Dawn in My Heart

by Ruth Axtell Morren

  The gilt badge pinned to his sash bore the distinctive eight-pointed silver star of the Order of the Garter and the double row of brass buttons set in pairs down the front of his jacket further identified him as an officer of the Second Foot Guards, otherwise known as the Coldstreams.

  Licking dry lips, she lifted her eyes higher. Wide gold braid edged the dark blue facing of the scarlet jacket. Gold epaulets showed a pair of broad shoulders to advantage. The high, stiff collar framed smooth-shaven cheeks bronzed by the sun. Dark hair, almost blue-black, was combed carelessly back from a wide forehead.

  And finally—how could she ever forget—those blue eyes, like lapis lazuli, in which a wicked hint of humor always lurked? They stared into hers now. For one, long second that blue gaze held hers.

  Laughter was evident in them. No surprise, no shock. Only amusement, as if it had been only yesterday he’d bid her adieu and gone off to fight the French.

  “Lady Gillian,” he exclaimed. “Upon my word.”

  Feeling the floor slide beneath her, she tightened her hold imperceptibly on Lord Skylar’s arm.

  “Are you all right?” he asked solicitously.

  “Yes,” she managed.

  Gerrit Hawkes turned to his companion, a beautiful lady whom Gillian recognized as a leading member of the ton, and said in a teasing voice, “This young lady was a mere slip of a girl out of the schoolroom when I last saw her.”

  As introductions were made, Gillian could only hope her features revealed nothing of the turmoil inside her. Why now? Why here? Why hadn’t she heard anything of his arrival from France?

  He was so devastatingly handsome. The three years on the battlefield had not aged him, merely toughened the youthful features into the rugged lines of manhood.

  “Captain Gerrit Hawkes of the Coldstream Guards,” he told Lord Skylar.

  He’d been promoted from lieutenant to captain.

  “Lately returned from Spain, I take it?” asked Skylar.

  “Yes,” the captain answered with a grin. “Via Paris.”

  “I congratulate you on your victories.” Gillian heard Lord Skylar’s voice somewhere above her to her left, but she had eyes only for Gerrit.

  The captain inclined his head a fraction. “Thank you. The credit belongs to our commander.”

  “I heard he especially commended the Guards.”

  “Morale was rather low before he came. But the Coldstreams are well disciplined so he was able to depend on us in battle. When the tide began to turn after Albuera, we were there to witness it.”

  They chatted for a few minutes—an eternity to Gillian. How much longer could she endure standing?

  “Well, I am sure we shall see each other again during the victory festivities,” Skylar told him.

  “I’m sure we shall, my lord.” With laughter in his eyes, he bowed over Gillian’s limp hand. “Au revoir, my lady.”

  As the crowd parted enough for them to continue on their way, Lord Skylar guided her forward. Looking straight ahead of her, seeing nothing, she kept walking where she was directed, her thoughts on only one thing. Gerrit was here. He was alive and he was back.

  “Let me find you somewhere to sit and something to drink,” Lord Skylar said as they reached a frescoed wall at the outer edges of the room.

  They finally found an empty settee in a secluded corner of the Rose Satin Drawing Room.

  Once she had a place to collapse, her urge to faint disappeared. Instead she found herself restless. “Are you sure you’re quite all right?” he asked her again.

  Turning away from his concerned gaze, she fanned her overheated cheeks with her ivory fan. “Just a little faint with the heat,” she said.

  He left her to go in search of some refreshment. She waited, hoping it would take him a long time before he returned.

  How she wanted to go back outside to get a glimpse of Captain Gerrit Hawkes.

  The only man she’d ever loved. The only one she ever could love.

  She remembered his avowals to love her always in the few letters she’d received from him, which her mother had destroyed, but not before she’d memorized their contents.

  Dearest Heart, you possess me body, mind and soul….

  My life is in your hands. With one word you—and you alone—decide if I live or die….

  I bid you adieu, most probably to die on the battlefield. I only pray it will be honorably. My last words will be your name whispered on my dying lips….

