Soldier's Valentine Read Online Free Page A

of Mary Anne’s tongue to retaliate and say that she was quite happy to be one of those ‘old maids’. Edward was gone. Her baby was gone. What did she care if she never married? The man she was going to marry was dead.
    At night she sometimes dreamed of that summer day before he’d gone to war when they’d stripped naked and swam in the weir, afterwards lying in the cool grass, the sun drying their bodies. That was when they’d made the baby that Edward never got to see, and all she could recall were a pair of tiny hands, waving goodbye to her forever.

CHAPTER FOUR
    In the aftermath of meeting Mary Anne Sweet, Henry Randall was subject to a number of interesting thoughts.
    For one thing he felt certain he’d seen her somewhere before, but no matter how much he racked his brains, he couldn’t think where. It could be that he’d dreamed about her when bone weary following yet another push, another battle full of noise, blood and bodies blasted to pieces before his eyes.
    Mary Anne was the sort of girl most of the soldiers dreamed of in their rest moments – the girls they’d left behind, the girls of their dreams. Other soldiers dreamed of their mothers.
    He’d never dreamed much of his mother or of the girls he’d left behind because there hadn’t been any. As for his mother, she’d been a poor thing, unable to stand up for herself against his father’s temper and the cuffs and blows that came with it. Once he’d got over the ‘found under the gooseberry bush’ thing and knew the truth about how babies came to be, it surprised him that regardless of his father’s bullying, his mother produced one child after another.
    He vaguely recalled having two or three younger siblings, if they’d survived the deprivation that is; he didn’t know for sure if they had.
    Over plates of home-made cakes, he watched as Mary Anne glided around the table, pouring tea from a big brown pot. Her hair changed colour when she moved, and she smelled good.
    He accepted another cup of tea, glad it was her pouring it out rather than her sanctimonious father or her stiff-looking mother. He had the distinct impression they favoured a match between him and their daughter. It occurred to him that she could do better than him, that there had to be a reason they favoured him.
    He wasn’t entirely unfavourable to the idea. He had his own reasons for favouring such a match, though he wouldn’t of course divulge it to them. His was a reason that had to be kept a lifelong secret.
    Deciding it wouldn’t hurt to set the pace, he moved his arm so that his elbow brushed against her. As women went, she was very attractive. All he had to do was play his cards right, keep his temper in check and rise above what he had been in the past.
    Every Sunday was much the same, their conversation light and focused on general topics such as what he thought of her father’s sermons. He said it was one of the reasons he kept coming on Sundays; he needed to hear those things.
    Mary Anne noticed her father visibly puff up with pride. It wasn’t often he earned such giddy praise and she couldn’t help the smile that came to her face.
    Thinking that the smile was intended solely for him, Henry smiled too.
    ‘I hear you’ve been to France,’ he said to her. ‘I hope it was a bit more pleasant than when I was there.’
    Mary Anne’s smile vanished. She blushed but found her voice, compounding the lie her parents had already began.
    ‘There were no battlefields where I was. Only the sadness they left behind.’
    He looked down into his teacup. The visions of the Great War came back regularly. He made a conscious effort to remember the glories of battle rather than the carnage, after all if those boys hadn’t died for glory, freedom and a better world, what was the point of them dying at all? He’d survived and was even something of a hero to those who knew him. The likes of him had helped make a peaceful world, a better world in which to bring up a