Work Text:
The hands were the hands of a servant, red and chapped. Only their thinness recalled slender fingers dancing over a keyboard.
She must have done her own scrubbing.
Anne folded them carefully.
The lieutenant had been a sanguine man, as well as an uxorious one. He was sure, he had said, that he’d soon be promoted. But three—two living—pledges of affection later, it had not happened.
Anne closed Mrs. Barnard’s eyes, her own hard.
Were Anne ever blessed with a daughter, she would never allow an engagement to proceed on a man’s hopes of a future income.
Never.