by Christi Caldwell, Eva Devon, Elizabeth Essex, Anthea Lawson
She nodded and then dropped a curtsy. With a long, graceful step, she started for the door. An odd panic filled his chest.
“There is one thing,” he called out and she wheeled around. Surprise marred her heart-shaped face. “Do not call me Captain,” he urged gruffly. “Do not call me Rayne.” He wanted no reminder of a title linked to war or a surname, by family legend, cursed years ago when they’d lost the legendary Theodosia sword.
She tipped her head and a brown curl popped free of her chignon and fell over her damp brow.
“My name is Lucas. Now get out.”
Eve yanked the door open and collided with a servant carrying a tray.
The young serving girl cried out and the pitcher, plates, and silverware tumbled to the floor in a noisy explosion of glass. From down the hall, another servant shouted and the frantic fall of his footsteps resounded off the walls as he rushed forward to clean the mess.
Bloody hell.
Lucas opened his mouth to order them all gone, when he registered Eve frozen. Her willowy frame trembled like a narrow elm being battered by a storm.
“Mrs. Nelson?” the servant whispered.
“Get out,” Lucas barked. All the color left the girl’s face and she bolted. Taking the footman by the hand, they fled down the hall together.
In the quiet, Eve continued to tremble and all the anger went out of him. She gripped that broom, hanging on to it for all she was worth. This woman is not my problem. I have my own demons. His throat constricted. Mayhap not all of his former self had died, after all. Lucas shoved back the blankets and swung his legs over the edge of the bed.
What manner of nightmares haunted a woman that a simple tray tumbling could hold her motionless in terror? It is you, you bloody brute. I’ve made her fear me. “Eve?” he urged gruffly, touching her on the shoulder and turning her around.
Dread spilled from her eyes and a frisson of cold ran through him. Hers was no mere nervousness at displeasing an employer. He’d seen that look too many times. Reflected in the bevel mirror in his prison after Talavera and in the one he’d ordered out of his chambers, upon his return to England.
Lucas set aside her broom and drew Eve close. “Look at me,” he commanded, gently squeezing her shoulders, attempting to bring her back from the madness that gripped her. He palmed her cheek; the flawless, unblemished skin, smooth as satin. When was the last time he’d offered comfort or solace to anyone? For the past two years, he’d retreated within himself, insulating himself from his own pain—only to now want to drive back this stranger’s.
Eve blinked slowly and then all the air left her on a swift exhale. The broom slid from her fingers and landed with a loud crack. “I...” He knew the moment she’d battled back her monsters. Horror marred her delicate features. “I... Forgive me,” she rasped. “I...” She made to retrieve the broom, but he gently caught her forearm.
“It is fine,” he said quietly.
Eve nodded jerkily and then stumbled over herself in her haste to get away.
And as she rushed out, closing the door hard, he couldn’t account for the rush of disappointment as she left him alone, at last.
Chapter 5
The following morning, Eve stood outside Lucas’ chambers, staring blankly at the wood panel.
Nightmares of the blood-covered battlefields of the Peninsular Campaign dogged her sleeping and waking moments. The sharp report of distant gunfire lingered in her mind still, with the pungent odor of smoke so sharp she could taste it. Those sounds and smells blended with the cries and shouts of dying men, pleading with a God who did not exist to save them. The memories came to her, unexpectedly, bursting into her present and holding her firmly trapped in the past. Even when her father had been living, she had gotten herself through the hellish musings. Never had anyone ever been there to help bring her back from the cusp of that madness.
Until now.
Captain Rayne, a man who’d stripped away the rank between them and demanded she’d refer to him by his Christian name. A man who’d confined himself to that lonely bed, only to climb out—for her, a stranger. As a stranger whose father was responsible for his suffering, Eve had no right to the comfort he’d offered—and yet she’d taken it anyway.
And God help her, she’d ached to remain in his arms, taking of his warmth and his strength.
