Grace Burrowes - Love and Other Perils

Catnip and Kisses 2019 by Grace Burrowes

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No part of this novella may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. If you obtained this story from, or uploaded it to, a torrent, community file sharing, or other piracy site, you did so without the authors permission and in violation of applicable laws.

Lieutenant Mayhews Catastrophes 2019 by Emily Larkin

All rights reserved.

No part of this novella may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. If you obtained this story from, or uploaded it to, a torrent, community file sharing, or other piracy site, you did so without the authors permission and in violation of applicable laws.

Ebook ISBN: 978-1941419861

Print ISBN: 978-1941419878

By Emily Larkin

The stagecoach door banged shut and the guard gave a final blast of his horn. Willemina Culpepper only just managed not to wriggle with excitement. It was finally happening. Her journey had begun and in a few short seconds the miles would start to roll away beneath the carriage wheels.

Willie let out a tiny sigh of happiness. She wanted to bounce in her seat and say to her fellow passengers, Oh, isnt it so marvelous to be traveling again!

But she was twenty-five years old, and twenty-five-year-old ladies didnt wriggle or bounce or blurt out remarks to utter strangers. And, sadly, none of these strangers appeared to share her enthusiasm for travel. The stout matron alongside her sighed and muttered as she rummaged through her reticule. Dawn wasnt quite yet upon them. The carriage was full of shadows, only the faintest of illumination coming from the lamps outside, but there was enough light to see the matron dab the contents of a small vial onto her handkerchief.

A scent wafted its way to Willies nose. Lavender. It mingled with the other smells in the narrow confines of the carriage: perspiration old and new, tobacco, ale, and for some reason that Willie couldnt fathom, marmalade.

The stout matron pressed the handkerchief to her nose and closed her eyes. A poor traveler, Willie deduced.

With a loud clatter of iron-shod hooves on cobblestones the stagecoach lurched into motion.

Late, the other female in the stagecoach muttered. Two whole minutes late already! She was as thin as the matron was stout, her mouth pinched shut in a way that gave it wrinkles all the way around.

The stout matron sighed. So did the thin woman. Two different sighs. One long-suffering, one annoyed.

Willie bit back a smile. Not at the stout matrons discomfort or the thin ladys irritation, but a smile of gladness that she was in this carriage with them, that she was moving again.

She turned her attention to the final passenger. It was from him that the smells of tobacco and ale came. He wasnt sighing like the matron and the thin woman; he was already asleep, his chin pillowed in the folds of a rather dirty muffler.

The stagecoach navigated the tight corner onto the street, swaying ponderously as it did so. The matron moaned and pressed the scented handkerchief more closely to her nose.

Willie didnt mind the swaying in the slightest. She would have preferred to be up on the roof, where the swaying was at its worst, but respectable young ladies didnt travel on the roofs of stagecoaches, where their faces might become dusty and sunburned and their hair windswept, and where every Tom, Dick, and Harry might gawp up at them.

But even if she couldnt be on the roof, her heart beat as fast as the horses hooves, a quick tempo of anticipation and happiness. Today, she was in London. Tomorrow, it would be Owslebury. And next month, she was off to the continent again!

Willie couldnt quite prevent a squirm of excitement. Fortunately, no one noticed.

The coach halted at the Bell and Crown, its final stop in London, and three more passengers came aboard: a woman and her young son, and a soldier.

The soldier was wearing the familiar green uniform of the Rifle Brigade, with the epaulettes of a lieutenant.

Willies breath caught in a moment of pure homesickness. Although, could it be called homesickness when it wasnt a single place she missed, but many? She missed Egypt and South Africa and even the disaster that had been South America, and most of all she missed the people whod been in those places. Men like her father. Men like the officer now settling himself opposite her. Men whod worn uniforms. Men whod trained and fought and endured hardship, whod laughed and joked and lived with enthusiasm because they knew that death might be just around the corner.

Willie released a silent sigh. How she missed the army. Missed the people and the purpose, the busyness, the travel and the places, and yes, even the discomfort of being on campaign, the heat and the cold, the mud and the rain.

But not the deaths. She didnt miss those. What she did miss was the sense that every minute of every day was to be treasured, even if it contained sleet or choking dust or saddle sores, because today one was alive and tomorrow one might not be.

Three minutes late, now, the thin woman said, as the guard secured the door.

That was another thing she missed: the stoicism of army lifeand the jokes that went with that stoicism. Here in England, people complained if it rained, or if their shoes got muddy, or if a stagecoach was three minutes behind schedule. Soldiers didnt complain about the little annoyances of life; they joked about them. A lot.

Willie did miss the jokes.

All aboard the coach to Southampton! the guard cried, and gave a blast of his horn. Willies heart lifted, while the stout matron sighed into her handkerchief and the thin woman looked at her timepiece and tutted sourly and the man with the dirty muffler snored faintly in his corner.

The mother was fussing over her young son, settling him carefully on her lap, and the lieutenant was taking almost as much care with the covered basket he was carrying. He held on to it firmly, as if something breakable were inside.

The lieutenant glanced up, caught her gaze, and smiled cheerfully. Good morning.

Good morning, Willie said. She wanted to say more, wanted to say, Tell me how things are with the Rifle Brigade.Hows Colonel Barraclough? Hows Charles Pugsley? Whats it like in France right now?

She would have asked those questions under other circumstances, but there was enough dawn light now leaking into the carriage to see the obvious appreciation in the lieutenants gaze, and Willie had learned years ago that when men looked at her like that it was best not to encourage them. It had been true when her father was alive and was doubly true now that he was dead.

She was a female, she was alone, and she was on a public stagecoach, and as much as she wished to talk about the Rifle Brigade with this lieutenant, it was wisest not to.

Willie smiled politely at him as the stagecoach rolled out of the Bell and Crowns yard, springs creaking, wheels rattling, harness jingling jauntily. She turned her attention to the window and the glimpses of London it affordedbrick and stone faades, windows and doors. Dawn was pink above the roof tops. Her heart beat a happy rhythm.