Free The Great War of the Quartet (The Imperial Timeline Book 1) by M.K. Sangert

got it.
    “Do you think it would be—be possible… to have money?”
    Tony glanced over at her, hardly surprised by the request. He had realized years ago that she was very irresponsible with money, although he knew that his own mother was hardly any better, and if only the Prince of Wales would be more generous, money would be absolutely no concern at all. Sighing heavily, he put aside the newspaper on the table, glaring at her with burning disapproval. She always became rather shy when she wanted money, but he didn’t want to fight her over it since she would become so childish, and that made it harder to be tough on her.
    “How much would you need?” he muttered
    “Not much,” she eagerly exclaimed, beaming from his positive reaction. “Maybe just around fifty pounds for now.”
    Fifty pounds?! Did she know that she was receiving a total of around three thousand pounds per annum, counting both her allowance and gifts? On its own, that made for a salary beyond excellent, except that she had no expenses other than her own. All the living expenses and staff were covered by the household overseen by Atkins rather than from any of her private stipend from the Crown Estate. If she had only restrained herself a little she would have had more money than she could possibly spend on clothes, jewelry, and all her other wasteful endeavors. She had hardly understood the concept of money when they had first married, and she still didn’t seem to understand where money came from, giving away something like seventy pounds each month to all sorts of people who asked for it—and then she burned through the rest on clothes and worthless toys the maids ended up putting away in the attic.
    Tony’s generous RAF salary was less than 700 pounds per year, and Atkins was paying the older of the two nannies just short of 110 pounds per year and the other 80 from the household funds he received from the Crown Estate. Together with the cook and the maids, the salaries to the private staff added up to less than 600 pounds per year divided between the six women and another 300 or so a year for Atkins himself for his great oversight of the apartment and all the properties Tony owned—including the house on the coast in Kent, the cottage in Scotland, and Olga’s summer house in Chichester. He did not expect Olga to subsist on a pitiful 600 pounds a year; he just expected her to cope with three thousand on nothing but her own selfish expenses—Atkins even managed her little summer retreat in Chichester and kept it maintained through the year with household money rather than ask her to pay a penny for her own bloody summer place. Even if she would manage to waste a thousand pounds each year on her tithes and charities she should still be able to manage not spending more than two thousand pounds each year. Her tailoring accounts alone were obscene, and yet she acted like fifty pounds was just a handful of pennies.
    “What would you need the money for?” he exclaimed.
    “For Christmas,” she said, coming over to sit down in the chair opposite him, acting like she had absolutely no worries about rejection. “It’ll be wonderful.”
    “Wouldn’t it be a bit more Christian to keep a lid on it?” he suggested as he took a cigarette from the box on the table.
    Her happy face immediately soured, and he regretted his suggestion.
    “What you mean?” she asked. “Christmas is really important,” she added, knowing that Easter was really the most important holiday.
    “Nuns don’t buy jewelry and dresses for holidays, do they?” he pointed out before he lit the cigarette with the lighter on the table.
    “That’s because they don’t have children,” Olga asserted.
    She knew what he meant, but there was no reason she should be ascetic. Her children should be happy and enjoy celebrating Christ’s birthday. It would do Anthony well to mark that day and think about the importance that had for all of mankind. Christ hadn’t just been