Once Upon a Highland Summer

by Lecia Cornwall

  “Is it bad?” she whispered.

  “Possibly,” he said through stiff lips. “May I return you to your sister, Lady Delphine?”

  She felt tears sting her eyes, and panic welled in her breast at the thought of losing him, now or tomorrow, in battle.

  She forced a teasing smile. “But the music has not ended.”

  He colored slightly. “No, but—”

  The door of the Duke of Richmond’s study opened again, and a grim faced cavalry officer emerged and held up his hand for silence. “Gentlemen, finish your dances, take leave of your partners and return to your units at once.”

  Dismayed cries rose from the ladies. The music faltered and stopped. Stephen looked around, taking note of the officers in his own regiment. She felt the tension in his body, saw the eager light in his eyes, knew he was already on duty, and she was all but forgotten. Still he kept his hand under her elbow as he caught the arm of a passing adjutant. “What news?”

  The young soldier glanced at her and bowed before replying. “Napoleon crossed the frontier at Charleroi. Lord Wellington plans to march out and engage him south of here.”

  Delphine put a hand to her throat. It was suddenly real, and frightening. All the past weeks of gathering troops, preparing for a battle that seemed like it would never come, or at worst, would happen somewhere else, somewhere far away. Weeks of rolling bandages they were sure would never be needed, of flirting and dancing and picnicking with handsome officers, laughing at their bravado, their brave boasts of the daring adventures they’d have when Napoleon appeared at last. Now he was here, just south of the city, close by. She looked around the room at the keen faces of the men, the tears in the ladies’ eyes. Despair made her sway. Stephen took her arm more firmly, tucking it under his own.

  “Come, I’ll escort you back to Lady Fairlie,” he said gently, giving her a brave smile.

  She felt the hard muscles under his tunic, warm and alive. For once in her life—and when it mattered most—her tongue knotted. She wondered again just what to say, when she may never see him again, and he might—she closed her eyes, leaned against him for a moment.

  He put gripped her hand for a moment, offering her courage. He smiled gently, yet in the depths of his grey eyes, she read something else, a shadow of something indefinable, as if the battle for him might already be lost, as if some great sorrow had brought him here, and he did not care if he lived or died, once his duty was done. That scared her most of all.

  “My lord, what—” she began, but they reached Eleanor’s side, and he turned his attention to her. Her sister was white faced, her lips drawn into a thin line. It did nothing to soothe Delphine to see an experienced officer’s wife like Eleanor, a woman who had been through many battles before, looking so grim.

  “Ellie.” She took her sister’s hand. It was ice cold inside her glove.

  Eleanor squeezed back. “Fairlie has gone to muster his men. He says we must go at once. We’re to return to the villa. Keep the horses harnessed and go north to Antwerp and home to England at once if it goes badly.” She looked at Stephen. Though her eyes were dry, they were huge, filled with worry. “Will it go badly do you think, my lord?”

  “We have an excellent commander, Lady Fairlie, and excellent officers under him, Colonel Lord Fairlie among them,” he said gently. “We can hope for the best outcome with such odds, I think.”

  Eleanor nodded. “And yet, Napoleon’s officers are every bit as fine as ours. I’ve heard Fairlie say so.”

  Stephen didn’t reply to that. “If I may, I think Colonel Fairlie’s advice was sound. You must leave at once if things go badly.” He turned to Delphine and met her eyes, as if he expected she would be the brave one, would be the one get her sister to safety, instead of the other way around. “Come ladies, I’ll see you to your carriage. The streets will be crowded with troops moving up, and it may take you some time to reach home, so it’s best to leave now.” He took Eleanor’s arm, and Delphine walked next to her sister as Stephen pressed through the crowds, seeing them safely through the crush.

  Outside, the yard was in chaos. Torches lit the faces of panicked horses, their eyes rolling white as yelling coachmen tried to force their way to the door to pick up their passengers. Delphine watched as Stephen gave an order to one of the Duchess’s footmen, and stayed close to them, protecting them from the mayhem, keeping them safe as they waited for Colonel Fairlie’s coach to arrive.

