The Dukes of War: Complete Collection

by Ridley, Erica

  Sarah spread her hands over her belly and sighed.

  What had started out as a girlish infatuation had turned into something more. Something desperately real. Something hopeless. When Edmund had bought his commission and sailed off to war, she had been convinced her life was over. All was lost without him. Their future was everything.

  Of course she wrote him love letters with every scrap of parchment she could find. Of course she took the first passenger boat to Bruges when Edmund wrote to say he would have a short leave and he’d like to spend it with her.

  Of course a single night’s indiscretion had left her lover gone and left Sarah eight months pregnant.

  The front door banged open and her brother Anthony burst inside, all sparkling green eyes and matching dimples beneath a snow-lined hat cocked at a rakish angle.

  “Who wants to stay in this hovel at least six more months?” he called out, his self-satisfied grin giving his handsome face an irresistible charm.

  Sarah’s mother pushed herself up off the floor and threw her arms about her son’s neck. “Oh, Anthony,” she cried happily. “I knew you could do it!”

  Sarah’s father grunted, but did not cease stacking books into boxes. The buyer’s offer had been generous, but only on the condition that the deal was final. Documents had been signed. The Fairfaxes might stay in the townhouse a few months longer, but their cherished library now had a new home.

  Anthony let go of their mother and swept Sarah into his arms. “And how is my favorite duchess, eh? Shouldn’t you be… oh, I don’t know. Off duchessing?”

  The townhouse became preternaturally silent.

  Frowning, Anthony released Sarah. “What happened?”

  “She didn’t do it,” her father ground out, as if he took this act as a personal slight. He likely did.

  Anthony laughed in disbelief. “Never say you jilted Ravenwood!”

  “Not exactly.” Sarah clutched her fingers to her chest. She still couldn’t believe the miracle. “The situation—”

  “Edmund Blackpool is back,” her mother interrupted with a scowl. “That’s why she didn’t do it.”

  “But that’s wonderful!” Anthony kissed both of Sarah’s cheeks before pulling her into another laughing embrace. “I thought Blackpool was dead. We all thought he was! What happened? When did he get home? How did he get home? Is this the happiest day of your life? You got to jilt a duke and get the love of your life back. You must be the luckiest woman in the world!”

  Sarah’s answering smile trembled. It was the happiest day of her life. Not for jilting Ravenwood—the duke had surprised her by being her best and staunchest supporter since the day she’d confessed her secret. He certainly did not deserve ridicule for being the kindest man of her acquaintance, or sacrificing himself to save someone as lowly as her.

  He no longer had to. Edmund was back.

  Improbably, wonderfully, terribly. His return was everything she’d wanted since the moment she discovered she was increasing. But her prayers had been answered a little too late. Her dreams of a life in London with her baby and her husband were as substantial as smoke. The child would be born before the banns could be read, and would be forever labeled a bastard. None of them would ever be accepted in Polite Society again.

  She could have circumvented all that by marrying Ravenwood after all… But for her, there had never been anyone but Edmund.

  Until now.

  She curved her hands over her belly and smiled when the baby inside rewarded her with a sharp kick.

  It no longer mattered what Sarah wanted, what she had dreamed. The only thing that mattered was the baby. Ensuring the infant’s future was the best future Sarah could possibly provide. She was a mother now, and that’s what mothers did.

  Correction: what good mothers did.

  Sarah sighed. Clearly she had inherited more than a small bit of her mother’s flightiness, because from the second Edmund burst into the ceremony, she’d no longer wanted to be a duchess.

  She just wanted Edmund.

  Seeing his face had been like being flooded with magic. He was sunshine and sultry nights. Laughter and sensuous kisses. The other half of her heart.

  For months, she’d longed for the dashing, carefree young man who was always happy to chase butterflies or swim in the river or spend lazy afternoons on their backs in the grass to look for pictures in the clouds. The Edmund who’d responded to her love letters with a fervor to match her own. The Edmund who had nicked her garter ribbon as if it were a maiden’s medieval token bestowed upon her knight, and promised to bring her a ring as soon as he returned home from war.

