Free Mila's Tale by Laurie King Page A

that he made no move to sell up and live in the city, but Mila thought he enjoyed rubbing his neighbors’ noses in his newfound wealth.
                  When Mila was twelve, a letter arrived from her father.  She must return to the village now, to take up her responsibilities in the home and to prepare for marriage.  Her aunt summoned a dozen protests, a score of them, and managed to spin Mila’s time out another two years. But then the war that had been slowly building up for many years began to break out, here and there.  Worst of all was the city.
                  Five years ago, Jephtha came and took the girl away.
                  Now, Mila lived in the village.  She was nineteen.  Her father was the most powerful man in the district—perhaps the country—with half a thousand loyal men at his command.  And yet, his only child remained disgracefully unmarried.  Aloud, Jephtha blamed his sister-in-law, for overeducating the girl.  She had picked up the manners of an aristocrat in the city, and had the habit of looking down her long nose at the fumbling approaches of the village boys.  He had already entered into negotiations with three separate men over her, only to have her flatly refuse to have anything to do with any of them. 
                  Privately, matters were less simple.  The truth of it was, Jephtha was too soft-hearted when it came to his stubborn daughter, whose raised chin reminded him strongly of her mother.  Still, he would have forced the issue, but for two things.  One was the convenience of having his remarkably competent daughter at home to care for the house and farm. The other thing was the war.
                  When open hostilities broke out in the land, Jephtha was a known criminal whose bribes alone kept prosecution at bay.  With war at hand, Jephtha’s large and highly organized criminal cartel was a tool too good to pass up.  Proposals were made; counter-offers were discussed; and in no time at all, Jephtha was a soldier, his men issued uniforms. 
                  Soldiers, even the generals, are rarely at home.  With his daughter in charge of the household, there were few distractions, no urgent letters from home demanding to know what was to be done about a tenant’s roof repairs or bemoaning the loss of one of his milch cows.  With her in charge, he could get on with the serious business of fighting.  And everyone knew this war couldn’t go on forever; he’d find her a husband when he got home again.
                  The war ground on.  Dutiful letters from home, one every week, reported that the crops were in, the new cow satisfactory, the roof repaired and a new farm manager taken on.  He read these portions of her letters with some care, but could find no fault with her management, apart from the inevitable failings of womankind.  The mentions of her work teaching reading to the village children, and worse, to the womenfolk, he read with a grimace—the Americans who ran the school paid her, and dollars were always handy, but he could foresee problems when she married and either wished to continue working, or grudgingly quit and forever blamed her husband for their lack of her income. 
    Still, while the war was on, he could see no real harm in it, and things would return to normal when it was over.  Later, a letter describing her study of medicine with the do-gooding Americans brought the same grimace to his face, but then again, nursing skills were good to have, and might counteract the effects of that aristocratic nose when the war ended and returned soldiers were shopping for wives.  So he said nothing, and tossed the letters into the campfire, and went on with the business of war.
                  Slowly, under the pressure of outside nations, the fighting damped down, and Jephtha’s far-ranging regiment withdrew from the negotiated borderlands.  Unfortunately,