Cheryl Reavis by An Unexpected Wife Read Free Book Online

because of the circumstances he’d
found himself in.
    He had to struggle to keep control of his emotions. He hadn’t
expected to hear that the Markham household as he knew it was essentially gone.
Finding out that Maria had married one of them was hard enough, but it was even
more difficult to accept that this Yankee colonel had taken up residence in the
house where his family—especially Samuel—had lived. Lying here now, he wanted to
hear Samuel’s boisterous presence in the house just one more time. Samuel,
running down the hall, bounding up the stairs, whistling, dropping things,
sneaking up on their mother and taking her by surprise with one of his exuberant
hugs. Robert smiled slightly. It had cost the household a whole dozen eggs once
when Samuel in his joyful enthusiasm had made her drop the egg basket she’d been
carrying.
    His smiled faded. There was nothing now but the tread of enemy
soldiers.
    No. The war is over. We aren’t supposed to
be enemies anymore.
    “And you live here, as well?” it suddenly occurred to him to
ask.
    “No. I’m only visiting.”
    “Visiting,” he said, because it all sounded so...normal. Only
it wasn’t normal at all. Nothing was normal anymore.
    His head hurt.
    “Are you—” she started to say, but he interrupted her.
    “Is he good to her?” he asked with a bluntness of his own. “I
want to know.” He turned his head despite the pain so that he could see her
face. The question was disrespectful at best, and far too personal under the
circumstances. He knew perfectly well that she would likely be the last person
to give him a truthful answer, especially when the question in and of itself
suggested that he had no faith whatsoever that her brother could behave well
toward a Southern woman.
    But it couldn’t be helped. She was his only opportunity, the
only person who might actually know.
    She didn’t seem to take offense, however. “He is as good to her
as she will let him be,” she said. “He has to be careful of her Southern
pride.”
    “And you see...that as a...problem?”
    “No, I see it more as a token of his regard for her. He was
quite smitten.”
    “Was. He isn’t smitten now?”
    “The word suggests to me a transient kind of emotion, Mr.
Markham,” she said, clearly trying to explain. “I believe what my brother feels
for Maria is a good deal more than that. Maria has made him happy—when he
thought he would never be happy again. The war...”
    “Yes,” he said when she didn’t continue. “The war.”
    “He was a prisoner,” she said after a moment. “Here.”
    “And now he’s the...?”
    “Occupation commander.”
    “That must be...satisfying, given his...history.”
    “If you’re talking about an opportunity for revenge, it might
have been just that, but for Maria. He loves her dearly. And it isn’t one-sided,
Mr. Markham.”
    “What do the townspeople think of the marriage?”
    “That would depend upon whom you ask, I believe.”
    “Has she suffered for it—for marrying a—the colonel?”
    “The fact that Mrs. Justice and the others are here in the
house ready to take care of her brother, and have been since you arrived, would
suggest that she hasn’t.”
    She was still looking at him steadily, trying to decide, it
seemed to him, precisely how much he should be told of his sister’s situation.
At this point he was certain there was more. Perhaps Mrs. Justice would know.
Asking Mrs. Russell and particularly Mrs. Kinnard was out of the question.
    He loves her dearly .
    And Maria apparently loved him in return. That was the most
important thing, wasn’t it? He couldn’t want more for Maria than that. But,
whether she was happy or not, he still had to face her—and his father. He closed
his eyes. He dreaded it, almost as much as he dreaded facing Eleanor. He had
never answered her letter, but even after all this time, there were things still
to be said.
    He took a wavering breath. The things he’d done—and not
done—had