  But the man who’d returned was a stranger. No ring. No smiles. No love words, or even a simple kiss. He’d come back… but he hadn’t come back Edmund.

  “I don’t know where he’s been,” she said dully. “He won’t talk to me. He just demanded that we wed posthaste and then left me. Again.”

  Anthony frowned. He dragged her into the furthest corner of the sitting room and lowered his voice. “Do you still have the blunt I gave you?”

  Sarah nodded guiltily. It wasn’t enough money to ensure independence, but it would have covered several months’ rent for her parents’ London townhouse. If she had been a good daughter, she could have offered it to them before they’d had to resort to selling the family library.

  If she’d been a good daughter, she wouldn’t have gotten pregnant and turned her life upside down.

  Well, now she had new priorities. That money was for emergencies. A few months’ security, should something financially terrible happen. Something like: not being a duchess after all. Something like: the love of her life returns, and their relationship disintegrates because they can’t keep food on the table. She shivered. Money might not solve everything, but poverty was a dark tunnel into Hell.

  Had she finally got Edmund back only to be dropped into a new nightmare?

  “Those funds are yours.” Anthony squeezed her hand, keeping his voice low. “Don’t you dare give that money to our parents.”

  She nodded, but her throat tightened with worry. Would it be enough?

  Her brother had opened an account for her the very day she told him about the baby. Every time he won at the gaming tables, he brought a portion to their father and deposited another sum in her secret account. Her brother loved her. He wanted to save her.

  He’d given her enough money to escape into the countryside, have the baby someplace no one knew her name, give the child up to an orphanage, and return home as if nothing had happened.

  Sarah could think of nothing more horrid. The child was hers. Hers and Edmund’s. Come what may.

  “What am I to do?” She laid her forehead on her brother’s shoulder. “Where are Edmund and I to live? How are we to live? If you could have seen him, Anthony. He didn’t look like Edmund. He looked like—like a street beggar.” She swallowed hard, hating that poverty terrified her. Hated what it meant for her future, for her marriage, for her baby. “He clearly has nothing. No clothes. No home.” She stared up at her brother in desperation. “Am I to be poor again? To raise my child as we were raised—never knowing if tomorrow’s meal would come from footmen or from animal troughs?”

  “Never.” Her brother’s green eyes flashed with determination and reckless zeal. “I’ll win you more pin money than a person could ever spend. Just you see. We will never again lie awake hungry, I swear it.”

  “Anthony, wait—”

  But her brother was already gone, flying out the front door just as quickly as he’d blown in.

  Tears of frustration stung Sarah’s eyes. She rubbed her temples to try and ease the pounding in her head. Perhaps Anthony would return home in a matter of hours, flush with pride and success. Or perhaps the next she saw him, he would lie coughing in a wretched cell in debtor’s gaol for betting—and losing—more than he could afford.

  Again.

  She eased down onto the worn sofa and set her jaw. No more feeling sorry for herself. N
ot now, not ever. Her sole concern was making the best possible future for the baby.

  Oh, God. A baby. Would she ever be ready for such responsibility?

  The back of her head slumped against the sofa as she closed her eyes and ran a hand over her belly. It would happen soon. Terrifyingly soon. Instead of just being Sarah, she would be Sarah and Baby.

  And Edmund.

  Joy washed over her at the thought. He was back home. Home and alive! She smiled with her eyes still closed, hugging herself with happiness. She could scarcely credit it. ’Twas a true miracle.

  But if she had been unprepared to be a mother… What about Edmund? He was back from the dead, and this was what awaited him?

  She had changed just as much as he had. Her body was distorted and ungainly. It would take more than a maid and a bit of soap to make her look like the girl he’d proposed to, the girl he thought he’d come home to. She wasn’t that girl any longer. Could never be her again. She was a mother now, with the bulging belly and swollen feet to prove it. She sighed.

