The Brigadier's Runaway Bride (Dukes of War Book 5) (18 page)

His brother seemed unconvinced. “Oliver felt wretched about being forced to choose one of us to save.”

“I forgive Oliver. His choices were limited.”

“
I
felt wretched for being the one that he’d saved.” Anguish filled Bartholomew’s face.

Edmund softened his voice. “I forgive
you
, brother. You didn’t have a choice. Besides, had the decision been left to me… I would have made the same choice.”

“As would I,” Bartholomew said fiercely, his eyes glistening. “Given half the chance.”

“You would save yourself?” Edmund teased.

“I would have to, for Mother England.” Bartholomew peered down his nose at Edmund’s dusty attire. “With that cravat, you embarrass the entire country.”

Edmund’s throat tightened. He had missed his twin dreadfully. The teasing. The camaraderie. The sense of belonging. Of being half of a whole.

“I love you too, brother,” he said gruffly, then popped a biscuit into his mouth before he could be forced to say it again.

Chapter 18

When the supper gong sounded, Sarah stepped out of the nursery just in time to collide with her husband. He caught her in his arms and did not immediately release her.
 

A familiar warmth spread through her at the feel of her breasts pressing up against the hard strength of his body. Not just a familiar warmth. A familiar
want
. An endless aching need that made it impossible to let him go.

“May I escort you to the table?” he asked, his words a soft whisper caressing the shell of her ear.

She nodded jerkily. She had no voice to do anything else. Her pulse pounded. Had she been able to respond, she would not have invited him to the supper table, but to their bedchamber. To the bed they should have been sharing all along.

He proffered his arm.

She slipped her fingers about his elbow and reveled in the strength of his muscles beneath her palm. She missed his touch. In keeping him from seeing her unsightly new body, she had been keeping herself from enjoying his.
 

The brief passion they had shared the other night had not extinguished her ardor, but inflamed it. Now she could not look at him without remembering his mouth, his fingers, his tongue.
 

When they reached the bottom of the stairs, he paused but did not let her go. She held her breath as his hot gaze met hers. He, too, was not thinking about food. Their interlude had awakened his passions as well as his own. She had but to say the word, and he would carry her right back up these stairs.

Her mouth dried. She was too frightened to say yes. Too aroused to say no. He was right here. He was hers. This was their chance at a better future. Her body yearned for his touch. Needed to feel him, to have him.
 

She was tired of waiting. Of letting fear limit her marriage. She wanted all of him.
 

Tonight
.

A loud crash sounded just outside the front window.
 

Edmund tackled her to the carpet before the first screams even rent the air. He lay across her in a protective shell, his back toward the danger, his eyes glassy and unseeing as the clatter continued.

Her heart was racing, but not nearly as loud or as fast as her husband’s. The color had drained from his face in seconds, leaving his skin pasty white and slick with sweat.

He didn’t move. Not a twitch of a muscle, nor even a rise and fall to his chest. Were it not for his hot, clammy flesh, he could as easily be a statue. Or a cadaver.

She reached up to touch his face. “Edmund?”

“It’s a carriage accident.” His voice was empty.

“Yes. Outside.”

His body began to shake. “I told you it was dangerous. Someone might have died. Perhaps several people did. It sounded…”

“Darling, I’m right here. It wasn’t me or the twins.” She caressed his cheek. “We’re safe. Your family is safe.”

“It
could
be you. Not today. Tomorrow.” His voice cracked. “I won’t
let
it be you. I won’t let… I can’t…”

She pulled him into her arms and stroked his hair. “I know you won’t. I trust you. You’ll keep us safe.”

His body began to shiver.

She held him in her arms until the squeals of horses and metal faded away and the shouts in the street finally quieted. She held him until her arms trembled from maintaining the same position for minutes, hours. She held him until he could feel her love, feel the beating of her heart, feel his wife alive and safe beneath him.

He rolled onto his back and pulled her into his arms. Now that the noise was gone, he could breathe heavily. She pressed her ear to his chest. His heart thundered alarmingly. The linen of his shirt was damp with sweat.

“I’m sorry.” The vibrations of his voice rumbled against her cheek. “You must think me as prone to hysteria as my mother.”

She reached up to thread her fingers in his hair. “Nothing of the sort. You are right. It
was
a carriage accident.”

“A bad one.”

“Yes,” she agreed.

“The screams…” He shuddered as if he’d caught a sudden chill. “The horses…”

Her throat tightened. “It reminded you of Waterloo?”

His muscles tensed. “It didn’t remind me. It took me there. As if no time had passed at all.”

They lay for a long time in silence.

“I won’t ask if it was awful,” she said in a soft voice, “because I know it was. Nor will I ask for details you’re not ready to share. Just know that I am here—
right
here—if ever you need me.”

“I don’t want to talk about the war,” he said after a moment. “Ever.”

