The Soul of a Storme
The Storme Brothers
Book One
by Sandra Sookoo
Copyright © 2021 Sandra Sookoo
Text by Sandra Sookoo
Cover by Dar Albert
Dragonblade Publishing, Inc. is an imprint of Kathryn Le Veque Novels, Inc.
P.O. Box 7968
La Verne CA 91750
[email protected]
Produced in the United States of America
First Edition May 2021
Kindle Edition
Reproduction of any kind except where it pertains to short quotes in relation to advertising or promotion is strictly prohibited.
All Rights Reserved.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
License Notes:
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook, once purchased, may not be re-sold. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it or borrow it, or it was not purchased for you and given as a gift for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. If this book was purchased on an unauthorized platform, then it is a pirated and/or unauthorized copy and violators will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Do not purchase or accept pirated copies. Thank you for respecting the author’s hard work. For subsidiary rights, contact Dragonblade Publishing, Inc.
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Dearest Reader;
Thank you for your support of a small press. At Dragonblade Publishing, we strive to bring you the highest quality Historical Romance from the some of the best authors in the business. Without your support, there is no ‘us’, so we sincerely hope you adore these stories and find some new favorite authors along the way.
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CEO, Dragonblade Publishing
Additional Dragonblade books by Author Sandra Sookoo
The Storme Brother Series
The Soul of a Storme (Book 1)
The Heart of a Storme (Book 2)
The Look of A Storme (Book 3)
Dedication
To Pete and Julie. Thank you so much for your unwavering support and love. You’ll never know how much it means to me.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Publisher’s Note
Additional Dragonblade books by Author Sandra Sookoo
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
About the Author
Chapter One
June 4, 1817
London, England
What the deuce am I doing with my life?
Not for the first time had Andrew James Storme, the Eighth Earl of Hadleigh asked himself that same question. One of the logs in the grate popped as the fire burned low, but it had kept the spring chill out of the study that even now he didn’t find comfort in, for the room would always remind him of his father. No, he had no bloody idea what he was about; he only knew the title, his family, the ton expected much from him, and that pressed upon his chest so tight it stole his ability to breathe at times.
The knowledge that he had no blessed clue about how to conduct himself—both professionally or personally—nagged at him day and night, but there was no reason to examine the whys or even wherefores, and little time to do so if he’d wished for it.
Nothing would change. Nothing ever changed except the pressure placed upon his shoulders. There had been no guidance, no words of encouragement, no preparation, for even though his father’s last illness had been the lingering sort, when they spoke it hadn’t been about the title. Mostly his father had wished to converse over memories and things nearly forgotten in the past—happier times perhaps, that hadn’t been nearly so for Drew when they’d happened due to the ever-present expectations.
With a sigh, Drew glanced at the letter he’d been attempting to write for the last half hour. Why the devil couldn’t he concentrate today? When his brother received the missive, it wouldn’t matter after everything that had happened between them, but the weight of responsibility demanded he do something, and this note was two years past due. It was time for everyone to gather at home and fit all the pieces of their shattered lives back together.
If it was possible.
Once more his pen drooped from his lax fingers. Two years. Damn and blast how life had changed in such a short time. For all of them. His hand shook, and a few tiny drops of black ink spattered upon the letter. No, life wouldn’t be the same, but would it ever be settled? Would there come a time when he didn’t feel like such an abject failure?
The rustle of taffeta preceded his mother’s arrival, and he welcomed the distraction, though the task at hand would need completing, and soon. It was the least he could do. He couldn’t put his house in order, so to speak, until his brothers had been accounted for and settled. The tightness in his chest went up a notch and he winced while trying to breathe through the pressure.
Yet even that wouldn’t erase the scars war—death—had wrought.
Then why is it me who is drowning?
“Good morning, Mother.” Drew had seen her at breakfast some hours ago, but when she’d made an attempt to start a serious conversation with him, he’d fled, for he couldn’t add another worry to the already precarious pile placed upon his head. It seemed running away was how he handled all the decisions in life, presently, and that stirred the anger that always brewed beneath the surface more than anything else.
Why the devil couldn’t he screw his courage to the sticking point and be an earl as his father had been? Poised, confident, nonplussed, congenial had been his sire’s outward appearance. All the things he was not.