  At least she’d finally stopped vomiting in the mornings.

  Her lips curved. That would’ve been all the ceremony would have needed. She could’ve jilted the Duke of Ravenwood and then cast up her accounts all over his cravat. She was already infamous. Why not ensure she was never invited back?

  She opened her tired eyes and stared up at the cracked ceiling. Everything was unraveling faster than she could stitch it back together. What she needed most was the one thing she couldn’t have: time. Time to reacquaint with Edmund and reinforce their love. Time for him to rejoin normal life before having fatherhood thrust upon him. Time to figure out what on earth she was going to do with a baby.

  Perhaps the Duke of Ravenwood could gift them a small sum to keep poverty at bay. She drew a shaky breath. Most people had too much pride to accept the charity of others. Sarah had none. Edmund, on the other hand, would want to solve things himself. He wasn’t even speaking to Ravenwood. There was no chance of Edmund begging for help or handouts. It might be years before the two men could be friends again. If friendship were still possible.

  A knock sounded upon the front door, followed immediately by the creak of its hinges.

  Sarah shook her head. Her brother had left with such haste, he hadn’t bothered to secure the door. Whoever was outside was already halfway in.

  She pushed heavily to her feet and waddled over to greet the caller. No one else was likely to. Her father wasn’t packing his books simply because there were no footmen to do so—he didn’t trust non-Fairfax hands with the family heirlooms. Likewise, her mother wouldn’t hesitate to drop to the floor to ensure no stray coin or jewel was being left behind—but “maid” and “butler” were not among her duties.

  The sole maid-of-all-work they still did have was little more than an exhausted child, and was currently out behind the townhouse, cleaning the chamber pots.

  Which left Sarah to start the kettle a-boil or heave logs onto the waning fire or leap up to answer doors.

  As much as one could leap whilst enormously pregnant. Inglorious at best.

  Out duchessing, her brother had said. Sarah’s feet slowed. What would that have been like?

  She reached around her belly and pushed the door the rest of the way open. Her breath caught.

  Edmund stood there.

  Not the dirty, unkempt street-beggar Edmund who had disrupted her clandestine wedding. Her heart raced. The old Edmund. The real Edmund.

  The white flash of his teeth in his slow, familiar smile nearly brought her to her knees.

  His thick brown hair had been trimmed and coiffed into the mirror image of his fashionable brother’s. The beard was gone, leaving Edmund’s chiseled jaw smooth and eminently touchable. His sun-browned skin was still unfashionably dark, but the bronze tone only made his white teeth and crystalline blue eyes that much more arresting. As to the rest of him…

  His shoulders were as wide as she remembered. His body was more lean, but just as strong and powerful. Perhaps more so. His cravat was perfectly starched and perfectly white, contrasting beautifully with the dark blue of his coat and the supple leather of the buckskin breeches covering his muscled thighs.

  Gone were the ill-fitting shoes with the soles barely attached. His feet and calves were now encased in shiny black Hessians. There was no longer any trace of whatever he’d been through en route to the wedding. He even smelled like London—new leather, expensive soap, imported perfume.

  He held out a bouquet of flowers. Not roses or lilies, as a debutante being courted might expect, but a simple clutch of the gorgeous red poppies she’d admired lining the streets during their stolen moments in Bruges.

  She brought them to her nose and breathed in deeply, allowing the memories of the past to envelop her. She had been so much younger eight short months ago. So feckless and foolhardy. So madly in love. Just as she was now.

  “I wish to apologize.” Edmund’s low, deep voice washed over her with the same aching familiarity as his big strong hands, his soft wide lips. “I am not apologizing for stopping the ceremony. But I do regret causing you embarrassment and discomfort. That was never my intention.”

  She lowered the flowers and stepped back from the open doorway, her head spinning at the sight of him. Just as it had done when he’d interrupted the wedding. “Come in.”

  As he stepped inside, his presence seemed to fill the entire townhouse.

