The Sergeant's Lady Read Online Free PDF Page A

adulterous woman could hide the evidence of her crimes by thinking of her husband’s face and form at the critical moment, to make any offspring conceived look like the husband instead of the lover.”
    “That’s ridiculous,” Matheson agreed. “And if the lady in question wanted to think of her husband at such moments, why, she wouldn’t make a cuckold of him, would she?”
    Will and the captain chuckled while Montmorency smiled thinly. That lad was much too serious. If he was to survive in the army, he needed to learn to have a proper laugh.
    “You should go to your mess, Atkins,” the captain said. “Bailey shot a hare and gave it to the sergeants in Juana’s honor. You won’t want to miss your share.”
    He set down his half-finished coffee. “No indeed. That will be a feast.”
    ***
    George Montmorency found himself, yet again, alone. After Atkins had left, Captain Matheson had dismissed George as well. Now he wandered around the edge of the olive grove avoiding contact with anyone until dinner at the officers’ mess. He wished he were home. He had never wanted an army career, and at two-and-twenty he felt absurdly old to begin one. Many of his fellow junior lieutenants and ensigns were mere boys. And if the choice of regiment had been his own, he never would have selected the Rifles. They were respected for their daring on the battlefield, but George would have preferred a more genteel regiment. Yet he needed to rise quickly for the sake of his mother and sisters. And the easiest way to do that was to join a regiment that saw a great deal of the fighting and hope one was lucky enough to fill a vacancy made by combat rather than create one.
    Deciding he should wear a fresh shirt for dinner, George crawled into his tent. He frowned to discover he had only one clean shirt left. Normally he took his laundry to Juana Martínez, but that was impossible with her just that day delivered of a child. How long did it take women of her sort to recover? Perhaps a woman who had given birth along the roadside and then made it to camp before sundown needed no respite from her usual tasks. He would ask Lieutenant O’Brian at dinner.
    George wished the Rifles had been assigned a place in the village that formed the center of the army’s encampment. Then the officers would’ve been billeted in a house. He hated sleeping in this shabby tent, hardly better than the soldiers’ makeshift shelters, but he could not afford a better tent or a horse. He alone of Third Company’s officers had to march alongside the men. Even rough-hewn, barely genteel Lieutenant O’Brian had a sturdy little Spanish horse.
    But George must endure to save Mama and his dear sisters from poverty and degradation. He wished any path other than the army had been open to him. It wasn’t that he feared combat. He heartily disliked campaign life, marching through dust and heat, sleeping in the open air and being forced to sip coffee with a man who would have been beneath his notice in England.
    ***
    Dan appeared at Will’s elbow before he could find the sergeants’ mess on his own.
    “Where’s Juana?” Will asked.
    “Under the best shade tree in the camp, being treated like a queen. I came to find you. Bailey gave us a hare.”
    “Captain Matheson mentioned it.”
    They began walking. “Speaking of captains,” Dan said. “Did you tell him about Captain Arrington?”
    “I did, and he said I did exactly right.”
    “Of course, but did you need to be so…flashy about it?”
    Will clenched his hand into a fist. “What was I to do? Let him ride Juana down?”
    “Were you protecting Juana or Mrs. Arrington?”
    “Both of them,” Will admitted.
    “You had no business stepping between a man and his wife.”
    Dan was right. The law gave a husband such absolute power over his wife that Will had no more right to prevent Captain Arrington from dragging his wife away than he would’ve had to countermand an officer’s orders. But as a man who had