His Lady Mistress

Elizabeth Rolls177* * *She sat writing at her father’s old campaign chest. Hesmiled as he remembered the times without number he hadreported to Colonel Scott and seen him working at it. A typicalofficer’s chest, it had a drop front in the top section thatformed a small desk. Battered, its brass corner mounts dull,the Baltic pine struck an incongruous note in the luxury ofthe room.‘Verity?’She spun around in palpable shock and jumped up, droppingher quill. ‘My...Max?’The question in her voice, the yearning softness spearedhim mercilessly. Along with the suddenly flushed cheeks andtrembling mouth. Oh, hell! What now was he to say?Shaken to his foundations, he blundered in. ‘He used totalk about you. Did you know that?’‘I...I beg your pardon?’He went on relentlessly. Somehow he had to make her see.‘About how pretty you were. How clever. He was so proudof you. He used to read bits of your letters occasionally. Hesaid you were as lovely as your mother. That must have beensuch a comfort to him after she died. Doesn’t he deservebetter from you now?’Verity had turned away, whitefaced. ‘What do you mean?’‘You use his campaign chest. Don’t you think he deservesa little more than shame from you?’Slowly she faced him. ‘You think I’m ashamed of him?’The pain in her voice shivered through him. ‘Do you think Iwould have that chest if I were ashamed of him? It’s the onlything of his that’s mine. I stole it.’For the first time he heard bitterness in her voice, poisonwelling from a wound buried deep.‘Stole it? But surely—’She broke in. ‘When the law says ‘‘everything’’ they meanjust that: everything.’ Understanding raked him and he sawthat she was shivering, that her eyes were bright with unshedtears.