She nodded against his heart. “That’s fine.”

He hesitated. “But I will tell you what happened after.”

She mentally prepared herself for the worst. “After being shot?”

“After waking up.” He took a deep breath and his heartbeat settled slightly. “A week had passed. I think. It was impossible to judge time.”

“You had been taken to a hospital?”

“A Flemish convent. Deep in the countryside. They had row after row of soldiers…”

“How did you get there?”

“I never knew. I couldn’t ask. I didn’t speak Dutch then.”

She blinked. “Do you speak Dutch now?”

“I had to learn in order to survive.”

Her mouth fell open in outrage. “They treated you badly at the convent?”

He shook his head. “Anything but. The nuns were miracle workers. Most of the soldiers died, but ’twasn’t their fault. To wind up in one of their cots meant you had been given up for dead.”

She snuggled into him and held on tight.

“All I had was what I was wearing. That’s all any of us had. Bloodstained uniforms with bullet holes or pieces missing.” His words came choppier now. “As soon as it was clear I might survive, they gave me a clean set of clothes. Likely cobbled together from scraps of usable cloth taken from the uniforms of dead men.”

Sarah shivered.

“A great many of us had been trampled by fleeing men and fleeing horses.” He gazed into the distance. “It took months to recover, to learn to walk again, to pick up a heavy object.”

“Were there many heavy objects?”

“
Many
.” His lips twisted. “I had no money, no people, no way to communicate. Once I left the convent, my only choice was to take any odd job I could find, for any pay I could scrabble. Sometimes it was a scrap of food, a hayloft for a bed. Other times, it wasn’t even a sou. I couldn’t argue, because I didn’t speak the language.”

“But you learned,” she said quietly.

He nodded. “I learned.”

She held him tight.

“I learned to muck out stalls,” he continued presently, his voice flat. “To clear quarries. To build stone fences. I learned about hunger. I learned botflies from horses could lay their worms in humans. I learned how to walk for miles and miles, with or without shoes.”

“You were heading to the coast?”

“First, to Waterloo. I didn’t realize how much time had passed. At first, I didn’t know the war was over. If the troops were still there… If my brother was still alive…”
 

She lifted her head. “Who was left at Waterloo when you arrived?”

“No one.” His voice was flat, his eyes haunted. “By the time I got there, even the fallen’s teeth had been squirreled away for making sets of false teeth. There was nothing left for me. Nothing and no one.”

She burrowed into him. “Did you try to catch the troops?”

“I didn’t care about the troops. I cared about Bartholomew. Oliver. Xavier. What if I was the sole survivor? What if I’d walked a hundred miles until the clothes rotted off my back, and there was nobody left to find?”

Her heart pounded. She couldn’t imagine the terror of such a moment.

“But there was always you,” he said quietly.

She stared up at him. “Me?”

“You were safe in England. Safe and alive. All I had to do…” He swallowed. “…was return to you.”

“And you did,” she said softly.

“You were the one thought that kept me moving forward. The dream that kept me sane.” He lifted his hand to his waistcoat pocket, then pressed a scrap of silk into her palm.

Her mouth curved in wonder. “The stocking ribbon you stole in Bruges! But how—”

“I stayed alive for you, Sarah.” His eyes were intense, magnetic, as he lowered his lips to hers. “I knew finding you would mean I’d come home.”

Chapter 19

After supper, as Sarah went upstairs to nurse her children, her heart was heavy. Her husband had been through something unimaginable… and, quite possibly, insurmountable in their current environment.

The carriage accident had indeed caused fatalities. The footman had stepped outside to get the news. It was dreadful.

A chimney boy had darted in front of the horses to retrieve his master’s top hat, which had been taken by the wind. The horses had startled, and reared. The child had been kicked to the ground. The driver had tried desperately to control his horses. The hackney coach behind him—unaware of what was happening—tried to pass the first carriage, but the panicked horses incited his own. When the two carriages collided, the first carriage became imbalanced and careened to its side.

The driver and passengers were bruised, but would survive with little harm.
 

The chimney boy trapped beneath the horses and fallen carriage would not.

Startled horses or broken axles occurred with regularity, but rarely was the outcome fatal. Sarah doubted that fact would bring much solace to her husband. If he had been apprehensive before about the safety of his children on the street, he certainly wouldn’t allow the twins out of the townhouse now.      

Not after a child had been killed right outside his door.

Sarah shivered as she gazed down at the suckling infant in her arms. She was not a fearful person, but the terrifying proceedings had unsettled her as much as it had her husband.

Well, no. They hadn’t reacted
exactly
the same.

Edmund, she had to admit, was not meant to live in the city. Perhaps neither were she and the twins. As suffocating as it would be to go from privacy to living with his mother, the countryside would no doubt be a much better place for Edmund to raise his sons. Safer. Happier. More peaceful.