  And who would keep him safe, Delphine wondered. He was still wearing dancing pumps, and surely he’d need to find his boots before battle began. He could not fight in dancing pumps, surely. She felt hysterical laughter bubble up in her throat. A dozen other officers nearby also wore their formal footwear. They could not fight, so they must stay, then, surely. Fear formed a hard knot in her throat, and she tried to swallow it, but it would not go. She scanned the crowds in the torch lit courtyard. She saw a grinning officer mount his horse, stilling the beast’s panic as it capered anxiously. He reached down and hauled a lady up to perch on his stirrup, holding her close, the satin of her gown shimmering. Her arms went around his neck, and their lips met in a long, passionate kiss. Delphine should have been shocked—such behavior would have been unacceptable at any other ball, on any other night than this one, but it was right in this moment, with battle looming. She wondered how many of the men here tonight would die. She looked at Stephen, so alive, strong and vital. She memorized the way the torchlight gleamed on his fair hair, lit his eyes, flamed over the width of his shoulders, made his scarlet tunic glow. He turned and looked at her as if he expected her to speak. Her lips parted, and she stepped closer, but the coach pulled up, and Stephen helped Eleanor into it before taking Delphine’s hand. “Goodnight, my lady, and thank you for the dance,” he said politely. “Remember, if things go awry tomorrow—”

  She didn’t want to think about that. She threw herself into his arms to stop the words, the fear, and kissed him. He caught her, and for moment he was stiff, his posture indignant, but she stood on tip toe to hold his face in her hands and kissed his cheeks, his jaw, and his lips, praying that every kiss might keep him safe, bring him back. Then his arms wrapped around her and he caught her mouth with his and kissed her back. His arms tightened around her, and she felt the sudden desperation in him, the need. He pulled her closer, and deepened the kiss, and she opened to his urging, let his tongue sweep in. He tasted of champagne, and wool, and leather—like a soldier, a warrior on his way to battle. She tangled her hands in his hair, pressed closer still, and he held her there, kissed her with all the passion she had dreamed of.

  “Delphine St. James!” her sister cried. “What are you doing? Get into this coach immediately!”

  Stephen pulled back at once, and met her eyes, his gaze was hot, surprised. He stepped away, and bowed stiffly, the proper and correct diplomat once more, the officer, the gentleman. “Goodbye, my lady, he said, and took her hand in his, and squeezed it, a thank you, perhaps—or forgiveness for her forward behavior. Her heart throbbed in her chest, and she was on the verge of tears.

  “You will be safe,” she whispered, making it a command.

  “Of course,” he said. Did he sound sure? She couldn’t tell.

  His eyes swept over her. “English daisies,” he murmured looking at the flowers in her hair. “How very . . . English. I used to pick them when I was a boy, carry them to my mother, my sister, even the cook.”

  She plucked one loose and held it out to him. “Take this one from me, for luck.”

  He stared at the small pink blossom for a moment. “Thank you.” He closed his hand over it.

  He helped her into the coach before she could say another word, and shut the door, his eyes on hers as the coach lurched forward.

  She fought with the latch, lowered the window and leaned out so she could watch him walk away. One last gleam of torchlight lit his scarlet tunic, before the shadows swallowed him.

  “I will see you again,” she whispered. “You will come back.�
�

  Suddenly it hardly mattered if he admired her or not. She only wanted him to live.

  Still want more? Keep reading for a look at

  THE SECRET LIFE OF LADY JULIA

  CHAPTER ONE

  London, October 1813

  When she looked back on the events of her betrothal ball, Lady Julia Leighton blamed it on the champagne.

  Or perhaps it was the heady scent of the roses.

  Or it was the fact that Thomas Merritt was not her fiancé, and he was handsome, and he’d been kind, and called her beautiful as he waltzed her out through the French doors and sealed her fate.

  Most of all she blamed herself. It had been the perfect night to begin with, every detail flawlessly executed, every eventuality planned for.

  Except one.