“We need to talk, Andrew.” Her tone brooked no argument even though the words had been couched in a quiet voice with a smile. She crossed the room, the picture of elegant grace, and then sat in one of the leather chairs that face his desk. How many times did he recall sitting in that exact spot waiting for his father’s notice? “And when we do, I’d like for you to listen this time.” Concern brewed in her hazel eyes and creased her brow. “It’s imperative, actually. We can’t keep avoiding this.” She smoothed a hand over her moss green skirts. There had never been a time when his mother hadn’t been the calm rock of the Storme family and though he desperately needed that safe harbor, the storms raging inside him couldn’t be soothed with maternal words of affection.
In this, he was quite alone and lost.
God, I’m a failure in every way that matters.
A tendril of cold terror snaked through his gut, but he shoved the thought and the fear away for a later time.
Drew rested the pen in its holder. “What is so damned important you’ve tracked me to earth here? Have I not done enough?” For it was always something that apparently only he could attend to or fix.
Who will take care of me when I finally fall apart?
“Language, dear.” She wasted no time in getting to the meat of it. “Your brother arrives home today.”
Panic twisted through his gut to mingle with the fear, and he took tiny, panting breaths to stave off an attack of anxiety. They’d come more frequently in the last six months, but he’d not wished to burden anyone with that fact. For what good would it do? Wasn’t that what came with being a peer? So, he’d hidden his distress as best he could. “Which one?” he finally managed to ask through a tight throat.
“Phineas. I had a letter from him several days ago.” She frowned as she looked at him despite the unabashed excitement in her voice. “I expect you to behave around him.”
Bloody hell. “Please, Mother.” His brother’s imminent arrival made the letter he currently wrote moot. He rolled his eyes heavenward. “Behave? Yes, by all means, let us coddle both of my brothers when they return.” He couldn’t help his words or the bitterness that propelled them into the air, but he also couldn’t stop them. “The heroes of the wars, regardless of the hell I’ve gone through, and still do.”
Why was it that no one cared about the men who hadn’t been to the front lines, who’d been left behind due to necessity and responsibility? Why were such men of less importance than the ones who’d seen battle and had the scars to prove it?
“Andrew, not now.” The exhaustion in his mother’s voice spoke of weary days arguing with him about that very thing.
“When, then? This needs saying, I’ll wager.” He shook his head and counted to five in his head to stave off an explosion of temper. “I don’t matter, for a man who didn’t fight has no right to complain. Isn’t that correct?” Despite his attempts to ward off the inevitable, anger rose in a hot tide to fill his chest until it threatened to choke him. He fairly shook from it.
“That’s not what I meant.” A hint of disappointment clouded her eyes, gone with her next blink.
But he’d glimpsed it all the same. “It’s implied. It always is.” Drew waved a hand. “What’s more, I know you blame me for what happened to the boys. How could you not?” His two younger brothers, both returning home from their military careers and both sporting some type of life-changing injury. “I didn’t try hard enough to deny their commissions.”
I wasn’t there to keep them safe.
The vice around his chest tightened. Father’s last words to him had been, Look after your mother and keep your brothers safe.
Nothing about what he should do in his own life, but he’d failed that simple command. Shame crept in to collide with the anger. What sort of man did that leave him?
“Such gammon.” Annoyance snapped in his mother’s eyes. “I was grateful one of my sons remained behind to care for your father in his last days.”
“As if I had the choice,” he muttered. He was the heir, and his first duty was not to his country but to the damned title. A finger drifted to touch the ruby stickpin he wore in his cravat. To him it signified a drop of blood, the terrible wounds his brothers had suffered, so he’d never forget the responsibility placed on his shoulders.
“Please don’t be disagreeable. Not today.” She clenched her hands in her lap. “I want you boys to put away the animosity and return to how it used to be between you.”
“Ha!” Drew snorted. His mother’s wishes and the contents of the letter he struggled to write were much the same. “I doubt that’s possible.” Why was he held to an exacting standard when the others weren’t? “Too much has changed.” He stood so quickly his chair toppled and crashed against the bookshelf behind him. “If you are quite finished, Mother?”
“I am not.” She glanced at his chair until he’d righted the piece of furniture. “You’ve avoided every overture I’ve made to talk, but two years has been long enough. Things must be settled, least of which is your relationship with your brothers.”
The panicked urgency to run away, to find a safe place to hide coursed through him and sent hot, bitter bile into the back of his throat. “Or what?” It sounded as if she’d come to deliver an ultimatum.
“If you cannot work out the details of your life and attend to the title, I shall have no choice but to write to William, request you sign a power of attorney that gives him the authority to oversee the earldom until such time that your mental… faculties are once more clear.” There was a hard note to his mother’s voice he’d never heard before. And what was more, she was aware of how he struggled.