  It had been nearly three years since she had heard anything from him, although she’d followed the movements of his company from the newspaper accounts. She’d known of his first engagement in the Battle of Barrosa through to the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz.

  When he had been wounded at Salamanca, she’d despaired, having no way of knowing if he had recovered. Through her close friend she had inquiries made and once again rejoiced when she knew he had survived.

  She devoured the accounts of the assault on San Sebastian and the army’s triumphal crossing into France and march to Paris. She had agonized and prayed for his safety until certain from the newspaper lists that he’d come out unscathed.

  He’d received his commission as a lieutenant and now he was a captain in command of a company. He must have been decorated for bravery in battle. Of course he had been!

  “Here is some ratafia.” Skylar handed her the glass and seated himself at the other end of the settee. She was glad of that, not knowing how she could bear it if he so much as touched her hand tonight.

  She sipped the sweet drink and remained silent, wondering how she would appear normal for the remainder of the evening. It must be well after midnight. She feigned a yawn, although the last thing she felt was sleepy.

  “Tired?”

  “Yes, frightfully.”

  He glanced at his pocket watch. “It’s almost three. The festivities are still in full swing. I’m sure they will go on until dawn.”

  “They usually do.”

  “If you’d like, I’ll fetch your mother and tell her you’d like to go home.”

  She debated, part of her wanting to leave, the other longing for another glimpse of the captain. “I don’t think she’d want to leave. I shall be fine if I sit quietly for a bit.”

  He nodded.

  Strains of music reached them, and the sound of guests, many of them walking through the room or standing in groups around it, but their own corner was solitary.

  “You look beautiful tonight,” he told her softly, a warm look in his dark eyes.

  “Don’t say that,” she said more sharply than she’d intended.

  He raised an eyebrow at her and she sat, caught by the question in his dark eyes. “Haven’t you ever been paid a compliment before?” he asked.

  She looked away. “It’s not that. I…it’s just…nothing. I must be tired. Maybe I should go home.”

  “As you wish,” he said, rising and holding out his hand to her.

  “Perhaps we could go riding tomorrow afternoon after you are rested from tonight’s fete,” he suggested, escorting her out to the main hall.

  “All right,” she replied absently.

  “We can meet at the Stanhope gate of Hyde Park around five. Would that suit you?”

  “Yes, fine,” she replied, surveying the people around her, searching for that blue-black hair.

  As dawn crept over the city, Gillian sat up in her bed, her knees drawn up under the covers. On one sat a gold locket snapped open. It was the only thing her mother hadn’t found when she’d ransacked Gillian’s room in search of any evidence of her clandestine meetings with the young gentleman from her dance class.

  Gillian stroked the black lock of hair that lay on one side of the locket. Soft and silky.

  She had truly felt for the young Princess Charlotte this past spring when her father, the Regent, had pried open her private desk and confiscated every letter, every memento exchanged with the handsome Captain Hesse.

  Gillian, too, had been seventeen, when her
mother had discovered her amorous correspondence with the twenty-one-year-old Gerrit. Every desk drawer had been ransacked, every letter burned in the grate.

  By the following week, the duchess had engaged Miss Templeton as Gillian’s companion. Her guard, she thought bitterly. Over the past three seasons, Gillian sometimes thought she would suffocate from the lady’s presence. It was only now, betrothed to Lord Skylar, that Gillian was experiencing anything like the freedom she had known when her father was alive.

  She looked at the ring on her finger. It looked lovely. But what was the price of wearing it? Marriage to a man she hadn’t known a fortnight ago—when another who’d stolen her heart three years ago had returned on the scene?

  Chapter Five

  Sky grimaced. The nausea was becoming worse in the rattling coach. It had started soon after he’d eaten that supper at the fete, but it had been faint enough to ignore.

  But as the evening wore on, it had grown stronger, and it had been with a sense of relief that he’d summoned the coach for the duchess and her daughter.

