She turned slowly in a circle and could still see the glittering ballroom. But now it was filled with French and coalition soldiers. The music was no longer playing in the background, the sounds of rapid firing rifles filled the air, along with the acrid odor of gun powder. Another explosion closer to her shook the ground and pain ripped into her head.
“No, no, no,” Angie silently screamed.
Strong and heavily calloused hands pulled her from the nightmare and back into the ballroom. Familiar hands. Ones that she had felt hundreds of times over the last year. But these were not the hands of one of the gentlemen or noblemen in the ballroom. No, in the past she had known men like them. Men with soft, sweaty, and pudgy hands. Hateful and despised men. Those had not been the hands of a lover but a seducer of innocent young women.
Not so these. They were a lover’s caress. Ones that bespoke of dreams coming true. Of a man she had only seen in her dreams. Angie knew them so well that she could now map each and every callus and scar on them. She knew the length of each finger without having to look. She even knew the ghastly scar that marred the top of his right hand. It ran diagonally from the knuckle of his right hand to the lower wrist bone of his arm. She knew it so well because she shared a similar one on her own right hand. And she knew, without having to ask that he had received it in a similar fashion as she.
His hand slid upward, cupping her right breast through the tight corset that banded her breasts and made it hard for her to breathe. Kneading them through the thick layers until her nipple pebbled and ached from the need he engendered. To be touched by those wonderful calluses was heavenly. Erotic. Then bereavement scorched through her as his hand left her breasts and dipped lower. Caressing her ribs, her stomach, and then setting fire to her core as they came close to the apex of her legs.
For a single breath embarrassment nearly overwhelmed her, but then she saw that the dance floor was devoid of people. The entire ballroom was now empty. She didn’t stop to wonder about it, just rejoiced in the pleasure of being in her lover’s arms.
His fingers seemed to paused for a moment near her most private of places. Her mons quivered and jumped to life even as his powerful hands moved farther down. They stroked down her right leg and then journeyed upward on her other leg. Tremors of pleasure followed in their wake. Again, her sex vibrated life as they passed over, unhesitating this time, over that most hidden place of her body. When they reached her breasts, one of his fingers slipped inside her corset and caressed her from one breast to the other. Questioningly. As if he was asking permission, or a question. But which, she did not know.
Enthralled she begged, “Yes. Oh, God please.”
Her mind screamed the answer so loud it echoed off the walls of her mind. But no words burst forth from her mouth. She could not fathom why she could not entreat this man to continue. To make love to her. To fulfill the erotic fantasies she had borne these many, many lonely nights.
His hand slackened and began to withdraw.
“No!” she cried.
This time the word ripped from her lips. Hoarsely. Raspy. As if something was wrong with her throat. The thought had barely registered before Angie felt a burning pain scorch her throat. Pain that seared and grated against her lips.
But she was beyond caring about insignificant things like a little pain or hoarseness. What did pain matter when she was in the arms of her lover? The man who fulfilled her every dream. Filled her thoughts. Both in slumber and in daylight.
She grasped his arm in a death grip as she tried to turn her face to his. A face hidden in shadows. Obscured by the smoke blanketing the ballroom turned battlefield. Tears of frustration blurred her vision as his face was always in shadows. Hidden from her.
“Lieutenant.”
“No, not again. Not now,” Angie cried out.
It could not end this way. Not again. Not this time. She wouldn’t allow it to end this way again. She tilted her head backward, her lips searching. The coarseness of his beard rasped painfully against the side of her face. Moisture dampened her mouth as she strained to meet his. Dirt and a bitter coppery metallic taste rolled over her and penetrated her senses.
Please God, not again, she begged in silence.
“Lieutenant. The line is moving up.”
Lighting flashed and thunder roared, slicing through the fog that clouded her mind. No, she wouldn’t let it go. Not this time. Not again.
Angie clinched her eyes shut, willing the world away and the darkness to remain. She elongated her body, stretching as far as she could. Searching for his lips but unable to touch them. The whispers of his form remained in the shadows. Barely there. Hesitantly they returned her caress, her kiss. They pulled away as more lighting flashed around them and thunder rolled across the land. The earth quaked beneath her body and ripped her from her lover’s arms.
White light blinded her as a bitter cold encased her. One that she had felt and relived hundreds of times in the last year. Numbness in her chest exploded with searing pain. It engulfed her, mind, body, and soul. Yet through all of it, she heard his voice. “I’ll come back for you, my Angel. I’ll come back for you. I swear on my honor, I’ll return for you as soon as I can.”
“Andrew?”
Her lover’s voice wavered and she closed off her mind to all but the memory of it. Once again, the dream faded into the oblivion from which it had come. A world of dreams and lost hopes. “I’ll save you, my lady,” his fading voice promised. His voice now growing fainter, more distant with each painful heartbeat. “I swear, on my honor, I’ll come back to you,” he repeated.