Stop! Drawing in a slow breath, Eve pressed the handle and entered Lucas’ rooms. She came to a staggering stop. Lucas stood at the drawn curtains, arms clasped behind him. Her breath lodged in her chest. With her eyes, she devoured him, standing in nothing more than crisp white shirtsleeves and midnight black breeches. He is magnificent.
At five-feet seven-inches, she was as tall as most gentlemen. This man, however, towered over her by at least half a foot. His body had the slender, wiry strength of a prize fighter from the streets. His midnight black hair hung unkempt, loose about his shoulders, giving him the look of an untamed lion. Her mouth went dry. No man had a right to such primitive beauty.
His body went stiff and he angled his head back.
Words came spilling from her lips. “You are out of your bed, Capt—” He shot a withering look. “Lucas,” she swiftly amended.
“How else am I to be rid of you?” he retorted, yet there was a faint teasing in that gravelly baritone that softened those handful of words. Then he again spoke and all mirth died from the room. “Nor is my body broken, Eve,” he said tiredly. Just his mind... That unspoken admission hung in the air, as real as if it had been spoken.
Yet, she’d known too many men who’d lost their legs, or use of them, and had been confined to chairs and beds for all time. This man had willingly climbed into that lonely bed and carved out an even lonelier existence there. What particular demons belonged to him from that bloody war?
Eve closed the door slowly behind her. For having witnessed the hell he and every other soldier faced on those battlefields, she well knew that far more than his mind had been impacted. His soul had endured pain no man or woman ought to know. She stopped beside him and grabbed the edge of the curtain to draw it back.
Lucas instantly shot a hand around her wrist and she gasped at the heat and power of that touch. “What are you doing?” he demanded, his voice harsh.
“I am drawing back the curtains,” she said, in the tones she’d used to calm her mare when the report of gunshots had filled the distant Spanish countryside.
“No. You’re not,” he clipped.
Letting sunlight stream in would mean one more nail in the coffin of her work here. Rag in hands, she stole a look back at the rooms requiring her attention. The bedsheets needed to be pulled and his furniture polished. That was the work that had brought her here. She’d been assigned but one task—maid of all things. What battles this man still waged were his own.
Yet Eve stared blankly at the gold brocade fabric. Do you have any final words for your crimes against King and country? Her throat constricted, making it difficult to draw in breath. Until she left this earth, she would hate her father for his treachery. Not for the shame he’d brought her and their family name, but for all the men who’d paid the ultimate price of his betrayal.
It was why she could not just be a servant to this man. Or ignore his suffering. She owed an entire army of men and the whole of a country and their allied forces atonement for Father’s sins. For all the men her father had failed, she could help this one and, mayhap, ease her soul.
“Living with your curtains drawn and the door closed will not keep the world out,” she said quietly. The only indication he’d heard her was the slight stiffening of his broad shoulders. “It will not prevent the nightmares from coming or undo the hurt you—”
“Enough,” he panted and spun so suddenly, she stumbled back. The white dusting cloth slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor. He caught himself against the wall to keep from falling and her heart wrenched. A man whose eyes and wiry frame dripped with masculine strength had surely been wholly in command of his every momen
t.
Eve looped her arm around his lean waist and, as her heart raced at the heat of his skin burning through the fabric of his garment, he snapped like a wounded cat she’d found in the fields of Talavera, lapping up a puddle mixed of blood and rainwater. “You know nothing of my nightmares,” he said tiredly. Shoving off her touch, he positioned himself with his back against the curtains.
Did he seek to prevent her from yanking that fabric apart and letting the sunlight stream in? “I know more than you think,” she said softly.
He tossed his head back and a sound, more strangled sob than laugh, burst from his lips, leaving her cold inside. “Do you know what it is to watch your friends die beside you, Eve?” He took a faltering step toward her and she remained rooted to the floor, forcing him to either knock her down or halt. “Do you know what it is to live with the sound of their dying screams echoing around your mind?”
“Yes,” she said in hushed tones. Until you thought you’d go mad. Until you wanted to clamp your hands over your ears and blot the always present echo from your tortured musings.
