She Will Rejoice Read Free

thirty.”
                  She glanced out the window. She had never been this far from home before.
                  “It is a distance of about sixty miles,” he continued. “If we must, we can stop at an inn along the way. There is a clean one at our next change of horses.”
                  Naomi wondered if all the rumors about her husband could be wrong. He was not the unfeeling cad she had heard him to be.
                  “Do we need make that decision now?” she realized he was asking her preference on the matter.
                  “Not at all.”
                  She adjusted her hat with little success. It was slipping down the side and she could not seem to make it behave.
                  “You could simply take it off,” he suggested.
                  Naomi was sure she did not need to explain to him why she could not do that. Man or no man, he was aware that a lady must wear her hat in public.
                  “We are alone,” Mr. Haydn must have read her mind. “This is not a public conveyance.”
                  Her lips turned up at the corners.
                  “Do you always do what is proper, Naomi?” he still smiled, but his voice was serious.
                  She opted for honesty, “Until quite recently, my mother was convinced I would never do anything proper in all my life, Mr. Haydn.”
                  “Finn,” he interrupted her.
                  “Finn,” she found the name was becoming easier to utter. “I did not care for needlepoint or covering screens, and I was quite rebellious about sitting for my lessons.”
                  “Did you learn nothing while growing up then?”
                  A smirk caught hold of her lips before she could stop it, and the words that followed were just as inappropriate, “I learned to fish and climb a tree.”
                  Finn smiled broadly, “Fine accomplishments for a lady.”
                  Naomi cleared her throat, “I did not say they were.”
                  “Your mother must have had her hands full, attempting to tame you.”
                  “Perhaps she would have, had she tried.”
                  Finn leaned back and folded her arms across his chest, “Are you of such a stubborn nature that she gave up?”
                  Naomi tried not to be offended by the implication, “No. She simply encouraged my pursuits. In the past few years, I believe she wondered about the wisdom in letting me run so wild, but I am glad to have had a happy childhood, at least.”
                  “At least?”
                  She wished she had left off that last part.
                  “Do you mean to say you have no hopes of being happy now?”
                  Naomi searched for the right words to correct her error.
                  “I suppose,” he looked at her from under lowered brows, “there are plenty of reasons to be unhappy, married to a man like me.”
                  “Married to any man,” she shot back.
                  He was surprised.
                  “I do not mean to say I never wished to marry,” she hurried on. “I simply wasn’t prepared. . .that is, I hadn’t thought it to be so soon.”
                  “We were engaged for nearly four months. Just how long did you feel we should wait?”
                  Four months, indeed. The day after the banns were read, Mr. Haydn had left with his uncle on a trip to the north of England and hadn’t returned until the day before their wedding.
                  “I am but nineteen.”
                  “Many girls are married younger.”
                  “I do