He flinched as Prudence caressed his cheek. “You didn’t think you were worthy of me.” There was a soft-spoken wonder in her words. Her wide, expressive eyes served as a window to the sadness, shock, and disbelief there. “How could you think I was not worthy of you?”
“And why do you think I am?” Christian captured her wrist and then removed her fingers from his person, going cold at the loss of her touch. “Because I was a soldier?” Retaining his grip upon her. “Because I’m some whispered-about war hero who gentlemen want to take drinks with and women want to bed.” Her entire body jerked at his jeering, and more, truthful words. “I was no hero,” he spat and released her with such alacrity, she stumbled back.
“We do not always see ourselves the way others do.” She spoke as one who knew; as a woman who’d been judged for the actions of others and disdained for those same actions.
“We are nothing alike,” he said raking his stare up and down her person, hating that he’d never been worthy of her and that she now made him clearly enumerate why. She’d flayed him open, exposing all his weaknesses and failings. “I have lived a lie the past eight years and I will not continue to do so with you.”
Her fingers fisted the fabric of her white ruffled skirts. “I don’t know what you—”
“You want the truth?” An ugly laugh worked its way up his chest and spilled past his lips. “The truth is I was a rotten soldier. I was…” More adept with the young women eager for a night with a solider than any battlefield skill.
“You were?” Prudence gently prodded.
He blinked, unable to concede this humiliating failure. The rest he would give her so she might understand, so that she could cease seeing him as a hero, and let him live his life without this constant lie between them. Christian clenched and unclenched his jaw. “The truth was I was a rotten soldier,” he repeated lamely.
She tipped her head and because he did not know what to make of that odd little angling—surprise, disappointment, a rejection of that truth—he forced out the remainder. “I was no hero. I was not the revered and deserved respected Lord Drake. I was bloody awful with my gun and a coward in battle.”
A soft understanding sparked in her eyes and she took another step toward him, hand outstretched. “Oh, Christian.”
He wanted to accept that offering. God how he wanted to merge their hands and take what strength she had as his own. Then his gaze fell to the stick still clutched in her opposite hand. The bloody elm. With a curse, he spun on his heel and marched over to the sideboard. He passed a hand over the decanters before settling on a bottle. Christian shot a glance over his shoulder. “You think I am being heroic and rejecting the praise bestowed on me?” He arched an eyebrow.
“One never sees one’s actions as heroic.” The dance. She referred to the bloody dance once more.
With jerky movements he poured himself a healthy glass of whiskey. He turned to face her. A muscle jumped in the corner of his eye. “And that would be because there was nothing heroic in my efforts,” he said with a casualness that raised a frown from her. “You wish to think you married a Waterloo soldier? An adept man who saved lives?” He continued over her attempts at protestations. “A man so modest he should reject the praise, content with the memory of his own greatness? But I am not that man.” Christian raised his glass in a mocking salute and then downed the contents in a long, painful swallow. He relished the burning trail it marked down his throat. “Do you know who I am?”
She jutted her chin out. “I would have you tell me.”
“I am a man who convinced my two best friends to join me on that grand adventure.” He recalled Derek, now the Duke of Blackthorne and Maxwell as they’d been—skeptical and hesitant. I rather like my good looks… Derek had jested. I’ve little desire to return a monster whom none of the ladies will take to their bed… His mouth burned with the need for more liquid resolve and he swiped the whiskey from the sideboard and poured another glass to the brim.
“It was still their decision to go, Christian. They decided.”
He scoffed. “Is that supposed to bring consolation?”
“No,” she said firmly. “It is supposed to show you that you aren’t responsible for the decisions another person makes.”
