Smitten by Books

THE SERGEANT’S LADY ended up being a September Top Pick long after Susanna received this day to have her excerpt posted. Do after you finish reading the excerpt, you may also want to check out Danielle’s review.

Highborn Anna Arrington has been “following the drum,” obeying the wishes of her cold, controlling cavalry officer husband. When he dies, all she wants is to leave life with Wellington’s army in Spain behind her and go home to her family’s castle in Scotland.

Sergeant Will Atkins ran away from home to join the army in a fit of boyish enthusiasm. He is a natural born soldier, popular with officers and men alike, uncommonly brave and chivalrous, and educated and well-read despite his common birth.

As Anna journeys home with a convoy of wounded soldiers, she forms an unlikely friendship with Will. When the convoy is ambushed and their fellow soldiers captured, they become fugitives—together. The attraction between them is strong—but even if they can escape the threat of death at the hands of the French, is love strong enough to bridge the gap between a viscount’s daughter and an innkeeper’s son?

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THE SERGEANT’S LADY ~ Susanna Fraser
Release Date: August 23  – Carina Press

In this scene from early in The Sergeant’s Lady, the hero, Will Atkins, and the heroine, Anna Arrington, have just begun to get to know each other and are seated in the shadows just beyond the light of an army campfire where Will’s fellow soldiers are singing and telling stories.

Fiddle and flute took up a new tune, Scottish, fast and infectious. It reminded Anna of her girlhood at Dunmalcolm, of being sixteen and dancing to the skirling music of bagpipes with her cousins and the neighbors’ sons in the castle ballroom. Her toes tapped of their own accord, and she saw that Sergeant Atkins’s did the same.

Impulsively she sprang to her feet and extended her hands. “Dance with me, Sergeant,” she ordered.

“No, ma’am. That wouldn’t be fitting.”

She beckoned again. “No one can see us here. Pretend we’re at your squire’s harvest dance, if you like.”

“But to a song like this, with a lady such as yourself? Not fitting at all.”

“What’s wrong with this song? I’ve never heard one more made for dancing.”

In the faint moonlight, she could just see his raised eyebrows. “You haven’t heard the words.”

She tossed her head. “I don’t care what the words are. I must dance.” Where was the harm? No one but the two of them would ever know. Anna longed for even a brief release from the tense propriety that had ruled her marriage and reigned over her still in widowhood. “Please, Sergeant Atkins,” she implored.

He shook his head again, but rose and took her by the hand. His grip was warm and strong. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

With Sebastian she’d learned to separate her body from her mind and heart—to touch and be touched without feeling anything. So the jolt of warmth that shot down her spine at the sergeant’s touch stunned her. Perhaps this was unwise.

No. It felt too wonderful. She wanted to laugh with pure joy. It was only a dance. How dangerous could it be?

At a ball they would have joined a line or square with other couples, barely touched and followed a prescribed set of steps. Outside that framework Anna hardly knew how to follow through on her own mad scheme. Fortunately, once persuaded, her partner took the lead. He caught her about the waist with one hand, clasped her hand with the other and whirled her into a series of quick steps.

The soldiers by the fire began to sing—something about a trooper lad arriving in town weary with riding on a moonlit night. Oh, this was more like it! Her sergeant was a grand dancer. Even in the dark, on unfamiliar ground, dancing in a close hold, she trusted his surefooted guidance.

The singers reached the chorus. Bonny lassie, I’ll lie near you, hey bonny lassie, I’ll lie near you. Anna flushed, but she had expected a bawdy song from Sergeant Atkins’s warnings.

The next verses told how the lassie took the horse to the stable and the trooper to her table and fed them each their dinners. Anna looked up. In the moonlight she could see a twinkle in her partner’s eyes, and he grinned at her. Despite his initial reluctance, he was enjoying this too. She let the music carry her along, feeling as if she were flying. Every time he pressed his fingers against her waist to guide her she shivered. She felt the sergeant’s stripes sewn onto the sleeve of his rough wool jacket and beneath it the strong, lean muscles of his arm.

She went upstairs to make the bed,

And she made it soft and easy.

She’s pulled her petticoats o’er her head,

Crying, soldier, are you ready?

Anna gasped.

Sergeant Atkins laughed. “Told you.”

“You did,” she admitted.

“It gets worse.”

How was that possible? This was scandalous—but she had all but forced it upon him. She could not in justice complain.