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Excerpt from "Till Next We Meet"
An Avon Release
May 2005
ISBN:
0-060-75737-X
©2005 by Karen Ranney
Quebec, Canada
April, 1761
My dearest,
The other day I saw a robin, a pretty little bird, surrounded by sparrows. I wondered why I felt such compassion for him and then realized he was alone of his kind. While the robin had a lovely plumage and was a more attractive bird, the sparrows were a community.
How silly I am to envy the sparrows.
Even being so busy with the renovations of Colstin Hall cannot stop my thoughts of you. Sometimes, I walk into the room I’ve prepared as your library, and close my eyes, wondering if I can conjure you there with my loneliness. Without much difficulty, I can see you at your desk, your eyes impatient at the interruption and then welcoming to see me standing there. You put down your quill and stand, greeting me with a smile. I stretch out my hand and can almost feel your touch on my fingers.
Oh, if it could only be true, my dearest.
I worry for you so, in the wilds of North America. I cannot think the winters there easily spent. I ache in our chamber when the wind grows wild and the storms come, thinking of you suffering in that desolate place. I have procured a map, and marked the continent in my mind, wondering where you are in that vast and strange country.
Enough of that. I will be brave as the vicar has counseled me to be. I confess, however, that at dusk I thank the Almighty for the end of another day. Each one gone is one less to endure until you return home again.
The vicar has been by again today. He visits overmuch, I think. He reminds me you are safe if I pray, and so, my dearest, I spend my waking hours in a daze of petitions to the Almighty even as I go about my work. I think I must pray even in my sleep since I awake and for a moment think you are here.
I hear stories in the market of the war and I am torn between wishing to hear more and not wanting to know anything in all. I can pretend, otherwise, that you are in Edinburgh or conferring with relatives. But then, all too soon I remember how you looked in your uniform, handsome and impatient to serve with your regiment.
Keep yourself safe for me. Forbid yourself, I implore you, the opportunity of being a hero. Tell yourself, instead, that you must return home, whole and safe, to me.
Your devoted wife,
Catherine
Moncrief carefully folded the letter and placed it on the stack with the others before placing a rolled up blanket in Captain Harry Dunnan’s trunk. There were pitifully few things he could return to the man’s widow.
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