Captive Wife, The by Fiona Kidman

turnips. I need someone to put in a garden and cook my dinners and wash the clothes.
    Was this when I began thinking of bringing Betsy over?
    No.
    I have been thinking of her night and day for going on 2 years.
    She has flashing eyes.
    Her smell is that of the sweet untouched.
    My balls ache but I do not want to put my poker in other women the way I did. When I do it is never what I want.

Chapter 10
    In her heart, Adie Malcolm does not believe that Betty Guard will return. After the first day, when she has failed to keep their appointment, she tells herself she must contain her disappointment.
    And yet each day at three o’clock, she finds herself waiting. The house is empty, except for Hettie the cook, for in this past week she has found reasons for the children to visit the homes of others. She knows this has to stop. This morning at breakfast, the lieutenant had called in, and drawn up a place at the nursery table. This is so unusual that Adie’s hands had shaken and spilled tea on the linen cloth, long ago embroidered with love knots and daisies by her friend Emmeline for her hope chest. Pale golden daisies spiral out from the centre towards the edge of the cloth and then suddenly stop near the edge. She sees Emmeline’s beautiful fingers with their translucent fingernails tracing a path on the linen as she explained why the daisies did not, as intended, cover every inch of the cloth. Emmeline had first set eyes on Gerald on her sixteenth birthday. Straight awayshe had known she was in love. Her mother has been coaxing her to persist at her embroidery: all the other girls were doing petit point and tapestry while she was still on lazy daisy. She had sworn to her sister that day, sworn she had breathed in a whisper, that she would go on making daisies until the day he proposed marriage to her, and then she would learn to crochet. She was sure this would happen the very next time he saw her, for she had dropped her handkerchief and he had picked it up and put it to his cheek. So she knew that this sudden stinging attack of love was mutual. Only, unbeknown to her, he was about to leave the very next day for Prussia with his regiment. So for a year and two months she had sewed on and on, often, it seemed, in vain, until one day he appeared again, and as soon as he saw her fell to his knees, beseeching her to marry him. The hand she held out to him was worn from the thimble, and the daisies had spread across the cloth as if a thousand bees had pollinated it, but at least she was able to stop. And at that point in the recital she would say, with her small laugh that Adie had so loved, ‘It’s nothing but a rag, something I would never use for more than serving the children their breakfast on.’ Adie tried to keep it fresh for all but the one day of the week when she instructed the girl who came to clean in its washing and ironing. Every morning she encouraged the children to count the daisies, which Austen still did, though Mathilde was getting bored with the game. And the lieutenant must have forgotten for the moment, the way he put his elbows on the table when he sat down, although a slight frown flickered over his brow when the tea was spilt, and Adie could have cried with vexation at her clumsiness, and the pain her carelessness would have caused.
    â€˜Forgive me,’ she had said, as the stain spread among the little marguerites, wandering between the toast and the empty shells of boiled eggs.
    He had shaken his head, as if uncertain of what she was talking about, watching his children. Mathilde is seven, a sturdy girl with dark braids and a full raspberry-coloured mouth;Austen is a frail little boy of four with wispy blond hair, his complexion the colour of skim milk.
    â€˜Eat up, old chap,’ said the lieutenant, picking up a discarded crust dipped in egg yolk and thrusting it in the boy’s direction. The child squirmed away, his eyes pale and yet hot at his father’s words.