As they parted to whisper to each other, Meg saw dark hair spread out across the ground. He lay facedown, his long limbs splayed. His tunic was dark with blood, and the earth under him was soaked with it. Three women were trying to turn him over, strip off his tunic. She saw the blue facings, the gold lace of the Royal Dragoons.
She felt the breath leave her body. “No,” she whispered. Fear gathered into a scream, and tore out of her throat. The women crossed themselves as she rushed toward them, and they tumbled backward over one another like carrion birds to escape. They huddled against a tree and screeched as she fell to her knees beside him.
“Nicholas!” she screamed his name, shook him, but he was cold, all life gone. She felt his limbs, trying to find the wounds, hoping somehow she could stop death, make him whole again. She had bandaged so many others, saw them live, walk away. Surely there was time for one more miracle.
“You cannot die! I love you!” she cried over and over again, her tears spilling onto his hair, sparkling.
But she was too late. He couldn’t hear her. She would never see him smile again, or feel her heart skip a beat because he’d walked into the room. He’d never stroke her hair, love her—
“My lady, he’s gone,” Private Collins said gently, gripping her shoulder, trying to pull her away. The scavengers huddled, waiting to return to their prize. One leaped forward and snatched a gold epaulette away. Meg shook off Collins’s hand and stayed where she was. “No,” she sobbed.
“Why do I find you with another man yet again, Maggie?” asked a tired voice behind her.
Meg spun. Nicholas stood a dozen feet away, mounted on Hannibal. He was filthy, and there was a tattered and grimy bandage wrapped around his head. He was hollow-eyed and exhausted.
She had never seen him look more handsome.
Collins stepped between them, his musket ready. “Are you Temberlay?” he demanded, but Meg hurtled past him to climb the stirrup and throw herself into Nicholas’s arms. He held her close. His body was warm, alive, and she could feel his heart beating against hers. She ran her hands over his back, his shoulders, looking for wounds.
“Meg, what are you doing here?” he asked, pulling her into his lap looking into her eyes. Eyes filled with the kind of love she had always wanted. “Are you real?” He wiped the pads of his thumbs over her cheeks, trying to brush away her tears, but they were falling too fast.
“I love you, Nicholas. I had to tell you that.”
He smiled slowly, an exhausted parody of his devil’s grin. “You walked onto a battlefield to tell me you loved me? Why do you never do things the simple way?” he said, brushing a lock of her hair out of her eyes. “I love you too.”
She felt her heart soar. He kissed her gently.
“Your hair is a mess, Duchess, your face is dirty, and I have no idea what you’ve been doing, but your dress is filthy, and you are still the most beautiful, desirable woman I’ve ever seen.”
“I was afraid you’d be killed.” She looked at the body on the ground. “Had been killed,” she said sadly.
He held her closer, kissed her. “I’m alive, Maggie, and I love you,” he said as if he didn’t quite believe it himself. “When we get home, I will send my grandmother away. I will pay Angelique Encore to leave London and never come back if that’s what you want. I want to take you to Temberlay Castle, fill it with our children and grow old with you. Damn London and damn the gossip.”
“Is this your husband then, my lady?” Collins asked.
Nicholas extended his hand. “Nicholas Hartley,” he said. “Thank you for taking care of my wife.”
“Private Alfred Collins, sir,” the soldier said, taking Nicholas’s hand. “I never shook the hand of an officer before. Or a duke.”
One of the scavengers gave a loud sniff, and snatched the dead man’s handkerchief out of his pocket to mop away her tears. “Such love,” she said in French.
Meg slid out of Nicholas’s arms and stood by the body of the fallen Dragoon. “He’s someone’s husband as well,” she said. “Or son, or brother. Someone loved him, is waiting for him. Did he have a ring? I will return it to his family, so they know what happened to him.”
The woman clutched her bundle close to her chest. “Non. My farm is in ruins, and I have little ones to feed!”
Nicholas dismounted and took a few coins out of his pocket. The woman’s eyes lit, and her fingers closed on them. She handed the bundle to Meg and scurried into the trees with her companions.
“Now are you ready to go home?” he asked. He lifted her onto Hannibal’s back.
She patted the horse. “Hannibal, how would you like to meet Arabella? Every lady needs a hero.”
Nicholas looked up at his wife, and the love in her eyes took his breath away. “Including me,” she said. “Forgive me for being too stubborn to see.”
“I can’t wait to get you alone,” he said, then paused. “We need to talk.”
“I think we’ve done enough talking. I know, Nicholas, I’ve seen with my own eyes what kind of man you are.” Her face flushed. “And besides, we won’t be entirely alone.”
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t tell me your mother came with you.”
“She’s in London.” She tilted her head and laid a hand on her belly.
He stared at her. “A child? You came here knowing you were going to have a child?” he demanded as his stomach turned to water. “Our child?” He stared at her flat belly, felt love well up, and swallowed hard. “God, Maggie!”
She smiled down at him. “Can we argue about it later?”
“Don’t think we won’t, Duchess.”
“From now on, I will do exactly as you wish, my love,” she said.
“I don’t believe that for a minute, Maggie.”
She gave him a devil’s grin of her own, and he laughed out loud.
He mounted the horse behind her, cradled her in his lap, felt her cheek against his chest, and took the first step on the long road back to the city.
Private Collins marched beside them, and others, the lucky ones, straggled off the battlefield and joined their slow march.
The devil had been paid in full, and it was time to go home.
About the Author
LECIA CORNWALL lives and writes in Calgary, Canada, amid the beautiful foothills of the Canadian Rockies, with four cats, two teenagers, a crazy chocolate Lab, and one very patient husband. She is hard at work on her next book. Come visit Lecia at www.leciacornwall.com.
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Romances by Lecia Cornwall
How to Deceive a Duke
All the Pleasures of the Season: A Novella
The Price of Temptation
Secrets of a Proper Countess
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
HOW TO DECEIVE A DUKE. Copyright © 2012 by Lecia Cotton Cornwall. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition DECEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780062202437
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062202413
FIRST EDITION
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