How desperately he wanted to cling to that undeserved absolution and yet it could not come from her. Perhaps it could not even come from Maxwell or Blackthorne or any of the other men. Perhaps it could not come from anyone because there was no absolution to be had. “They were far better fighters than I ever was,” he said quietly to himself. The great irony—he’d been the one eager for the show upon that grand stage but Blackthorne and Maxwell had taken to battle as though they’d been born to it. While he’d muddled through battles, a living failure of a soldier. “They saved me…” His voice broke and he took another sip. “More scores than I deserved.” Christian stared into the half-empty contents of his glass. How much better Blackthorne would have been if he’d have just let him flounder in battle.
“Do not say that,” Prudence snapped. Icy steel underscored her command and brought his head up. “You deserved to live and I am…” Tears flooded her eyes once more and she sailed over and cupped his face between her palms. The cold edge of the stick bit into his cheek. “And I am glad they did save you. How very empty my life would be if I’d not met you, Christian.”
Her words filled him, lifted him. The chains of his past, however, would never free him. “I would have you know the whole of it,” he said tersely, stepping back.
“Then tell me,” she demanded, a spark glinting in her eyes. “Tell me everything.”
He would and then she’d cease to look at him as though he were the single reason for her smile. He’d been selfish long enough where she was concerned. “I am the reason my friend was nearly killed.” His mind shied away from offering her the whole truth.
Her mouth parted.
Christian grinned, even as her silent shock knotted his insides. “What, nothing to say to that? Would you have me tell you the chaos at Toulouse?” The floodgates cracked open and then the memories rushed through of the terrified panic. The agonized screams. Then that one shot. The burning scent of flesh invaded his nostrils and bile climbed up his throat. With a roar, he hurled his empty glass at the opposite wall where it exploded into a spray of crystal shards, falling upon the sideboard like a thousand useless teardrops.
At the soft, hesitant touch on his sleeve, he stiffened and braced for the loathing in his wife’s eyes. Instead, agony bled through their crystalline depths. “Oh, Christian,” she whispered and then wrapped her arms about his chest.
He went taut, his hands of their own will came up and hovered about her, aching to fold her close and breathe in the purity of her summer scent. Christian closed his eyes and drew in a shaky breath, determined to have the whole of it told. “I was a lousy shot. I spent more time shaking in battle than killing men. Maxwell and Blackthorne became protectors of sorts. Set themselves up at my side.” As though he’d been a bloody babe in the nursery in need of constant care. “Timing was everything.” He dropped his chin atop the silken tresses of her golden curls and stared beyond to the raging fire in the hearth. Those flames drew him back to Toulouse. “Do you know how to fire a gun, Prudence?”
She nodded once. “My brother schooled me on how to use a gun. He would take us hunting but Poppy and I despised killing the animals so we would go along and scare them off so he could not kill them, either.” Ah, God, that was the manner of innocent she was and had been. His wife’s eyes grew distant with the memory. “After failed outings, Sin insisted we fire at the trees on our country estate until we became skilled shots.”
…Look at the mark I left up that demmed tree! I will kill scores of Frenchies…
A sad smile pulled on his lips at the memory of him, Derek, and Tristan battling one of the oaks on his father’s property. How hopelessly naïve they’d been. “Shooting a man in the midst of war is very different than shooting at a tree.”
His ears flooded with the bloodcurdling screams and the thunderous booms of cannon fire.
“When a flintlock is fired, it sprays a shower of sparks forward from the muzzle and another sideways out of the flash hole. In battle, a soldier fires in volley to ensure one soldier’s spark does not ignite another man’s powder as he is in the act of loading.”
Prudence stilled. “Oh, God,” she whispered.
She knew.
Yet it needed to be spoken into her existence, so she truly knew. “Der—Blackthorne,” he said, the agony ripped through him with a vicious ferocity. The pain of regret as sharp now as it had been then. “While he loaded his weapon, I fired, and his flint exploded in his face.”
A gasp slipped past her lips.
“He is…” He shook his head once. “Was, the second son of a duke.” Christian dug his fingertips into his temples to blot out the dark reminders of those early days when he’d returned from war. “Society whispers about him. They call him the Beast of Blackthorne.”
