Soldier of the Queen by Max Hennessy Read Free Book Online Page B

Morning Post , Colby was hardly aware of the headlines beyond it.
    She had always been in the habit of sending him notes and usually they were gushing, but now there was a new tartness in her words that he’d never noticed before, a new firmness that allowed no leeway and no room for manoeuvre or excuse. ‘The wedding could easily be held before the autumn, as you well know ,’ she wrote. ‘Certainly, too long must not elapse. No one must ever know how wicked we have been and you cannot possibly turn from the girl you have wronged .’
    He stared at the prim round writing, his eyes blank and defeated. She had been talking and writing about marriage for days now, making no bones about what was in her mind and, with Colby always stubbornly dodging the issue, here she was again, with another bloody note, sharper in tone and finally putting the ultimatum squarely on the mat before him.
    Wronged! Considering it had been her idea, she was stretching it a bit.
    ‘You all right, boy?’
    As his father spoke, Colby jumped and hastily stuffed the letter away. Major-General Goff was old now but he was as straight as a ramrod, even when he was seated. It had been his grandfather, Joshua Pellew Goff, who had raised the 19th in 1760 after Eyre Coote had smashed the French at the Battle of Wandewash. Returning home with the despatches, he had been granted two thousand acres in Yorkshire, the sum of five hundred pounds and the charter to raise a regiment of light dragoons.
    The room was dark and contained prints of officers in ceremonial dress; pictures and statuettes of horses; mounted spurs; a sabre; and a rake, poker and shovel made out of French cavalry swords collected on the field of Waterloo, which were often used to demonstrate weapon drill. The old man studied his son.
    ‘Look worried,’ he observed. ‘How do you feel these days? Quite recovered? No problems? No colic, strangles or thrush?’ Having rattled off a string of questions to which he clearly expected no replies, the general shifted in his chair and shook the folds out of his Times . ‘Better get your hair cut next time you go to see the doctor, by the way,’ he added. ‘It’s almost down to your hocks.’
    Settling himself more comfortably, he absorbed himself in his reading again, satisfied his son was on the mend. Colby watched him overtly across the top of his own paper, black despair in his mind. No, Father, he thought gloomily, no problems! Not one! Only Georgina Markham trying to rush me into marriage!
    Her surrender had been complete but there had been little in it of the grand passion he had expected. She had been unresisting and had seemed no prize at all, letting him work his will on her without apparently joining in, laying in the grass, her clothes undone, her breasts out of her bodice like superb fruits, and wearing the same triumphant expression Joan of Arc must have worn as she went to her death.
    She had spent what had seemed hours titivating herself afterwards, and he had to go backwards and forwards to the stream to fetch water in his hat to cool her flushed face before she would even make an attempt to move. He was still recovering from the shock of disappointment. After all those years of waiting, planning and scheming, he had expected crashing cymbals and there hadn’t been even the tiniest tinkling bell.
    He had been more than glad to leave and had snapped at Ackroyd who had been waiting at the front door of the Markharm house with the horses, spinning a yarn to Annie Oldham, one of the housemaids. For a few days he had felt uncertain and ill-tempered. There had even been an honest feeling of guilt because he’d been brought up to be decent and reasonably moral, and writers had it that what had happened to Georgina was a fate worse than death. That she hadn’t suffered overmuch, however, had soon become clear and as time had elapsed it had appeared that he hadn’t put her in the family way either. The only fly in the ointment was her