  Her blood raced. She could not think. She could barely breathe. Not with him so close after all this time. Her heart pounded. She needed to sit down before the dizziness overtook her.

  “You are mine,” he said urgently. “Just as I am yours. We promised ourselves to each other, and I mean to keep that promise.”

  Trembling, she led him to the sofa and eased onto one of the worn cushions. Her fingers touched her protruding belly. “I haven’t forgotten a single moment.”

  His wry smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Of course you haven’t.”

  She couldn’t look away from the piercing blue of his gaze. Eight months ago, they were lovers. Naked, needy, devouring each other with hungry kisses as his hard member thrust within her.

  Today they were strangers.

  “What happened?” she asked. She sensed, rather than saw, the violent wave of anger roll through him.

  He collected himself just as quickly and spoke with deliberate calm. “The banns must be read on three consecutive Sundays. The first reading will be a week from—”

  “There’s not enough time. We have only a fortnight. The babe will be born a bastard.”

  “The infant will be our child.” His jaw clenched. “I will not let him be born illegitimate. I have applied for a special license.”

  Sarah glanced away. She understood the reality of their situation. Edmund was beautiful to look at, but he was neither rich nor titled nor influential. A mere Mister would not be granted a special license. They would be wed by banns. Their child would be a bastard. There was nothing to be done.

  “Shall we live here?” She picked at her morning dress. “With my parents?”

  Of course they would not. They could not. The lease was precarious at best. Nor was there anywhere else to go. The Fairfax cottage in Kent was even smaller. There was no room for baby, much less a baby and a husband. She was simply pointing out what they would not be able to offer the child: a home.

  Edmund shook his head. “As you may have surmised, I came here as quickly as I could. I paused only to make myself presentable, and did not spare a moment even to speak with my brother. But his townhouse—”

  “—is not large enough to hold us.”

  He frowned. “Have you seen his property?”

  “I don’t have to. Bartholomew was a bachelor. You cannot convince me his townhouse contains guest quarters and a nursery. Although I suppose that will have to change.”

  Edmund’s eyes widened and his shoulders began to shake.

  Alarmed, Sarah twisted to face him fully. “Wha
t is it?”

  “Of course.” He laughed, but as before, his eyes did not laugh with him. “She was gone when I returned to the townhouse, and in the turmoil of stopping the wedding and discovering you with child, I had completely forgotten her presence earlier…” His tone was empty. “Bartholomew married little Daphne Vaughan, did he?”

  Sarah’s throat tightened. What a wretched way to find out one’s twin had moved on without him. She touched his knee. “A week ago. They came back to Town because of the wedding. Neither Ravenwood nor I were willing to wed without Bartholomew’s…”

  “Without my brother’s blessing,” Edmund finished bitterly when she failed to complete the thought. “Charming.”

  “We thought you were dead,” she burst out, grasping his forearm with her hand. “I’ve been in mourning for the past eight months… Bartholomew has been in mourning for the past eight months… Ravenwood didn’t take off his armband until the vicar arrived to take our vows. No one forgot you, Edmund. We thought you were gone forever.”

  “I suppose you’re delighted that I’m back. No more dreary dukedom. No more extravagant London estate, no worries about making do in a far more luxurious mansion cresting the best hill in the entire Kent countryside.” Edmund stretched out his legs and propped his head back against his hands. “I imagine every Ravenwood property has an entire wing of nurseries at one’s disposal.”

  “I am beyond delighted to have you back. I prayed for your safe return every single night. If I’d had the slightest idea you might still be alive, I would never have stood before the altar with Ravenwood. Please try to understand. We did what we did because of the baby. She is the greatest innocent in all of this.” Sarah placed a protective palm against her belly and glared at Edmund. “I would do anything to keep her safe. I would give my life to make hers better. I would wed the devil himself.”

  “And so you shall.” His gaze bore into hers. “You’re mine, Sarah. I will never leave your side.”

  “Not me. Her.” She grabbed his hands and placed them on her belly.