The Officer's Wife

Catherine Law

Description

'A beautifully written emotional, absorbing story about love, family, and secrets. I absolutely loved it.' Siobhan Daiko, author of The Girl from Venice

1939 - American heiress Vivi Miles falls for naval officer Nathan as soon as she arrives in England. And, under the threat of war, they marry in a whirlwind before he leaves to join his ship.

When Nathan returns from Dunkirk injured, he is distant, aloof, and no longer the man Vivi fell in love with. But it’s not just because of his brutal experiences of war. Nathan has a secret and Vivi suspects it’s linked to the mysterious evacuee at the secluded house in the woods on his Kent estate.

As war continues to rage, Vivi battles her own grief and loneliness, and tries to find out the truth of the girl’s identity, uncovering a scandal from the past.

Is her love for Nathan strong enough to survive?

--

‘I was engrossed in this beautiful, heartfelt story. Characters to care about and a plot that kept me turning the pages.’ Helen Parusel, author of A Mother's War

Sujets

• Mashups
• Historical Fiction
• 20th Century
• Historical
• Women
• Inglaterra
• Reino Unido
• Segunda Guerra Mundial
• Friendship
• Historical romance
• Military
• Woman
• World War II
• United Kingdom
• The Women
• Great Britain
• Dunkirk
• Romance
• England
• Fiction
• Seconde Guerre mondiale
• Royaume-Uni

Informations

• Publié par: Boldwood Books
• Date de parution: 03 avril 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781837515561
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE OFFICER’S WIFE