Another wave of hot shame invaded his person. “You’d give control of everything I have to my cousin?” William was a year younger than Drew. Viscount Heymont had been the previous Earl of Hadleigh’s younger and only sibling. He and William had grown up together and had been as close as brothers until a rift of some sort between their fathers had put an abrupt halt to the relationships. Now, with both their fathers dead, the origin of said rift had been lost to memories—and his mother certainly wouldn’t expound on the topic—but the damage was done. Drew had too much pride to ask after the origin of the feud, and if damned William didn’t care, well, neither did he. There were also two female cousins, but he’d not been as close to them as he had with William. They’d much preferred his brothers’ company.
Rotten to the core, every last one of them. Good riddance.
“I will if you refuse to do what you must.” His mother’s expression was unwavering. “Your father would be disappointed in you.”
“Too damned bad he’s not here to ring a peal over my head about it.” Disappointing everyone in his life had been a theme for too many years to count. He quickly swallowed and glanced at the doorway. I need to leave… it was imperative that his mother not witness one of his attacks lest he appear too weak, but when the butler showed up in the open space, he bit back a curse.
Damn it all to hell. Will I ever know peace? “What is it, Peters?” he asked from around clenched teeth as he worked to regulate his breathing.
The aged butler flicked a faded blue gaze his way. “Major Storme is here, my lord. I’ve had him settled into the drawing room.”
Settled instead of shown, for his brother was unable to walk. Once more, hot embarrassment and anger bubbled up, gathering strength. Soon it would overtake him, as would the crushing bands of anxiety, and he’d lash out in destruction—proving the surname was appropriate.
“Phineas is home,” his mother breathed as she rose to her feet. “Oh, I’m so glad.” The relief lining her expression grated against his already overwrought nerves.
Drew ignored her to focus on the butler. “The dowager countess and I will be there directly.” He glanced at his parent, and a shard of jealousy stabbed through him. She never seemed that glad to speak with him.
“Very good, my lord.” The butler withdrew.
“Andrew, please, don’t call me the dowager,” his mother said with a playful tone. “It makes me seem so old.” She patted a tendril of brown hair into place. Though it was streaked with silver, she’d never looked better in his opinion.
“You are as beautiful as always,” he conceded in a soft voice. “But until I marry, that’s your title and you know it.”
Interest lit her face. “Will that be soon? You were always so charming with the ladies before. Is there a special woman—”
“Before Father died and I was free?” He clenched one hand into a fist and then slowly relaxed the fingers. “I haven’t found a woman worthy of being a countess.” It was merely another responsibility heaped upon the pile. The weight of it pressed into his chest. He staggered from it, obliged to grip the edge of his desk to remain upright.
“Are you well?” She looked him up and down with concern.
“Quite,” he managed to gasp out. If he didn’t compose himself, the anger and anxiety would win. Would his family
diagnose him as insane then? Hand off his responsibilities to William as if he didn’t matter? As best he could, he ignored the internal hell he battled with. “Shall we?” When she nodded, they quit the study.
It took all of a minute to reach the sun-drenched drawing room at the opposite end of the corridor. As soon as his gaze landed on his brother sitting in the Bath chair, the anger rushed up anew, threatening to choke him.
Drew fought off the urge to claw at his too-tight cravat as well as retreat from the room like the coward that he was. It was his fault Finn would never walk again and seeing him like that brought back how inadequate he truly was for this position.
For life.
“Phineas. Welcome home,” he managed to gasp out. Emotion he could never show raged and grew inside his chest, graveled his voice. Hadn’t his father ingrained into him the importance of never allowing such things to show, lest he appear weak before the ton or his family? A man—an earl—must be strong at all costs, for it was his responsibility to care for the rest.
Yet, who was there to teach him how to live with the overwhelming feelings that were tearing him apart? Who would be there to make certain the anxiety that told him every damned day that he wasn’t good enough would be beaten back? Who would help him manage all he struggled with to live a somewhat normal life?
“Nice to see you again, Drew.” His brother lifted his chin a notch. His black hair was a tad longer than fashion demanded, and he wore it disheveled as if he cared not for outward appearances. Unlike Drew, whose hair of the same color had been cut and styled as if he’d meet the Regent tomorrow. Finn’s clothes reflected the same attitude as his hair. But then, recovering in hospital didn’t require the same attention as a peer about Town. “Being home isn’t exactly how I used to imagine it.”
“I’m glad you’re here.” His mother swept across the room. She dropped a kiss on Finn’s lean—almost hollow—cheek. “Tell me what you need to make your life easier. How can I help?”
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