Lightning flashed once more and “the Dream” as Angie had come to think of her reoccurring nightmare, faded away completely. Once again leaving in its wake desolation and despair. The Dream had plagued her for nearly a year now. It was always the same. She knew his voice, his touch, his manly scent.
But other than the color of his uniform and the buttons on his coat pressed against her breasts, Angie knew nothing else about the man who came to her in her dreams each night. Her soul told her he was real. Her mind told her he was but a dream. A dream built on hopes for salvation. For freedom. Manifested in her mind in response to her daily prayer for redemption from God.
“Lieutenant Devlin,” the voice of Sergeant Gordon Campbell bellowed from just outside her tent. Moments later the tent flap wrenched up and the face of the man she had come to see as her mentor and protector stuck his head in and glared.
“Lieutenant, I know you like your beauty sleep, but the General has called for an advance. The First is moving up in ten minutes. Get your arse up and join your squadron before someone reports you as missing or dead.”
Lieutenant Andrew Devlin, that was who she was now. Or who she was pretending to be. It was whom she had become three years ago when her worthless brother had managed to get himself killed the night before he was to report for duty as an officer in the Royal Army. A commission bought for him as a last-ditch hope to stave off poverty for him and their family. A family he had cared nothing about. As the eldest, Angie was the only remaining family member capable and able to care for all of them. So, thanks to her brother’s untimely death she had been forced to take extraordinary measures in order to keep her mother and little sister safe from poverty.
It wasn’t such a stretch, pretending to be her brother. Angie had been doing it for years while running the farm he and their father had ignored. Physically her younger brother and she were nearly identical. At least as far as their facial features went. To the world, Andrew Devlin had been an Adonis. A man of extraordinary good looks. He had been a charming rakehell with a dishonorable character. A typical English nobleman as far as Angie was concerned.
On her, the features weren’t so appealing. At least not for a woman. But over time she had come to appreciate her unusual appearance as it had allowed her to fill in on their farm, as her father and brother liked to call it. It had freed them to gamble away what money the farm had been able to make.
&nb
sp; Filling in. It was what she had decided to do when Andrew’s last escapade had gotten him killed the night before he was set to save them all from ruination. In true “Andrew Devlin” fashion, he had lied through his teeth about the duties he was to be assigned to. A cushy post behind the lines as an aid to a general.
Desperate, Angie had done what she had always done, she stepped in for her brother. She had donned his uniform and reported for duty as Andrew Devlin. Fortunately, the commission had been real. Unfortunately, the cushy post was not. Angie had arrived and found herself assigned to one of England’s most decorated fighting units and thrust into battle on her first day there. And there she had been for the last three years. Fighting and watching men dying in horrible ways. Men she had come to rely on and count as friends and comrades in arms.
The Dream was vanquished to the recesses of her mind once more as she struggled into her coat and lumbered outside to join her men. Or Lieutenant Andrew Devlin’s men. The rumor was that the fighting was almost over. There was talk that this would be the final battle in the war with the insane Frenchman.
Angie prayed it would be so. For then she would no longer need her dream man to come and take her away from all this. She would have survived on her own. Just as she had always been forced to do. She could return to England a conquering hero, a decorated war hero, a newly minted Earl (that one bothered her as she would have to continue pretending to be a man, something she didn’t want to do) and in possession of enough money to keep her mother and sister safe from the drunks and gamblers of their world.
Just one more battle. One more fight. One more charge and she would be free to be herself again.
Other Books By Julianna Hughes
Full Length Novels
The Fallen Angels series
Book #1, To Save a Guardian Angel
His life is a lie…
* * *
Gabriel Stoughton, Duke of Belfort, swore he’d never claim the family title. A horrific past forced him to assume a false identity, living as a military man, and burying his old life. Now a Sergeant-Major, Gabe learns that Reginald Stoughton—his cousin—is committing the same heinous crimes as Gabe’s father. Then an urgent letter from his former commander’s daughter pulls him back into the depths of his gruesome childhood, and as two lives collide, Gabe must save her from certain death.
* * *
Her life is in danger.
* * *
Katherine McNair lost her father to war. Now in the hands of her despised uncle, she’s virtually sold to a man rumored to be evil and abusive. Desperate, she sends for the man her father told her would protect her, a man he trusted from his military days—a man who used to make her young heart flutter. When Gabe arrives, Katie realizes the attraction is still there, and when they are faced with a marriage for the sake of protecting her, she is more than willing, convinced she can seduce him into a real marriage.
* * *
But when Katie is kidnapped, Gabe realizes he loves his wife and will do anything to keep her safe. But can he rescue her in time to tell her?
