Read Online The Patriot Bride by Carolyn Faulkner - Free Book Online

himself with her tonight or any other night until she’d had her monthly flow. He wasn’t about to let her fob off some bastard child as the next Preston heir. Regardless of what he wanted, regardless of the fact that, by his own word, they were going to be sleeping nude together every evening, he could not indulge himself with her in the manner he craved until he was sure that she wasn’t pregnant with another man’s child.
    It was that annoying thought that was going through his mind when he returned the corporal’s absent salute and entered his room. It was late evening and the room was dark. He crossed to light the lantern, surprised that she would sit alone in the darkness – but then he didn’t really know her that well.
    He didn’t know her well at all.
    When he turned the flame up on the lamp, he saw that she was sitting in one of the small chairs near the window, facing him, holding the loaded pistol he kept under his pillow aimed squarely at the center of his chest.
     

 
     
    Chapter Five
     
     
    Hannah was terrified by what she was doing, but she’d vowed to herself that she’d take every opportunity she could to get away from this man, and she meant to do just that. If she had to, she’d go to Canada or go west and restart her life yet again. It wouldn’t be easy, and it certainly wasn’t what she wanted to do. She wanted to convince him to leave her alone, to turn around and walk out the door, get a divorce and find someone else to marry. He wasn’t bad looking and he apparently had a lot of money – it couldn’t be that hard for him to find someone to say yes to his proposal.
    As soon as she’d recovered from her crying bout, she’d scoured the room for anything she could use to get away, but there really wasn’t much. His clothes didn’t do her any good – she couldn’t wear them; they would be ridiculously big on her and it would take too long for her to alter them to fit her. She’d returned the bed, having turned the place topsey turvey then carefully put everything back to rights, feeling defeated yet again. Her hand had wrapped around one pillow but landed under the other, and found something made of a mixture of metal and wood, and it turned out to be some sort of gun.
    She’d never held a gun in her life, but she’d spent the afternoon trying to learn to hold it without shaking, and that had worked . . . until the minute she’d heard his heavy, booted steps on the stairs. Now she was sitting there, pointing a gun at him that she wasn’t even sure was loaded, and shaking like a leaf.
    Wolf was extraordinarily angry at himself. He’d forgotten he’d put that gun there, just in case. No matter how civilized a colonial town appeared, he’d found that it was better to be prepared. But now he was being held at gunpoint by a his own wife, who apparently was having a very hard time holding the gun steady. At times, if it was to go off, it would, indeed, pierce his heart and kill him relatively instantaneously. At other times, mere seconds later, its nose was pointed in a more southerly direction, which actually gave him much more pause for thought. Of the two sites, ignoring the multitude of organs just ripe for gangrene in between, he’d much rather be killed quickly than made a eunuch by his own wife.
    He could see, though, that her arms were getting tired. The weapon she was holding was a Light Dragoon pistol – he commanded a regiment of the 17th Light Dragoons. But the name was a misnomer. It wasn’t that light a gun, made of brass, iron, and walnut and being well over a foot long. It was much too big for her, and he realized that he might get out of this situation alive if he could just wait until she became too tired to hold the gun up. It wasn’t easy to keep one’s arms stretched full out and then hold something of that weight clenched tightly in both hands.
    All he had to do was keep her from pulling the trigger, by accident or on purpose.
    He wasn’t looking at