Lucas stared at her open-mouthed, shock emblazoned on his harshly beautiful features. Unable to meet the pain ravaging his eyes, she dropped to a knee and retrieved her cloth. “My...” She glanced down at the tips of her boots, hating herself for being a liar. It proved her father’s treachery lived in her own soul. “My husband was a soldier.” Except, unlike her departed sire, she was no coward. She lifted her eyes to Lucas’. “I followed the drum.” Her lips twisted at that vague descriptor handed down to the wives and daughters of military men. Followed the drum, a tone that conjured music and instrument and not the death and dying Lucas had spoken of.
A muscle jumped in the corner of his right eye as he searched her face. She braced for a stingingly accurate reminder that she’d not held a bayonet in hand or shoved a blade through another man’s flesh, ending his days.
“That is why,” he said slowly.
She shook her head. “I don’t—”
“That is why you reacted to the tray hitting the floor,” he said with a softness she’d believed him incapable of.
Eve hesitated and glanced about. Those momentary lapses in sanity came to her at the most unexpected times; with the crack of lightning, with the slam of a door, and then in her dreams, sleeping and waking. It was the manner of madness that saw a woman sent away to Bedlam. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said hollowly.
He peered at her through thick, black lashes. “You worry people will think you mad,” he predicted.
She braced for his jeering. Instead, there was a regret there that sent her toes curling into the soles of her boots. Oh, God. He knows that. How did he know that? Eve retreated a step.
Lucas’ eyes revealed nothing. “Those memories don’t mark you as mad, Eve,” he said quietly and she gasped at his accurate supposition. “They make you human and strong.”
A dratted sheen of tears blurred her vision and she blinked back that useless moisture. “Strong,” she spat. “Where is the strength in being unable to save so many?” A desperate fury sent the words she’d carried deep inside for so long tumbling forth, at last set free. “Where is the strength in lying abed when the nightmares come, cowering under blankets like a scared child when other men lie in their graves?”
Lucas palmed her cheek That gentle caress brought her eyes briefly closed. “Those same nightmares keep me shut away. In your living and control of your own life, you are far braver than I could ever hope to be, Eve Nelson.”
His words drew a soft gasp from her lips. Since she’d returned from the battlefields of Europe, she’d seen only her failings to help so many men. Their pleading, dying faces had haunted her. With his resoluteness, Lucas almost made her believe his words were true.
A fledgling bond stirred to life. But then reality intruded, leaving in its place, desolateness. Eve Nelson. Were he to learn her identity, he’d see nothing good or honorable in her. “I do not presume our experiences were the same,” she said quietly. “For I didn’t endure what you—”
Lucas pressed an index finger to her lips, ending the rapid flow of words. “Do not diminish what you saw there. Or the weight you yourself carry.”
She curled her hands into her drab skirts. They each, men and women, who’d endured the battlefields and the horrors after, bore the memories as scars brought back. How long she’d felt alone and, yet, there was this man.
His gaze moved beyond her shoulder. “I would wager all the men and women who marched through those fields battle their own demons.”
“And I would wager you are correct,” she said quietly. His gaze fell to hers. “Thank you for...being there—”
“Do not thank me,” he said quietly.
For the days’ worth of terse, tense exchanges and angry looks, some of the hardness left his eyes. They stood frozen, the rapid rise and fall of their chests in like rhythm as their breaths mingled. His grip loosened, but he retained his hold on her. Only... He ran the pad of his thumb along the place where her pulse beat hard at her wrist. Her heart tripled its beat. How was it possible for a touch to elicit this wild yearning for so much from this man?
Lucas hooded his eyes; those thick, long, black lashes that curled at the corner, concealing the depth of emotion burning from within his green eyes. But not before she detected the hungry flash to spark in their depths. Her lips parted of their own volition. He sucked in a sharp breath and then released her, stepping quickly away. A wave of shameful regret assailed her. Regret that he’d not dipped his head and claimed that kiss. For one breathless moment, she’d craved that kiss with a greater hunger than air. “I do not want anyone else in here,” he said with a calm, matter-of-factness.