  Now Sky slumped across the seat of his own carriage, feeling with every bump of the wheels the desire to retch. He held on, knowing it was not far to his house.

  He’d managed to hide his bouts of indisposition up to now, but they were becoming more severe. The fever couldn’t be striking him again. No! He hit the seat with his fist in futile anger.

  The coach stopped. He sat up, allowing the groom to let down the steps and open the door. Sky exited as if nothing was the matter and bade the man good-night as he held the front door open for him.

  The candles in the candelabra had gone out, but they weren’t needed. Already a gray light crept into the house.

  Glad his father was away—Sky neither knew nor cared where—he staggered up to his room.

  “Good evening, my lord,” Nigel greeted him from the chair where he’d been dozing.

  Sky collapsed on his bed.

  Nigel hurried over to him. “Tired, my lord? What’s the matter?” he asked more urgently when Sky said nothing but sat with his head between his knees.

  “It’s hitting me again,” he answered finally through gritted teeth. “I can feel it.”

  Nigel touched his bowed forehead. “Your skin is warm.”

  He nodded assent. “Get me something—a basin. I don’t know how long I can hold my meal down.”

  Nigel hurried to comply. Then he gently helped Sky remove his coat and waistcoat. He undid his cravat and let his shirt hang loose at the neck. As soon as he’d removed his boots, Sky lay on the bed, his legs curled up in an effort to mitigate the discomfort. Nigel threw a blanket over him.

  He heard Nigel’s soft tread across the room. He came back with a cold compress.

  “You’ll have…to…cancel my engagements tomorrow. Tell everyone…I—I’ve gone out of town.” He couldn’t think beyond the pain in his gut and between his temples. “Go. Leave me in peace.”

  Nigel leaned over him, his brown face inches from his. “It’s her. She won’t let you go.”

  “Don’t speak idiocy,” he mumbled, closing his eyes to those greenish-yellow irises looking at him with such certainty.

  “She won’t stop till she have you back in Kingston.”

  Sky groaned. “You think a human can make me this sick? What do you think, she’s laced my food with arsenic all the way across the Atlantic?”

  “She have her ways.”

  Sky cursed. “Get out. You can’t help me anymore. Don’t let anyone know anything. Say I’m out of town, say anything but that I’m ill. And don’t, for pity’s sake, call any doctors.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll leave the laudanum by your table.”

  A few minutes later the room was silent. Soon it would be fully light. Who knew how long he’d be laid low this time. One thing was certain, he would rely on no more physicians. If the illness hadn’t killed him the last time, the physics they filled him with would have. The bleedings alone had probably cost him most of his strength.

  Finally relief came as Sky heaved over his washbasin. After cleaning himself, he measured the laudanum drops into a glass of water Nigel had left, doubling his usual dosage, hoping for numbness from the pounding between his temples. Finally he climbed under the covers, seeking the blessed unconsciousness of sleep.

  Gillian’s mare stamped restively as she waited with her groom at the entrance to Hyde Park. She patted the horse’s neck and whispered a few words to her. Then she flipped open her watch. They had been waiting three quarters of an hour and Lord Skylar had yet to appear. Had he forgotten his invitation? Or had he been too tired from the evening’s exertions?

  He hadn’t struck her thus far as a gentleman who would forget an engagement, least of all with his fiancée!

  Perhaps he was indisposed after last night. Although he insisted he was recovered from the illness that had hit him in the Indies, to Gillian he still looked like a man recuperating.

  Yes, that must be it, she decided, feeling a momentary sympathy for him as she remembered his solicitude to her last night when he’d thought her fatigued.

  Her groom coughed behind her. “My lady, hadn’t we better return? The crowds are getting thick.”

  She debated a minute longer. She wasn’t ready to go back yet. Since last night, a restlessness had seized her. Finally, she turned to her groom and said, “I shall go for a ride first.”

  “Very well, my lady.” Together the two entered the park and headed for the Ladies’ Mile.

  As they were returning along the Row, she spotted Gerrit in the distance. He and a fellow officer were leaning over an open carriage, having a good time chatting with the ladies inside.