* * *
RELEASED September 29, 2018
Book #2, To Save a Fallen Angel
His life has been a series of adventures…
* * *
Abandoned at a young age, Captain Lucien Stoughton spent his early years searching for his past. During his travels he is befriended by an agent of the Crown, who in return for help finding Luc’s brother, requires Luc to become a spy. But his latest assignment might be the death of him. Posing as the Barbary pirate, Captain Peri, Luc must rescue the kidnapped Earl of Kiterman. There are only a couple of problems, and one of them is a trouser-wearing, sword-wielding beauty Luc aches to make his own.
* * *
But none before have offered such a beautiful bounty.
* * *
Lady Margaret (Peggy) Hennessey has been raised by pirates. When her beloved uncle and her fiancé are murdered in front of her, Peggy vows revenge on the one man she is sure is responsible: Her father, the Earl of Kiterman. To protect her dead uncle’s clandestine activities as a spy for the Crown, they created a fictitious description of Captain Peri. One that Army Captain Lucien Stoughton fits perfectly. So now, Peggy must teach landlubber army captain to sail a pirate ship… all while hiding her true vengeful intentions.
Peggy is determined to kill her father and Luc is determined to save him. Danger and death surround them on the high seas. Is love strong enough to save them all?
* * *
RELEASED March 14, 2019
Novella Length Titles
The Fallen Angels NOVELLA series
Book #1, Alison’s Scandalous Affair
Second chances…
* * *
The widow Alison Sheiling has been a dutiful soldier’s wife, a nurse during the Napoleonic War and most importantly, a mother. Now that her daughter is nearly grown, Alison longs for excitement and maybe a discrete affair with the right man. But how does a lady go about finding a lover without revealing the shame her husband made her feel?
* * *
Barrister John Netterman spent the last twenty years searching for the men who murdered his pregnant wife. When he found the last of the killers, John took his own justice, but in the process was tortured and left possibly blind. In the aftermath family friends have found an experienced nurse… a sweet smelling, soft touched woman whose voice soothes away his nightmares. As John heals, Alison makes a shocking proposition, one that would tempt a saint. But John wants more than to be in Alison’s bed for a single night. He wants to be in her heart forever.
* * *
Can he teach her to love and trust again?
* * *
RELEASED October 23, 2018
Book #2, The Christmas Promise
* * *
A pledge between two childhood friends…
* * *
Peter Henricks knew from a young age his dreams of becoming a scientist could never become reality. He was to be the 8th Duke of Rollens, but that didn’t crush his love of learning. One Christmas season when he was a boy, he met Mary, another child whose love of scientific knowledge rivaled his own, and it didn’t matter his new friend was a commoner and a girl. For a fortnight they were inseparable, exploring castle ruins and pouring over her father’s books. When they stumbled upon a spring, one legends said granted a person’s fondest wish, an enamored Peter proposes a future marriage, if both are still unwed.
* * *
Becomes a vow of love.
* * *
Twenty years have passed since that day at the Spring—twenty years and two failed marriages. Peter went as far as fighting in the war, convinced the risk of death would be better than being on the marriage market again. But a battlefield realization gave him strength and now Peter is going to find the wife of his dreams—not another marriage arranged by his family. At Christmastime once again, Peter finds himself in the company of Mary who is all grown up but just as smart, vibrant, and oh-so-enticing. But Mary is convinced a lowly governess can never be married to a Duke, no matter what pact was made years ago.
* * *
Can one more walk to the enchanted spring help Peter convince Mary their long-ago Christmas promise is the key to their happiness?
* * *
RELEASED November 20, 2018
UPCOMING BOOKS by Julianna Hughes
Book #3, from The Fallen Angels series,
To Save an Angel
A debt that wasn’t hers…
* * *
Angela Devlin has been the responsible one for as long as she can remember. With a drunken father and gambling brother, she learned to do what had to be done to pay the family’s bills—including disguising herself as her brother to handle the estate’s business. Now with both Father and brother dead, Angela is forced to repay the debts incurred by both men, and still care for ailing mother and younger sister. Her only option is to take her brother’s Army enlistment … but it’s not the behind-the-lines assig
nment she thought, and Angela is thrust into the middle of battle.
* * *
A debt that lead to love.
* * *
Major Richard Darkman isn’t who he seems. He’s really Ricarda Dorko, half-bred son of a disgraced Earl’s daughter and a Gypsy horse breeder. Determined to forge his own future, he changed his name and joined the cavalry. During a vicious battle he is wounded. In and out of consciousness, he wakes to another wounded soldier tending his wounds—and not just any soldier, a woman in disguise. When he finally comes to, the woman in uniform is gone. But he cannot forget her. And as the war ends, Rick is driven by the Gypsy code to repay the debt to the angel who saved his life.
* * *
Despite all efforts to keep her war deeds a secret, word spreads of the woman war hero, who, having saved the life of the Prince Regent, is presented with monitory award. Soon Rick finds Angela—but realizes she’s at risk. Where money is involved, danger lurks.
The Earl's Night of Being Wild (The Fallen Angels NOVELLA series Book 3) Page 12