Read Online The Gates of Rutherford by Elizabeth Cooke - Free Book Online

had asked him last month, when they had been finalizing their arrangements. She was certainly hoping so.
    â€œIt’s a nice little place, very friendly,” Michael had answered.
    When she had confided this to Louisa, her sister merely laughed.“I don’t see the problem,” she’d exclaimed. “If you don’t want visitors, bar the gate or something.”
    â€œIt’s not Rutherford,” Charlotte had answered. “It’s only a cottage. I shouldn’t think anyone bars their gates. I expect people come and hang on gates instead, and expect to talk. What will I say to them? I don’t want to be the subject of discussion. You know, new bride and all that. It would be so embarrassing.”
    â€œChattering away should suit you down to the ground,” Louisa had replied. “You’re used to talking to all kinds of people by now, aren’t you? At the hospital and so on.”
    Charlotte had raised an eyebrow. “It may come as a revelation to you,” she said, “but I do not chatter away. Sister would shoot me for it.”
    â€œRather defeating the object, shooting nurses?” Louisa retorted. They had been having tea at Claridge’s—a rare afternoon treat on Charlotte’s day off. She couldn’t explain, even to Louisa, her misgivings about being permanently at Michael’s side. Anyway, she had rather thought it would be tactless to say such things to Louisa, who had been so spectacularly jilted three years ago.
    She had eyed Louisa secretly when her sister’s head had been turned. Strange . . . Louisa didn’t look at all like the spinster sister. She looked rather happy, in fact. Who would have thought it? Sociable, empty-headed Louisa, being happy to be at home in Yorkshire with Father. What changes they had all been through. It was like being on a surrealist merry-go-round.
    Michael hadn’t wanted to discuss the subject of their marriage at all—not in the sense of what she should be or do. He accepted that Charlotte wanted to go on working at St. Dunstan’s, but had hinted that it would not be appropriate in time. She supposed that “in time” meant when she became pregnant. “You will make a topping little wife and helper,” he had told her. “Everyone will love you. We shall be very happy.”
    Happiness. One clutched at it like air, almost as a right. But she wasn’t looking for the kind of happiness that she suspected Michael was describing; the domestication, the closed-in feeling of four walls.
    â€œWe shall have adventures, shan’t we?” she had asked him.
    â€œPlenty,” he had reassured her. “Although, darling, some adventures are overrated.”
    He had been on a so-called “adventure” in the first few weeks of the war—“over by Christmas” and all that rot—he had packed his bags with a glad heart, like so many thousands of others. He had told her as much. He had been a regular already, an officer in the Royal Field Artillery. “We all wanted to get out there in 1914,” he said. “Champing at the bit. Positively fretting.” He told the story with a wry smile, as he said most things. Whenever she thought of him, she thought of that twisted expression of humor. Never his blindness, never the star-shaped scar that crossed his temple and one side of his forehead in disjointed white lines.
    Sitting now on the train, she leaned forward in her seat.
    â€œWhat’s the weather doing?” he asked.
    â€œTrying to rain,” she told him.
    â€œWe shall pass Salisbury soon.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œDescribe it to me.”
    She did so—although this was only ever when he asked. She didn’t want to be a running commentary on life, a human conduit. Michael had his own opinions, and firm ones at that. He could be impatient. All of this she understood.
    â€œI remember this area so well,”