Surrender the Wind by Elizabeth St. Michel Page A

How did she explain the glasses were a disguise to hide from Mallory?
    “Since I live alone, I feel more comfortable…” Perspiration trickled down her back. Her gown grew scratchy as if it were wool chafing her skin instead of soft cotton. She hated lying as much as she hated the war. Her illogical heart crossed swords with her logical brain. Stay the course, her brain warned. “Where are you going?”

    John whipped her spectacles first low then high, flinging them with the graceful arc of a discus thrower. “I’m throwing rocks at a hornet’s nest.” Her glasses vanished into the infinite rising boughs of oak, caught somewhere in its iron chord branches just this side of the sky.
    “Why in the world did you do that? You spawn of Satan. You stinking pile of codpieces.” On and on she went, raining down every major curse that came into her mind. Gone was the well-bred, proper young lady and in her place was a snappish, coarsely spoken version of a butcher’s wife.
    She was mad as a cut badger. She was lovely. His mind raced with the folly of their dilemma. There were many points of contention. They didn’t know each other at all. Compared to the disaster of his first marriage and with other women of the South, she was an innocent and a rare jewel. They were oceans apart in political viewpoints. They had a war between them, and they were somehow going to have to solidify that division. They had nothing in common. She had a way, which exasperatingly enough, could rile his normally cool state of mind and snap his temper like kindling on fire. Yet, he needed a woman who could challenge him.
    In her growing indignation, he admired her wild beauty and, no doubt, her brazen insults could pale the most hardened of his seasoned soldiers. Above a narrow waist jutted the moist satin of her breasts, heaving with anger, and he savored the satisfaction that this passionate, glorious Yankee woman was now his wife.
    Like a saint to the pillar, she clung to the porch post, cultivating her pulpit of fire and brimstone. The real reason for her outburst was fear, fear of the magnitude of marriage, fear of being a woman, a wife. She had spent herself and slumped, and John could not imagine more of a picture of misery and desolation.
    “Why did you throw away my glasses?” She asked near tears.
    “I’m your husband. I will protect you now,” John said. “You’ll never need them.”
    “You forget you are in Yankee territory, General Rourke. I have to protect you .”
    “There is that,” he conceded. “I believe there is more to your story than you’re telling me. If it will reduce your worries, you can tell me in your own good time.”
    She nodded, mollified with that concession. “Will I be fond of being…married?” She swiped a tear, the epitome of despair.
    “I believe so,” he said, taking one step at a time so as not to frighten her.
    “With absolute certainty?”
    “With absolute certainty,” he repeated, and then took another step.
    Like a small bewildered child caught in a frightful darkness, she turned away from him, her face upon the post.
    “Will it be similar to your first marriage?” she asked.
    “There is no comparison. You know there isn’t.” He took another step, giving her time to adjust.
    “I will not be considered your property,” she sniffed, “that would be a tragedy.”
    “We are equals,” he admitted calmly.
    “What does a Rebel General’s wife do?” He heard the defeat in her words, revealing to him, her vulnerability. John’s heart clenched.
    “Be a wife.” He smiled at the back of her head, and picking up a long strand of her golden hair, fingered it in his calloused palms.
    “Be specific. I mean, will I have to knit sweaters for cannonballs or polish your rifle?”
    “God forbid!” He broke into a laugh, and then added seriously, “I have an orderly for those duties.”
    “He can knit?”
    “Who?” he asked, inhaling her lilac scent.
    “Your orderly, he can knit?”