting to remove the
garment. The two girls jumped backwards, away from the obviously agitated
bride.
    “While Mr. Coulson as
my husband may have some say in my daily schedule and wardrobe, I assure you—the
household staff does not. I have been dressing myself for as long as I can
remember, and unless I specifically request your help, do not presume to take
it upon yourselves to dress me, drag me from my bed or force feed me breakfast.
Do you understand?” Mary Ellen no longer sounded like a timid seventeen-year-old
girl, but more like the determined lady of the house.
    The two young maids,
who were each at least eight years older than the bride, nodded their heads
nervously, taken aback by their mistress’ authoritative tone. Neither knew Mary
Ellen’s furor was stoked by days of frustration. She did not want this
marriage. While she might have submitted to the will of both her father and husband,
as she was taught a good daughter and wife must do, she did have her limit and
she had just reached it.
    Growing up as the only
girl in a house with ten boys, she’d become a surrogate mother to her brothers,
hardly a task for a timid soul. To survive, she learned to take a firm hand
with her younger siblings and refused to take any nonsense from the older ones.
Maybe she hadn’t taken a firm stand with her father and her husband, but she
definitely would with the household staff.
    Mary Ellen wasn’t sure
if the two girls told their coworkers about the dressing down the new mistress
gave them, but the rest of the staff treated her with respect befitting a woman
in her position and did not presume to assert their control. Even Mrs. Parker
came to her the next day —i nstead
of waiting a month as Randall suggested — asking for her input on the next week’s menu.
    During the first week
of her marriage, Mary Ellen saw very little of her husband. He joined her for
dinner each evening, and together they silently ate what the cook prepared for them.
Each night at 8 p.m. he promptly came to her room, climbed atop her body and
tried to make a son. After the first night, Mary Ellen began applying the
lotion between her legs, and if Randall ever noticed, he didn’t say anything.
    She didn’t see William
Hunter that first week; they had no visitors. None of the household staff were
chatty, particularly not the two young women who greeted her the first morning.
They silently attended to their tasks and only spoke to their mistress when
absolutely necessary. Mary Ellen began to feel a little guilty for being so
harsh with the two, and told herself she would need to talk to them so they
could stop acting so frightened all the time. She knew how painful it was to be
constantly frightened of someone. That was how she felt about her husband.
    On her week’s
anniversary, she sat down and wrote a letter to her Aunt Rachel.  In the letter
she asked, Would you please send me the recipe to that lotion you gave me ?
      

Chapter Five
     
    “I can go instead,”
William suggested. He sat alone with his business partner in the study of
Randall’s home, waiting for dinner to be served.
    “You hate Chicago, and
this deal is really my baby. It’d be best if you stay here and take care of
things at the plant.” Randall