“That is horrid that Society would be so cruel.” A spirited gleam burned in her eyes. Ah, that was just one of the things he loved about her. She spit in the face of Society’s cruelness.
He let his hands fall to his side and then balled them. The man reviled as a beast had been made that way by Christian’s mistake. Desperate to be done with the telling, he continued in a gruff voice. “Both his father and brother died and he found himself duke.” Christian stared over the top of her head, unable to meet her gaze. “He does not leave the confines of his townhouse.” His telling was met with a long, energized silence. “And now you know the man you married, Prudence.”
His arms hung uselessly at his side and he waited for the moment she retreated in loathing at the coward she called husband. “I owed you these truths before you married me,” he said flatly. Yet he’d proven a coward even in that. “I was not supposed to care. I did not want to find a woman who cared for me and respected me, but you were always there and I always wanted you to be there.” Always wanted her to be forever at his side.
She searched his face with her unfathomable eyes. “Oh, Christian.” Leaning up on her tiptoes, she placed her lips to his.
Chapter 23
Lesson Twenty-three
Many times a gentleman needs a lady to make him see reason…
She kissed him. And in that kiss, she infused all the love, hope, forgiveness, and joy her husband deserved. And while she kissed him, her heart broke and bled for a man who saw no worth in his life. A man who, with his dignity and self-guilt, had more honor than anyone else she knew. And she kissed him for the loss he’d known.
Prudence sank onto her heels. His expression may as well have been carved of stone. “What happened was not your fault.” She thought of the young man in the crimson uniform grinning in the abovestairs painting. “You were merely a child.”
“I was eighteen,” he rejoined.
“A boy.”
“A man who knew my mind.”
An obstinate one at that. She could have only imagined him eight years earlier.
Before she could issue any further protestation, he said, “You are eighteen, Prudence. Are you a girl or a woman?”
Prudence wrinkled her nose. “I am a woman, but this is entirely different.”
“Oh?” He folded his arms. “And how?”
She gave a flounce of her curls. “Well, I’m a woman and we are more practical and logical than a man at that same age. You race your phaetons and douse yourselves in cologne and run through town as though you’ve just shed free of a too-strict governess.”
His lips twitched. “And hiking along a riding tract is so very practical?”
She swatted his arm. “Do hush, that is entirely different.”
He flashed a smile, displaying two rows of perfectly white teeth. “Of course it is.”
Her belly fluttered. Oh, God how she loved his smile. Hated to see him sad. Ached to make him happy.
Prudence knew he intended to divert her attentions with that easy grin and teasing words. A pang struck. How many years had he spent adopting a carefree façade when inside he was the tortured boy who’d gone off to fight? “I do not believe your friends blame you,” she said solemnly, bringing them back to the discussion he needed to have, needed to have eight years ago. Lord Maxwell’s devotion was testament to the bond they shared.
A spasm of pain contorted her husband’s face. “Blackthorne has not spoken to me in six years.”
“Did you try to see to him?” Or had guilt kept him away?
He gave a brusque nod. “When I returned, for the first two years I would try to visit. He saw me once.” Something dark glinted in his eyes. Memories of those long ago visits? “The other times I was always turned away.” The column of his throat worked. “I miss that friendship. He, Maxwell, and I were once as close as brothers.”
Her heart ached for his friend’s loss and yet… “It was a mistake, Christian. And surely with time, that anger has healed. You should try to see him again.”
Christian shook his head. “He will not see me.”
“But if he would?” she persisted.
Without hesitation, he said, “Undoubtedly.”
Hmm…
“I believe—” Her words ended on a soft gasp as he drew her to him.
“I do not want to speak any more about Blackthorne,” he whispered against her lips. “Or my past.” He brushed a kiss against the corner of her mouth.
Her eyes fluttered as he continued to trail kisses around her lips, teasing, enticing her in such a way that a breathless anticipation caused a heat in her belly that spread lower, warming her. “You are just trying to silence me,” she managed to rasp as he dropped his attention to the swell of her décolletage and placed a row of kisses along the exposed flesh.