CATHERINE LAW
CONTENTS



Prologue

Book One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Book Two

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Book Three

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Epilogue


More from Catherine Law

Acknowledgements

Author’s note

About the Author

Also by Catherine Law

Letters from the past

About Boldwood Books
PROLOGUE
ELISE, AUGUST 1932

The beach was hers: the water, blue and wide, waves cresting in the salty air. Her ankles sank into the sand and, all around her, she could hear the sound of the sea. Sitting down, she unbuckled her sandals, bare toes massaging the granular surface, ears filled by the wisps of the breeze.
Not a day for sitting on the beach, yet a family had erected a stripey wind break under the chalk cliff and were huddling together; she could see their tea dress, newspaper and straw hat flinching in the wind. The man wore a bowler. A boy squatted with his back to his parents, bashing the bottom of an upended bucket, hopeful for a sandcastle.
The chalk stack stood to Elise’s right, beyond it, the rockpools. But she’d have to walk past the family.
The boy lifted his bucket and the castle collapsed. He shrugged. His whoop of laughter, the mock outrage on his face made Elise smile and as she hurried past, her joy joined in with his.
A passage of wet sand lay between cliff and stack, guarded by the tide. Elise waited, watching the rhythm of the water. When one of the crashing waves, brimming with seaweed, retreated, she made a dash for it, running, but her summer dress became soaked as another wave, as slick as mercury, caught her and made her yelp.
On the other side, in the little horseshoe cove enclosed by pearly-white cliffs, the air fell still. She set her sandals down in a safe spot and started to pick her way over the pavement of rocks, bare feet settling in crevices, finding a path, gathering the harvest of seaweed her mother required for her kitchen and medicine cabinet. Little sandpipers danced delicately over colonies of limpets and the winking sun made the pools iridescent. Below the surface, tiny crabs scuttled, and crimson urchins basked.
Elise squatted down, carefully tugged at specimens of bladderwrack and Irish moss and began to fill her basket. Sea lettuce floated like green hair, a miniature underwater forest. A mermaid’s purse drifted past her fingertips. She plucked it from the water. The leathery pod glistened, the fronds curling over her fingers.
‘Isn’t that stealing?’ came a voice. ‘Isn’t there a law against that?’
Elise looked up, peeled her hair from over her face and tucked it behind her ear. The boy stood where spent waves foamed on the sand, his bare feet wriggling. One of his braces dangled.
‘I’m doing errands for my ma,’ she called back. ‘I’m not stealing any wreckage.’
A tiny white lie. She often presented her mother with sea-polished shards of ships’ crockery, rusted pennies and pieces of old rope spilled from the hundreds of vessels that lay in the graveyard of the Goodwin Sands.
The boy gave a shrug of his shoulders and turned as if to go, and yet he dawdled, hands in pockets, his attention drawn to her. She bent to the rockpool, keeping him at the tail of her eye.
‘The sand further up the beach is no good for sandcastles,’ she said. ‘You need to be closer to the sea. Good damp sand is needed.’
‘I should know better.’
She spotted his rolled-up trousers, wet at the bottom.
‘You got caught running through the gap.’
‘Yep. Not quick enough.’
‘Same here.’
He took tentative steps into the water, his dark hair lifting in the breeze.
‘Ouch. It’s colder than it looks,’ he said. ‘Mother keeps complaining about the wind and the sand, wants us to leave. She says it is even getting into her teeth. Father keeps saying it’s supposed to be summer. We’re supposed to be on holiday. Are you on holiday?’
‘No, I live here.’
He glanced around at the beach.
‘Here?’
Elise laughed, perched her basket on a rock. ‘No, at Margate. A mile or so that-a-way,’ She pointed over her shoulder. ‘I’m here nearly every day in the holidays. But I like the beach best in wintertime.’ She gazed at the pale horizon and back at the cliff face. She knew the sea to be as beautiful as it could be dangerous, and, close up, the pristine white chalk complex and dirty. ‘Do you like it?’
He shrugged. ‘Mother didn’t want to go to Margate. She thought it wasn’t our sort of place. We’re at the Grand at Ramsgate, overlooking the Royal Harbour.’
‘How posh.’
At her laugh, his cheeks went red. He dug his toes into the wet sand, lifted chunks, scattered them. He turned to walk away. Seagulls rose like white flags above the cliffs and the waves raced in, licking Elise’s ankles. A sharp wave swamped the rock where she perched, the thrilling coldness fizzing over her legs. She stood, dripping, grabbed her basket and picked her way back. He turned back, stopped to watch her progress, gave her an amused smile.
‘The tide is turning; that’s why it’s so wild,’ she called out.
She paused to choose the best route, but her foot slipped, and her knee slammed down on to a jagged rock. Her palms grazed, water to her elbows. A scream hissed through her teeth.
‘Are you all right?’ The boy waded towards her, hopping over pools, ‘You’re bleeding.’
A stream of red coursed down her shin and over her ankle bone. She lifted the hem of her dress. The cut was raw and curved like a smile.
‘Quickly, come on.’ He grabbed her arm, his fingers firm at her elbow, pinning her with clear, earnest eyes.
She sat down on the sand, panting lightly from shock and embarrassment. He pulled out a handkerchief. She held it to her knee. Crimson blossomed through the white cotton.
‘Does it hurt?’
‘No, but it will later.’
Later, she thought, at home, with a cup of tea with her mother in the dark little cottage on King Street, Ma would know what to do. She would make her better. She always did.
‘You’re being terribly brave.’
‘I’m trying to be.’
Her knee smarted. Blood seeped around the embroidered initials in the corner of the handkerchief.
‘N.C.?’
‘That’s me,’ he said. ‘No, don’t lift it. You need to keep the pressure up.’
He pressed his palm over the top. Elise winced. She hauled her gaze away from him to study the blue horizon.
‘Stop the blood, must stop it bleeding,’ he said. ‘I’ve learnt that in the naval cadets.’
Up close, his face appeared sharper, cheek bones prominent, a kindness latent beneath blushing shyness. ‘It runs in the family. My grandfather was a captain in the Navy, although Father never joined up. He prefers dry land and making money. Trouble is, I get seasick. Not much of a sailor.’
She giggled.
‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘You looked a bit queasy.’
‘You’re here on holiday?’ She resumed their earlier conversation, trying not to think about the blood.
‘Yes, we’ve come down from Farthing, near Canterbury. You won’t know it. It’s a little place in the middle of nowhere. We’re almost swallowed by the woods.’
She glanced at his shirt, the fine stitching, the good linen. The buttons on his braces were imprinted with a miniature coat of arms.
‘A big house?’
‘Depends on what you mean by big.’
She thought of his parents, sheltering behind their windbreak. Their fine, wind-ruffled clothes. The man’s smart bowler.
‘How long will you be here?’
‘We’ll leave this afternoon if Mother gets her way.’
Elise pulled her basket over to check her spoils.
‘Let’s have a look.’ He leaned in closer, his hand still pressing on her knee.
‘It’s okay,’ she said, moving away. ‘I think my leg is better now.’
He sat back, folded his arms, an unconscious barrier.
‘Oh, dirty old seaweed,’ he said, looking into her basket. ‘Thought you might have caught fish or crabs, or lobsters. What’s that?’
‘A mermaid’s purse. Brings sailors good luck, Ma says.’ She handed it to him. ‘You better keep it.’
He cradled it in his palm, fascinated.
‘But what is this thing?’
‘If I tell you, it will lose its charm.’
He drew out another handkerchief and wrapped the mermaid’s purse, slipped it into his pocket.
‘Two handkerchiefs?’
‘Mother insists.’ He smiled.
They fell quiet. Elise dabbed gingerly at her knee. The boy examined the contents of her basket. The waves quietened, expending themselves in gentle lines of froth. Even the seagulls shut up for a moment. They both started to speak at the same time.
‘You only live down the road?’
‘You live in a big old country house?’
‘Nathaniel! Hey, Nathaniel!’
The man in the bowler hat stood on the other side of the chalk stack, fixed to the spot, his burly frame dark against the white rock. On this wild, beautiful beach, he looked ridiculous in his suit and hat. A fierceness set his jaw.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing! Get back here. Your mother wants to go. Right now.’
Elise turned to the boy in time to see pain travel swiftly around his face. His dismay was touching, crushed a tiny part of her. She shivered.
‘Who’s that?’ she asked, knowing immediately.
‘Time to go.’ He sighed, standing.
‘I best get home, too.’ But she stayed sitting on the sand.
The man bellowed, furious, gesturing. He turned and limped back the way he’d come, with no question that his son would not follow.
‘What’s wrong with his leg?’ Elise asked.
‘War wound.’ The boy’s face sharpened. ‘You’ll be all right if I leave you here?’
‘Of course, I will.’ She peeled the handkerchief off her knee and held it out to him.
Laughter brightened his face.
‘Keep it. It’s yours,’ he said. ‘I have plenty of handkerchiefs.’
Elise felt her cheeks scorch. ‘Of course, how silly of me. You won’t want it back. It’s ruined.’
Folding the handkerchief, she