How could he be so indifferent when her heart raced so?
“You may continue overseeing your responsibilities.” He proceeded to tick off a perfunctory list. “I do not want you probing, asking questions of my past, speaking of the war, urging me outside.” With that he limped back to his bed. “Are we clear, Eve?”
He wanted her here, but on terms that would keep him safely insulated. “No. We are not.”
***
Desire raged through Lucas, still. A hungering for the spirited Eve Nelson, unlike any need he’d known for any woman before her. And surely in his desirous musings he’d merely imagined those four bold words, a declination of his orders.
“I said, we are not clear,” the lady repeated, taking a step toward him.
“Are you challenging me?” he whispered, reveling in her intrepidity. After being feared, reviled, and pitied, her bold, honest response made him feel alive. Alive in ways he’d been deadened. Until her.
Undaunted, Eve nodded. “Yes.” Then, given this lady’s tenacity, was it a wonder she’d defy him, when men under his command had only ever obeyed? She turned her palms up. “I know...knew, countless men who’d lost one or both legs. Other men, who lost use of their bodies from the waist down. Men whose movements kept them confined.” Eve came over in a rush of noisy skirts. “You have the ability to go out and—”
“Do you want this post?” he demanded tersely, staving off the lady’s flow of words. She pursed her lips. “Then, I suggest you attend your responsibilities.” And not challenge him to live again. To live, when he knew not how. How to step outside these walls and interact freely with people. He’d been a beast too long.
Eve stood, her chest rising and falling rapidly, as she bravely met his eyes. And for a sliver of a moment, he thought she’d challenge him. Then she dropped a stiff curtsy. “As you wish, Captain Rayne.”
Lucas flared his nostrils. She was the only bloody person who, since he’d returned, had looked at him. And now she’d strip him of that connection. He rose from the bed and strode over, his movements quick and jerky. “I ordered you not to call me—”
Whipping her head back, Eve planted her hands upon her hips. “You cannot demand I call you by your Christian name and then refuse to speak with me about things that
matter. Either you are my employer or you’re Lucas. You cannot be—”
He caught her around the waist and covered her mouth with his. Eve went stiff in his arms, but then a breathless moan spilled past her lips as she melted against him. Lucas slid his tongue inside, swallowing that breathless sound of her desire. She tentatively touched the tip of hers to his, in an innocent gesture, and then all hesitancy melted away. They tangled tongues in a bold dance, simulating an expert thrust and parry.
She tasted of honey and chocolate, a blend of sweetness that he wanted to lose himself within. “Eve,” he breathed, breaking contact with her mouth. She cried out, but that sound of protest merged with a keening plea as he trailed his lips along her cheek, lower to her neck. Lucas cupped her buttocks and dragged her against him. A low, agonized groan stuck in her throat as she twined her fingers through his hair, angling his head to boldly meet his kiss. His shaft thrust hard and demanding against her flat belly. There was nothing shy or hesitant about this woman; even in her embrace. In her arms, he felt alive. Alive, when he’d been dead for so long. A woman who—
Was in his employ. Heart pounding, Lucas stumbled away. The thick haze of desire receded, leaving in its place a horrifying shame. Prior to the war, he’d been a rogue and a charmer, but he’d never been a man to seduce servants in his or his family’s employ. And yet... Since she’d swept into his chambers the day prior, he’d ceased to see her as anything other than Eve Nelson—courageous, quick-witted minx who challenged him at every turn.
“Lucas,” she whispered, taking a step toward him. He staggered back another step and then continued retreating.
“That should not have happened,” he rasped. “I... Forgive me.” If he were the respectable gentleman he’d once been, he’d have offered her wages for the year and freedom from her post. But he was not that man, as was proof of his actions in these chambers, a short while ago.
Her eyes still clouded with desire, Eve searched his face. Did she seek a hint of the man he used to be? “There is nothing to forgive,” she said. Her husky contralto sent desire raging through him, once more.
