Miss Truelove Beckons (Classic Regency Romances Book 12)
Read Miss Truelove Beckons (Classic Regency Romances Book 12) Online
Authors: Donna Lea Simpson
Tags: #traditional Regency, #Waterloo, #Jane Austen, #war, #British historical fiction, #PTSD, #Napoleon
Miss Truelove Beckons
When Truelove Becket’s betrothed went missing in a naval battle, she vowed never to marry unless she found someone she loved as much. In the seven years since then, the quiet vicar’s daughter has lived a simple and contented life helping the poor people of her village. But now another man has asked for her hand in marriage and, unsure if she is ready to commit to him, she agrees to accompany her beautiful cousin Arabella on a trip to visit friends so she can take time to think it over.
Viscount Drake cut a dashing figure when he returned from war to a hero’s welcome, but the Battle of Waterloo left him a shattered and haunted man. As his dreams are invaded by the terrors of war he becomes a sleepless shell of a man, and as his torment grows he begins to wonder if marriage to the lovely Arabella will help restore him again. But as Arabella coquettishly flirts to secure Drake’s hand and his riches, it is the pretty and practical True he turns to for solace.
With the weight of her marriage proposal bearing down on her, True finds herself irresistibly attracted to Drake’s quiet dignity and genuine distress, just as he finds himself drawn to her honest nature and soothing compassion. When a spark of passion ignites between these two who have both lost so much to war, they will have to confront their biggest fears—and everyone else’s plans for their futures—to discover if love can truly cure all ills.
Miss Truelove Beckons
Donna Lea Simpson
Beyond the Page Books
are published by
Beyond the Page Publishing
Copyright © 2001 by Donna Lea Simpson.
Material excerpted from
The Rogue’s Folly
copyright © 2001, 2014 by Donna Lea Simpson.
Cover design and illustration by Dar Albert, Wicked Smart Designs
ISBN: 978-1-940846-46-0
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Contents
Chapter One
Mud oozed up under the scarlet jacket of Drake’s uniform as he was pushed down by the crushing weight of his horse, Andromeda. The cannonade thundered around him, and the stench of smoke and blood reeked in his nostrils, but that he could handle—
that
he was used to. It was the feeling of having all breath squeezed out of him that put him into a panic. His back felt as though it would snap, and he thought he could feel someone’s knee in his groin. Andromeda was twisting and grunting, poor old girl, but then was ominously still, laying over him, her warm, heavy body limp.
He was buried, entombed alive beneath bodies of horses and men. Mother Earth vibrated under him as though she shrieked and writhed in misery at the abominable use men made of her surface, violating a once peaceful, green Belgian field. The air stank of death; the mud was blood red and body parts and dead and dying men lay around him.
Drake knew he would die. Even now he felt his own blood pumping into the muck and mire from the saber wound in his thigh.
He would die. If not from loss of blood, then from this gargantuan weight, his poor dead mount, Andromeda, crushing the air from his fatigued lungs. But no, he would
not
die! He would fight and scream until someone found him and pulled him out of this bloody grave, this battlefield, this Waterloo.
“Sir! Major!”
Someone heard him; someone was coming to rescue him.
“My lord, wake up! You’re all right, sir; you’re home at Lea Park, and alive!”
Wycliffe Prescott, Viscount Drake, major-general of the renowned Kent Light Dragoons, a cavalry unit of his Majesty’s army, awoke, sweating and screaming, twisted in his bedclothes with the bolster on top of him. It was pitch dark and Horace Cooper leaned over him, candle in hand, his ugly face twisted into a grimace of concern.
Drake threw aside the bedclothes, then sat on the edge of the bed and swept one long-fingered hand through his wild hair. He was home, or at least at the home of his parents, at Lea Park. The war had been over for months and he was alive, though injured. He buried his face in his hands. When would the horror leave him?
“Was I loud this time, Horace? Did I awaken anyone?”
“I don’t think so, Major-General, sir . . . I mean, my lord.” Horace straightened and set the candle on the table beside the large, ornately carved bed that dominated Drake’s room. Flickering shadows of the heavy old furniture danced across the papered walls in ghastly silhouette.
“Good. I don’t wish to alarm Mother. Ever since I came back from Waterloo with this beastly leg wound and . . . and the nightmares, she worries about me.”
“I know, sir,” Horace said, his voice a gruff rumble in the quiet darkness. “That be a mother’s chore, seems to me. No matter that you be full-growed and thirty-two years, you still be her child. It’s nature, sir.”
Drake glanced up at his former batman, now his valet, in the wavering candlelight as the man straightened the bedcovers. Everyone in the household called Horace “the Sergeant,” though it was not a rank the man had attained. It was likely more accurate, though, than calling him by his new position. As a valet he made a very good soldier. “Don’t you ever dream of that day at Mont St. Jean, Horace?” He realized as he spoke that he should have known he was deep in another dream, for he had dreamt of Waterloo—the place name had sung in his ears like a Greek chorus—and it did not become Waterloo until old Nosey sent the dispatch announcing victory from that town. The actual battleground was near Mont St. Jean, some miles away.
The older man shook his head and bent to pick up the candle once more. “No, sir, I reckon I leave that part up to you. You was there through the worst of it; I just came to pick up the pieces.” He handed his employer breeches that had been draped over a nearby chair.
Drake grimaced and rose, stripping off his nightshirt and pulling on his breeches, feeling the familiar ache in his thigh. The wound had healed, or at least it was no longer oozing or festering, but the pain was still there, sometimes excruciating in its intensity, slicing through him with every bit of the agony of the first thrust. “You did more than that and you know it, but even if that was the truth, bad enough, old man. Bad enough. You saw it all, the blood, the bodies, the small pieces of humanity hacked to bits on that bloody battlefield. And you saved my life, pulled me out from under poor Andromeda and from beneath young Captain Lewis, or what was left of him.”
Horace held out a shirt to his master—that simple aid was the height of his valet skills, which were negligible—but would not meet his eyes, abashed as always in the face of praise. He had managed to raise self-deprecation to high art. “Just doin’ my job, sir.”
Drake smiled grimly and pulled the shirt over his head, then crossed to the bowl of water cradled in his elaborate mahogany and marble washstand. He dashed the cool, lavender-scented water on his brow, wiping away the sweat that filmed it with the soft cloth Horace handed him. There would be no more sleep for him that night. The only remedy for one of his nightmares was a few hours walking or on horseback. “And still are. You’re the only one who understands, Horace, the only one who knows.” He tossed the cloth down and straightened, trying to ignore the pain as he stretched. “I shall be gone for a few hours. Please let Lady Leathorne know that in the morning, will you?”
“I will, sir.”
• • •
But there was no need, really, for that service. As Drake limped from the house, a plump older woman stood at a window up on the third floor and watched her only son—her only
child
—crossing the grass toward the stables. A worried frown etched deep wrinkles on her forehead. Drake had not slept again, or at least had not slept for longer than a couple of hours, despite the quantity of brandy he had imbibed before retiring. Even through the thick walls of Lea Park she had heard his nightmare screams echoing down the old hallways and knew that once more, his sleep was at an end for that night.
There was no anguish equal to that in a mother’s heart when her child was so sorely in need of comfort, and she had none adequate to give him. It hurt so very deeply. When he had first come home she had been shocked at how pale and gaunt he was, and how very weak. She had been full of hopeful energy then, able to help him heal his body, not knowing the deeper laceration was to his soul.
