“Macklin! Look out!” he cried in a voice laced with unspeakable pain. “Simpson! Behind you! No. No!”
This time he lurched to his feet. Olivia could see his body trembling, as if he were terrified. Then he suddenly was wracked by an even more violent shudder, one that must have shaken him awake. Even though he faced away from her, toward the window and its view of the night, she sensed he no longer slept. With an anguished groan he bowed his head and just stood there, the heels of his hands pressed tight against his eyes.
“Oh, God,” he murmured, swaying slightly. “Oh, God. Make it stop.”
At that heartrending utterance, tears sprang into Olivia’s eyes. So this was why he feared to sleep. This was the nightmare that haunted him. His friends dying in a war while he survived. Did he blame himself?
She knew he did.
He stood silhouetted in the dark window, the very image of misery. She wanted to go to him and took the first step forward. But when he turned halfway around and, spying the decanter, reached for it, Olivia froze. He lifted the vessel up and slowly, slowly, removed the stopper.
Don’t, Olivia wanted to cry. Don’t! But it was not her place; somehow she knew that. She could not doubt the depths of his misery, but she understood instinctively that how he dealt with it was his decision. Only his. If Neville chose the stupefaction of drink, no one could stop him. Especially not her, a woman he would not—or could not—love.
But knowing that, Olivia still could not abandon the room. She watched as his swaying figure steadied. She watched as he raised the decanter to a level even with his face and stared at the amber liquor swirling behind its cut-crystal facade. The firelight glinted through the decanter, painting him with golden color. Like a sinister rainbow the gray shadows, the flickering firelight, and the golden allure of the liquor fell in bands across his unhappy face.
Olivia realized she was holding her breath. She pressed the knot of her fists against her mouth. Please, Neville. You will never find happiness that way. Hadn’t her father been proof enough of that?
Then he shuddered and, with a sudden jerky movement, heaved the crystal decanter at the hearth.
Olivia leapt at the shattering sound, then gasped when the liquor burst into bright flame. Like a living creature it licked up the face of the mantel and across the slate floor toward Neville’s booted feet.
Neville looked up at her gasp, belatedly discovering her presence. But he wasted no time. He snatched up a small carpet and threw it over the flames, then stomped on it until the fire was completely smothered.
In a matter of seconds it was over, all but the smoke and the reek of burnt alcohol and wool.
When he lifted his head, his face was so haggard Olivia wanted to weep. Was it the battle with the liquor or the nightmare? Or was it her?
“You saw it all, didn’t you?” His voice was low and hoarse.
She nodded. He did not want her to see him at his weakest moment, and in truth, she would not have chosen to do so. But now that she had …
Olivia blinked her eyes. She could not explain it, but now that she had seen him afraid and vulnerable, it made her all the more confident of his strength. Though paradoxical, the truth shone through clear as sunlight. He was so much stronger than he knew.
She took a deep breath, shaking off her fear. “Neville—”
“No.” He shook his head slowly. “You needn’t say it. You will want to renege now on our marriage agreement, and I will not fight you. You said from the first that I would make no one a good husband, least of all you. And now you have the proof.”
“But it’s not true,” she protested.
“Don’t!” He held his hands up as if to fend off her approach. “You don’t know me, Olivia. You don’t know what a wretched excuse for a man I am. In an attempt to find some sort of peace, I have ruined you. I … I thought making you mine—making love to you, marrying you—I thought it might bring an end to these … these nightmares that haunt me.”
His eyes closed and he gripped his head between his hands. “But it hasn’t. It hasn’t.”
He opened his eyes, and the misery Olivia saw there nearly broke her heart. “I don’t deserve you,” he went on in a low, tortured voice. “I cannot undo the wrong I have done you, Olivia. But I see now that making you my wife would be an even greater wrong. For you to marry me would be the biggest mistake of your life. You deserve better.”
