Summer Campaign

Summer Campaign (2012) Carla Kelly

Set in England in ~1813.

Major Jack Beresford is returning home from four years of campaigning, much in Spain. He (like other soldiers) has seen and lived horrors, but he is now returning back to England, and to Yorkshire.

Onyx Hamilton is about to make the match she has been expecting: Reverend Andrew Littletree, the self-absorbed and self-important vicar who is willing to overlook her birth to gain a pliant helpmeet is his vicarage.

Conversation was never very demanding with the vicar. He required only an audience. It mattered not that she listened. He knew with the instinct of the truly self-involved that she would hang on his every utterance. Anything less than her total attention would never have occurred to him.

It is obvious from the first that Littletree is a terrible match for Onyx, but it is just as obvious that she has no other choices. Her adopted mother and step-father want her out of their hair almost as much as Onyx quietly dreams to escape them. She is trapped by circumstances beyond her control and an inflexible society.

She is also marvelous, and completely protective of those in her care.

She ran across the room and grabbed up the poker, swinging it over her head as the doctor, abandoning his air of superiority, scrambled out of the room and bumped into the coachman.
The coachman was so exhausted that he swayed on his feet, but he gathered himself together and clamped two meaty hands on the physician’s arms. “You’re not troubling this lady?” he asked. “After I went to such pains to get her here? Let us go below and discuss this, sir.”
Onyx dropped the poker and picked up the doctor’s bleeding box. She flung it at him as he ran down the stairs. “Send Major Beresford your bill, and don’t ever come here again!” she shouted, pounding her fists on the banister.
The doctor turned around in the doorway only long enough to look up at her. His mouth worked but no words came out. He pointed his finger at her and then ran from the house.

And Jack, although very obviously damaged by his time at war, is just as obviously a good man.

“My older brother Jamie fought with the Major at Talavera.”
“And where is Jamie now?”
“He died there, but Major Beresford saw to it that Jamie came home anyway. None of the other commanders ever did that for their men. Major Beresford said he didn’t want his boys to take their final rest away from our dales. I am in his debt for that, miss.”
“I see,” she replied and could say no more.

I very much enjoyed this story, the character, and the way things worked out.
Rating: 8.5/10

Published by Cedar Fort, Inc

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