An Officer But No Gentleman by M. Donice Byrd

Aboard ship, it only mattered that you were a hard worker and had a modest temperament. It was also foreign to her to hear how people judged each other based on money or one’s parents’ mistakes. If I had not gone to sea, she would have been one of the only girls in our town who would have improved her lot by marrying me.”Ĭharlie thought about that. I was fighting my own battles and didn’t think to take on hers. “I was the dullard from the poorest family in town my standing was barely above hers. The last time I saw her, she had become a tavern wench with all that that implies.” The girls shunned her and some of the boys would spit on her. There was a little girl in my school-she was just a little mousy thing-she never did nothin’ to nobody. I’ve seen the way children at school treat by-blows. Your children would be bastards-you do not want that for them.

“Fallen women, and you are truly fallen become mistresses not wives. How could she? She had never lived among it. He did not want to be the man encouraging her to marry another man, but Charlie truly had no inkling of the way society worked. Morty looked at her directly in the eye and sighed. “If he would not believe me, why would I want to marry him?” Considering the life you live, how will a man know you only had one moment of weakness not a lifetime?” “Some men might,” Morty said, “but not all. “Why? Surely, if I ever were to fall in love again and want to marry, my future husband would forgive me for an indiscretion if he loved me.” “If he is offering to marry you after he slept with you, you should marry him, Charlie.”Ĭharlie’s soft snort of derision went without notice.

An Officer But No Gentleman by M. Donice Byrd