  She had waited twelve years for her betrothal ball to take place, and it certainly turned out to be an evening she would never, ever forget.

  She had been engaged to marry David Hartley, the Duke of Temberlay, since she was eight and he was sixteen, and as she smoothed the blue silk gown over her grown-up curves, she had hoped that David would, at long last, see her as a woman, his bride-to-be, and not just the child who lived next door.

  She was grown up, and pretty too—a chance flirtation in Hyde Park had proven that, and she’d barely been able to think of anything or anyone else since. She wondered now what Thomas Merritt might think of this dress, as she preened before the mirror. Mr. Merritt treated her like a woman, while everyone else—David, her father, her brother—all saw her as little Julia, even if her pigtails were long since gone.

  She pushed him out of her mind and practiced a coquette’s smile in the mirror—the smile she meant to give David when his eyes widened with pleasure at sight of her tonight. She planned to sparkle every bit as brightly as the diamond clips her maid twined into an artful coiffure of dark curls, or the magnificent Leighton diamonds glittering at her neck, wrist, and ears. She slid her betrothal ring—a sapphire surrounded by pearls the size of quails’ eggs—over her glove and stared at herself in the glass. She had been raised to be the perfect duchess, and she certainly looked the part.

  “Let me see.”

  Julia turned, waited for her mother’s nod of approval. If the Countess of Carrindale thought her daughter looked pretty, she kept it to herself.

  “We’d better go down,” was all she said, and “Decorum, Julia,” when Julia tried to descend the stairs a little too eagerly, anxious to see the appreciation in her fiancé’s eyes.

  But David wasn’t waiting at the foot of the stairs.

  He wasn’t even at the door to the ballroom, or in the salon with her father.

  She felt her heart sink.

  “You look well tonight, Julia,” her father said, casting his eyes over the jewels, as if assessing their value against her own worth, before turning away to take her mother’s arm.

  She glanced up at the portrait of her bother James that graced the wall of the salon. He smiled down at her in his scarlet regimentals. If he were here, he would have bussed her cheek, teased her, told her she looked very pretty, and made her laugh, but James had been killed in battle in Spain a year ago.

  She felt the familiar pang of grief as she met his painted eyes. She missed his friendship, his easy company, and his advice. Her childhood had ended with the heart-wrenching sorrow of his death. “Courage,” he might have whispered now, squeezing her hand. She let her fingers curl around his imaginary ones. James had been her protector, her friend, and her confidant. She hadn’t felt as safe as she did with James until—Thomas Merritt’s smiling face passed through her brain. She looked down at her satin gloves. He’d squeezed her hand as well, but it hadn’t felt the way it did when James touched her, or even David. It felt, well, intimate, admiring, the kind of caress a man gives a desirable woman.

  She felt her cheeks heat at the memory of the encounter in the park, and gave the painting a pleading look. Would James have been horrified at her behavior? No, he would have done the same thing himself, had he been there.

  Thomas Merritt was a complete stranger to her. She had never seen him at the balls and parties she attended, and she really should not have even deigned to speak to him without a proper introduction. If he’d been a proper gentleman, he would have walked right past her, ignored the fact that she was standing alone in the middle of Hyde Park with tears stinging her eyes, but he’d stopped, and pressed his handkerchief into her hand, and just in time to rescue her from the curious eyes and prying questions of Lady Fiona Barry, the ton’s worst gossip.

  She’d been prattling too much, perhaps, about the details of the wedding, and David was looking bored, which made her try all the harder to amuse him. He’d seen some people he knew across the park and stopped walking, taking her hand off his arm and stepping away. “Wait here, Jules. There’s someone I wish to speak to,” David had said. She’d caught his sleeve.

  “I’ll come too, and you can introduce me,” she said, but he’d shot her a look of irritation. “Surely I should know your friends, David. They might be guests in our home some day and—”

  “It’s business, Julia,” he replied sharply, plucking his arm out of her grip. “Be good and wait here, and I’ll buy you an ice at Gunter’s on the way home.”

  Stunned, she’d watched him walk away, leaving her behind as if she were an annoying child.

