Lord Harry's Daughter Read Free Page B

enjoying himself and losing the money he might be using to make his family's life more comfortable.
    In the end, Maria bore her husband's neglect without complaint, quietly dedicating herself to her little daughter and to creating a home that was welcoming whenever her husband saw fit to grace it with his presence. Her forbearance, while it did not recapture the ardent affection of their first infatuation, at least won Lord Harry's gratitude and the dubious pleasure of being called his good little puss as he kissed her good-bye before embarking on another evening of revelry.
    When Lord Harry's regiment had been ordered to the Peninsula, Maria and the baby, not having anywhere else to go, had followed along and, oddly enough, things had improved for a while. There had been too much real soldiering to be done for Lord Harry to find time to get into trouble, and the qualities that had made him such a wretched husband and father—his recklessness, his thirst for excitement—and his craving for attention—made him a soldier to be reckoned with. While no sane commander was willing to risk a large body of men by putting them under Lord Harry's leadership, everyone acknowledged that if there was a dangerous mission to be accomplished or a charge to be led. Lord Harry was the man to do it.
    Lord Harry's wife had also taken to life in the Peninsula, where she found herself making a home for more than just her own family. The men of Harry's regiment, longing for the families they had left behind, naturally gravitated toward the Featherstonaughs’ quarters whether they were in a peasant hut or apartments in some provincial capital.
    While Lady Harry might not have the companionship of her own husband, she could always count on being the center of a little group of officers who looked forward to an evening of quiet conversation in front of the fire.
    Following the drum was an unusual upbringing for a child, but Sophia, who had never known any other sort of life, enjoyed it thoroughly, for there was always someone to talk to or to teach her something. Her eagerness to learn was totally disarming and young officers who had begrudged every minute spent poring over their Greek or Latin now found themselves wishing they had paid more attention as they struggled to recall what their masters at Eton or Harrow had taught them so they could explain things to Lord Harry's daughter.
    Brothers who had refused to allow their sisters to tag along now found themselves falling over one another to teach her to fence, and shoot. But no one except Lord Harry was allowed to teach her to ride, for the very simple reason that he was clearly the best there was, no matter the horse, no matter the terrain. And his daughter took after him.
    By the time she was ten, there was hardly a horse in the regiment she was not capable of handling. And when her father did take the time to pay attention to her, he would allow as how she was a natural horsewoman. “It is the Featherstonaugh blood,” he would say, “and believe you me, it is the only damned thing you will ever inherit from them—not that you would want anything else from them—a pack of stiff-rumps the lot of them."
    But by the time she was old enough to understand such a remark, Sophia was also old enough to know that there were two sides to every issue, and she had seen enough of her father's unreliable nature to suspect that the Featherstonaughs he criticized so harshly might seem considerably less rigid to a normal person. However, she did not regret the lack of relatives, for she had the entire regiment to look after her.
    Indeed, when her father had been killed leading the men across the treacherous ditch at Talavera, she hardly missed him. Lord Harry had been such an infrequent presence at their meals or around their quarters that Sophia and her mother hardly noticed his absence.
    The army moved to quarters in Lisbon and it was there that Lady Harry had decided to settle. She had no family in