“I am just trying to make love to my wife.” He gripped her hips, bringing her flush to the swollen length of his shaft pressed against the front of his breeches.
A moan climbed up her throat and she rubbed herself against him, needing to ease that aching pressure pulsing at her center.
An agonized groan rumbled in his chest.
Concern jerked her away. “Did I hurt you?” In response, he ran his hands up and down her hips in a tantalizing manner, urging her to resume those slow, rhythmic movements. Then, with a staggering precision, he expertly released the row of tiny buttons along the back of her dress. He worked the gown free of her body and it sailed to the floor in a pile of white ruffled lace. Christian drew her shift overhead and tossed it atop her dress.
Her skin burned under the heated intensity of his gaze and she drew her arms close to shield the thatch of curls between her legs and her modest breasts.
“Do not.” That harsh command ripped from his throat, ragged with desire.
She hesitated and then let her hands fall to her sides. As though worshiping a long searched after treasure, he palmed a small breast. His sure, deliberate exploration was that of a man who committed the feel and shape of her to memory.
Christian continued to pass his fiery stare over her. “So beautiful,” he whispered.
Her breath hitched as he captured a swollen, pink tip and rubbed the bud back and forth. He continued to tease and tweak the turgid bud until her hips undulated with a hungering need for more of his touch.
“You are so beautiful,” he whispered, dipping his head. And before she knew what he intended, he captured a nipple between his lips and suckled.
Her legs buckled, but he was prepared and easily caught her to him. Guiding her backward so she had the support of his desk, he never broke contact with her breast. He trailed the tip of his tongue around her nipple and then blew on that crest until he wrung a cry from her.
She bit her lip to keep from crying out as he gently nudged her legs apart with his knee and pressed his oak-hard thigh against her core. Prudence moved against him, gripping the edge of the desk to keep from falling back. She fought to breathe. God help her, she’d never fel
t anything akin to what coursed through her now. She moaned and continued to ride his leg, knowing she should be ashamed at her scandalous response to him, and yet she could no sooner stop her body from straining to him than she could stop the earth from spinning. All she felt was a hunger for more. For him.
“From the moment I held you in my arms for that waltz, I have dreamed of this moment,” he whispered against her ear. He captured the soft lobe of her right ear between his lips and sucked.
Incapable of words, she turned herself over to feeling, reveling in the strength and power of his touch. He slid a hand between them and found her center with his fingers.
“Christian,” she cried out, clenching her thighs reflexively about him.
He was relentless in his efforts, palming the soft, dampened thatch of curls that shielded her womanhood.
Prudence dropped her legs open, needing more of him and he slid a finger slowly inside until madness loomed. Her head fell back and a wanton groan lodged in her throat. She moaned in protest when he pulled away from her but he merely shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it into a quiet heap on the floor. He tugged off his snowy cravat. His waistcoat and shirtsleeves followed suit until he remained bared at the waist before her.
Her breath caught as she took in the whipcord strength of him. She trailed her fingertips along the muscles of his forearms and they strained at her attention. Emboldened, she continued her exploration to his flat nipples and she caressed him. Did her touch drive him to the similar madness he’d brought her to? Prudence stole an upward peak. Christian studied her through thick, hooded lashes, desire burned from his gaze. She swallowed hard and then with a sense of power at the knowledge he was as affected by her as she was of him, she pressed her lips to his chest.
The air left him on a hiss and he caught her to him. His mouth covered hers. There was nothing gentle about his kiss. It was a fiery meeting of two people who’d hungered for one another and she boldly returned his thrust and parry. She dimly registered him carrying her to the leather sofa opposite the hearth and laying her down. The blazing heat warmed her skin and she shoved herself up onto her elbows to examine him. Clad in nothing more than his boots and breeches, she longed to see him naked before her.
Lords of Honor-The Collection Page 44