It was awful to hear those words of his. Awful to hear them, but even worse to know that he believed them. She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, but she did not turn away. For she knew with a bone-deep conviction that he needed her. He’d thought making love to her might cure him, and it plainly had not. But being loved by her, and loving her in return—that was where happiness lay. She was convinced of it. It was the only place either of them would ever find contentment.
But first he had to accept her love and trust her with the truth of his nightmares. To cleanse himself of whatever guilt he suffered.
“Nightmares or no,” she began, “I intend for us to be wed, Neville. Nothing that has occurred tonight has changed my mind on that score.”
He hunched his shoulders against her words, reminding her of a bear-baiting she had witnessed as a child. The great beast had understood its role and, though wounded by the first several dogs, had girded itself for more of the same. It had been a hideous spectacle and she had run away in tears.
But she would not run away this time. This time she would stay, for this was her wounded bear of a man, and she meant to help him patch the bleeding scars on both his heart and his soul.
“Do not try to warn me away,” she said, starting purposefully toward him. “For I am quite determined to have you for a husband.”
He stared at her through wary eyes. “I cannot let you do that. You don’t know what you are letting yourself in for, Livvie.”
“No. For the first time I do understand. In the beginning I thought you merely a charming ne’er-do-well. A man to whom I should feel no attraction but, unfortunately, did. But I have come to know you better, Neville. Slowly but steadily, and often against my will, I have come to know you.”
She stopped less than an arm’s length from him. Please give me the right words to say, she prayed. She took a deep breath. “First I discovered a superior horseman who maintains an impeccable stable. Then I discovered that you are a good landlord to your tenants and workers. Fair to them and just as hard-working as they. I will confess that at the time I did not want that to be the case. But now I am glad. You are a good man, Neville, and most important of all, you have proven yourself to be a caring uncle and, tonight, a man uncannily kind to a heartsore little girl.”
His lips thinned in an unhappy half-smile. “How quickly you forget the man who insulted you and who tried repeatedly to seduce you.”
Soberly Olivia shook her head. “No. I haven’t forgetten that man, though I admit I do not understand him. Why, when you are so kind to everyone else, have you always been so troublesome with me? So challenging to everything I said or did?”
She caught a glimmer of light in his dark, troubled eyes. “Because you are such a worthy opponent.”
A smile began on Olivia’s lips. But it quickly faded when a distressing thought intruded. “A worthy opponent,” she echoed. “But there are no more battles to fight, Neville. Not with me, nor with yourself. And most certainly not with the men who haunt your dreams.”
At that remark the spark in his eyes snuffed out and he turned away. “Those men …” He hesitated and she knew he struggled with his words. “Those men will never leave me. They will haunt my life—my nights—forever. I thought I could be rid of them. But I cannot.”
The defeat in his voice made Olivia’s heart ache in her chest. Her mind spun, searching for the best way to address this blight upon his life. “Remember what you told Sarah this evening, that she has a family that loves her, and that she should never take that for granted? You also said that her father would always b
e a part of her and that she ought to think about what he would want her to do. That was such good advice, Neville, and it brought her so much comfort. But you should follow that advice too.”
“I do. I keep up Woodford Court in their memory, though it sometimes—”
“I’m not speaking of what your parents would want you to do. I mean your friends. Those soldiers who haunt your dreams, the men who died alongside you.”
His face had grown haggard with emotion, and the sight brought a huge lump to her throat. “I … I think, Neville, that they would want you to remember the lives they had, not agonize over the lives they might have had. I don’t believe they would want you to feel such guilt for surviving when they did not. They would not want you to turn away from living the life given to you. If nothing else, live your life for them.”
Neville stood there, hardly able to look at Olivia. She was being so kind, so incredibly careful of his feelings, when he deserved no such consideration. Most unbelievable of all, she still wanted to marry him. Despite having witnessed his gruesome nightmare, his weakness and fear, she still vowed to marry him. Him, a man who would never sleep a night at her side. A man small-minded enough to seduce her for his own selfish purposes.