  “I would have promised you diamonds,” a voice said, and she’d turned and regarded the stranger by her side. He was watching David’s retreating back.

  “I beg your pardon?” she said, though she didn’t know him, and knew she should not speak to him at all. He could be anyone, or anything. But he smiled at her, his eyes warm, and her breath stopped.

  “To wait, I mean. I would have promised you diamonds, or something infinitely better than a Gunter’s ice, unless of course you prefer those to jewels. Even then I wouldn’t have left you alone in the first place, not with every man in the park watching you with such obvious admiration.”

  She held her tongue and glanced around. The park was indeed filled with curious eyes, and all of them no doubt wondering why she, Lady Julia Leighton, was without an escort.

  “It’s quite all right,” he said. “Think of me as your protector until your brother returns.”

  “Fiancé,” she murmured.

  His brows shot upward toward the brim of his hat, rakishly tipped on dark curls. “I see.”

  Embarrassed anger filled her. “Do you? And just what do you imagine you see, my lord—”

  “ ‘Mister’ will do. Thomas Merritt,” he said, giving his name and bowing. “And you are?”

  “The Duke of Temberlay’s bride-to-be!” she snapped, rising to her full height. She still barely reached his nose, even in the tall, lavishly feathered bonnet she wore. There was amusement in his eyes, which was not the impression she’d hoped for.

  “Forgive me, Duchess. At first glance I thought perhaps you were a younger sister he finds annoying, or a cousin he’d been instructed to squire about for a bit of fresh air, against his own choice. He treats you as if—”

  “It’s none of your affair how he treats me!”

  He put a hand under her elbow. “Ah, but it is, as your temporary protector. I cannot leave the most beautiful lady in the park all alone, especially when she is on the verge of tears.”

  It was exactly what James might have said, and that only added to her desire to cry. She blinked back tears. “I never cry!”

  He pressed his handkerchief into her hand. “Of course not. Shall we stroll along the path a little way? Lady Fiona Barry is heading this way, and I hear she can smell tears from a hundred yards.” He took her arm.

  Julia’s stomach froze. Fiona Barry? This was disaster! She would report everything to her mother, then to everyone else in the ton—David’s absence from her side, the lack of a proper escort, and of course the presence of the handsome stranger by her side.

  “Laugh, my lady,” he murmured, leaning unde
r the edge of the feathered bonnet.

  “I don’t think I can,” she admitted.

  “Then I shall make you smile. I will promise you diamonds and pearls,” he said.

  “I prefer emeralds,” she murmured.

  He looked down at her, his eyes moving over her face and her elegant new moss green walking gown. “Yes, I can see that they’d suit you very well indeed,” he said, his voice low, seductive, something in his gaze suggesting he was imagining her draped entirely in emeralds and nothing else at all. She felt heat surge through her body, and she couldn’t help but smile.

  “There now, that’s better,” he said, but his eyes remained on hers. He had gray eyes, glittering and dangerous, filled with the kind of male admiration she’d never seen directed at her before this moment. She’d been wrong. This was where childhood ended, with the first look of male appreciation a girl received. She liked it very well indeed. Her spine turned soft for a moment, and she had the oddest desire to lean into his strong shoulder.

  “Good morning, Julia,” Fiona Barry said as she approached. Julia’s spine stiffened to attention at once, and she tore her gaze from Thomas Merritt’s handsome face. Fiona was examining the gentleman as if he were a cream cake and she was starving. “And who is this? Do introduce me, my dear.”

  “This is Mr. Thomas Merritt,” Julia said. Even her voice sounded more adult, husky and soft. “Mr. Merritt, this is Lady Fiona Barry, a dear friend of my mother’s.”

  He bowed over Fiona’s hand. “Good morning, Lady Barry. A pleasant morning for a walk in the park, is it not?”

  “Indeed,” Fiona said. “But where is Temberlay, my dear?” she asked Julia. “I was sure I heard your mama say you’d gone walking with him this morning when I called.”

  Julia felt her face heat. Fiona could also sniff out lies. “He’s just—”