  She pressed her lips together, determined to ride past him without acknowledging him. It hurt to the quick to admit how little she had meant to him. She had given him everything, and he had never even bothered to let her know he was back in town. Clearly he had forgotten her in the intervening years since their tearful goodbye.

  Gillian skirted some other riders and was almost past the carriage, the laughter of its female occupants intermingling with the lower-timbered laughter of the officers—one she recognized so well. It was like a fresh wound, hearing it now, and knowing it was not meant for her.

  “Lady Gillian!”

  She looked up involuntarily and then wished she hadn’t.

  Gerrit looked splendid in his scarlet uniform and shako. He had one hand raised and his devastating smile reached into her very heart.

  She gave a nod and kept on going.

  Five minutes later she heard the muffled clip-clop of hoof-beats against the sandy path behind her. She kept riding.

  “Good afternoon, Lady Gillian. What’s your hurry?”

  His black charger had pulled up alongside her mare with ease. His voice sounded amused.

  “Good afternoon, Captain Hawkes. I am in no hurry. This is my usual gait.”

  “Care to go for a canter? I recall you used to be quite a good rider.”

  The challenge was unmistakable. Without a word, she veered from the crowded path and went off onto the grass. Gerrit’s horse was right beside her. Only her groom, with a faint, “Lady Gillian!” was left several paces behind.

  They rode across the vast parkland, under massive elms and plane trees and wide fields. Finally, after several moments, having reached almost the opposite side of the park and nearing the ring, they slowed their horses.

  He tipped his hat to her with a smile. “You have improved.”

  “So have you.”

  He grinned, showing those devastatingly white teeth against bronzed skin. “It comes from marching anywhere from ten to twenty miles a day across all sorts of terrain in Spain and France.”

  “I read your name in the lists when you were wounded.”

  The amusement in those blue eyes deepened. “Were you concerned?”

  She could not share his humor. “The only way I could discover if you had recovered was to have a maid talk with a maid at your
household.”

  He sobered. “I’m sorry if I caused you worry.”

  Her smile was tight. “I wouldn’t describe it precisely as ‘worry.’ More like agony of mind and soul.”

  He looked down at his gloved hands on the reins. “I’m sorry I didn’t write you after I arrived on the Peninsula.”

  She waited.

  He sighed, as if sensing the moment had arrived for explanations. Would he have ever given her any if she hadn’t run into him at Carlton House?

  “I didn’t write you anymore after those first few times because, once I understood what I was really in for—between the summer fevers and the long sieges to capture Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz—I doubted very much if I’d ever be home again in one piece.

  “My closest comrades didn’t come home. Those who didn’t die on the battlefield died of the putrid fever from their wounds. The few that are home are missing a limb or two. I didn’t want you to be obligated to half a man.”

  “Oh, Gerrit, you know that wouldn’t have mattered.”

  He gave her a smile that made her think no time had passed at all and he was still that wonderful dancing partner in her quadrille class. “To you it wouldn’t, but to me it would have.

  “You’ve grown very beautiful, Gillian,” he said softly. The way he looked at her made her feel warm all over.

  And then he had to ruin it all by saying with a smile, “I hear congratulations are in order. The future Countess of Skylar, and someday the Marchioness of Caulfield. I stand in admiration.”

  “Doesn’t it matter to you?” she blurted out before she could stop herself.

  His blue eyes looked into hers with absolute understanding. “Of course it does, but what is that to the purpose? Your father and mother would never have countenanced a match between the two of us—I’m a third son, don’t you recall? I had few prospects except to die a glorious death on the battlefield. I did you a service by not letting you hope.

  “Look at you now, betrothed to one of the biggest titles and fortunes on the market. Every young lady envies you.”

  The words were a bitter consolation. Once again, as she had three years ago, she felt caught in a web not of her own making. Before, her mother had forbidden her to see Gerrit. Now, her mother had neatly tied up her future to the most eligible bachelor on the market.