All his plotting had paid off, and yet victory now tasted bitter upon his tongue. She deserved so much better than the likes of him. He’d done her a huge disservice when he’d seduced her. A better man would let her go.
He’d never been as strong as he should be. He’d always fallen short. But not this time. For once he would truly be brave. He would finally reveal to someone—to her, the person he most cared about—exactly what he’d done, the whole truth of his shameful, craven nature.
As he lifted his head to face her, a terror as fierce as that of impending battle settled over him like a heavy, smothering blanket. “You don’t know the whole of it. Nobody does.” Then he began. “At Ligny we faced a fierce enemy.”
In the long pause that followed she said, “And the British forces prevailed.”
“We prevailed.” His throat was dry. It was painful to talk. “But … But too many died. I fell asleep,” he blurted out.
At her quizzical look he rushed on. “I had the watch. Macklin and I. We’d been up for days. Everyone had. Snatching naps when we could. But it was quiet that night.” He drew a shaky breath. “Macklin dozed off. I knew it, but I decided to let him sleep, at least for a little while. But then I—”
He broke off. His heart was racing, beating a hole in his chest as he recounted the horrors of that fateful night. “I fell asleep. Just for a moment—No,” he amended. “That’s not true. I don’t know how long I slept. I’ll never know. But it was long enough.” He closed his eyes. “It was long enough that the French forces were able to surprise us.”
He started shaking. He tried to control it, but he could not. “They surprised us, and the men—my men. My friends—” Again he broke off, unable to go on. Four years gone, yet the horror of it was as fresh and hideous as ever. And the guilt continued to grow.
“But Neville. Everyone says you were a hero at Ligny, that you saved so many of your men. If not for you …”
Her voice startled him, for in the midst of his misery he’d nearly forgotten her presence. How he wanted to turn to her, to reach out for her and hold on to her like a lifeline. But she could not save him from the truth of his past. No one could.
“Yes. They say I am a hero. That I fought like a man possessed.” He laughed bitterly. “Well, I was a man possessed. Perhaps … perhaps I still am. Because for every man I am said to have saved, another—” Again he faltered. It hurt, like a physical pain, to admit such awful truths. But he bowed his head and forced himself on. “They say I am a hero, but that is only part of the truth. I saved a few. But I let those others down. I let all those other men down.”
A silence filled the room, ugly and damning. Then Neville felt a touch upon his arm. She should be repulsed by his shameful admission, but instead she had moved even nearer and laid her hand upon his sleeve.
“It is hard for me to imagine you deliberately letting anyone down, Neville. I think that is one of the reasons I wish to marry you. Your every ambition seems to be for the benefit of others. Not for your pleasure or gain, but for someone else’s. For your tenants. For your nephew. For me.” Her hand slid up and down upon his wrist in a soothing fashion. “And for your fellow soldiers. You would have given your life for them, I suspect.”
He shuddered. “It would have been better if I’d died alongside them. I wanted to die with them.”
“But you didn’t. You didn’t die with them, or for them, so … so maybe instead you are meant to live for them. Please, Neville.” Her voice softened to a whispered plea. “Choose to live. Choose to live!”
He looked down at her, at her serious face turned up to his in entreaty. “If you are afraid I might deliberately end my life, I promise you, Livvie, that I will not. I’ve thought about it, but coward that I am, I’ve never been able to follow through.”
She shook her head. “That’s not what I meant at all. I mean, choose to live for them, Neville. Live the life of good purpose that those men cannot now live. Live as they would want you to, and be the best man you can be as … as an honor to them.”
He heard her words, and a part of him wanted to embrace them. It would be so simple and the very least he could do for them. But he was afraid. Afraid of the night and the dreams they held. And the overwhelming guilt they dredged up when he could not fight back.
As if she sensed his fear, Olivia moved in closer, circling his waist with her arms and resting her cheek against his shoulder. “You are a much better man than my father ever was. I am ashamed that I ever compared you to him.”
He wrapped his arms around her, because at that moment he needed to hold her, to crush her to him with more force than he should. “It could be that Cameron Byrde was not nearly so bad as you believe.”
“I’m afraid he was. But he doesn’t matter to me. He’s my past. You’re my future.” She gazed up at him. “I love you, Neville. You don’t want to hear that,” she went on when he stiffened. “But I love you just the same. It’s time to leave the past behind and get on with your future. Our future.”
He stared down at her, down into the hazel-colored eyes that had captured him from the first. “How can you be certain about the future we’ll have?”
She smiled then, a beautiful smile, so trusting that he felt it all the way into his heart. “I’m not. For so long I tried to be careful and to analyze everything. Everyone. I thought if I picked just the right man, I could keep my life calm and uncomplicated, and plan out my whole future. I suppose I thought I could control it. But then you came along and turned my life upside down. I’m not certain at all of the future, Neville. But I am certain that I love you and that I want to spend my future with you. You’re the right man for me. The only man.”
In her beautiful hazel eyes, the truth of her feelings shone, and it warmed Neville to the depths of his shriveled, tarnished soul. Like the rising sun always rescued him from the terrifying night, her love, given without regard to her own needs, was rescuing him from the dark night of his past.
Did he dare accept the love she offered him? Could he ever give to her as much as she’d already given him?
Then like the saving light of dawn touching him with infinite grace, he suddenly understood. To love her in return was all she wanted from him. Just to love her. And she was willing to wait for that love to come.
Only there was no reason to wait.
“Livvie …” He faltered, for powerful emotions filled his chest and clogged his throat. “I love you. God.” He crushed her to him. “I love you. I love you.”
Then he kissed her, really kissed her, with honesty and love and absolute truth. “God, how. I love you.”
“Oh, Neville.”
Only when he felt the sweet dampness of tears upon her cheeks did he draw back. “If you will have me, Livvie, then I will marry
you. I choose you. I choose life.”
She laughed, the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard, then reached up on tiptoes to kiss him fully upon the mouth. “And I choose you. Come, let us go back to bed, Neville, for I wish to sleep in your arms, and have you sleep in mine.” Before he could protest she added, “We shall conquer the past. You’ll see.”
He glanced beyond her, to where the shards of the decanter lay. He’d already chosen to fight the lure of drink and the false relief it gave. He’d done it because he knew he could not have her any other way. Now it was time to fight the rest of his demons. To choose to truly live again. If she was willing to fight that battle alongside him, then so must he be.
“Yes,” he said, smiling down at this amazing woman who had saved him with the bright shining light of her love. “Yes. I want to lie down and sleep beside you, my Olivia. My wife.”
Then he scooped her up and headed for the door. There were three hours until the dawn. Enough time to make love to her again, then time to sleep beside her and dream of a future he’d never thought to find.
Epilogue
Woodford Court, 1821
Olivia came awake with a start.
The mewling cry came again, so faint and breathy that it should not have disturbed her sleep. But she had the heightened senses of a new mother now, and at little Catherine’s first cry, Olivia’s slumber had fled.
She pushed the bedclothes aside and slipped from the bed, careful not to disturb Neville. He’d been working long hours of late, what with the sheep shearing under way and the new weaving shed finally in full production. Add to that, his utter fascination with his dark-haired baby girl, and it was plain he needed his rest. Dawn would come soon enough to awaken him, she decided. Already the sky beyond the open window showed the first pale streaks of the approaching day.
“Come to Mama,” she murmured as she scooped up the carefully swaddled child. With newly acquired skill she replaced her baby daughter’s damp cloths, then settled with her in a large chair that faced the window. “My, but you’re a hungry little thing,” she whispered as little Catherine rooted instinctively for her mother’s full breasts.
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