The Dukes of War: Complete Collection

by Ridley, Erica

  She curled against him and pressed a kiss to his bare skin. He tasted faintly salty. The entire room was spiced with their lovemaking. She felt like she belonged. Like she could stay in this bed with him forever.

  He cuddled her close. His eyes drifted shut as she laid her cheek against him. Peace enveloped her. This was everything she hadn’t known she wanted. She felt cherished. And finally happy.

  Xavier stroked her hair until his breathing slowed to a calm, steady pace. She threaded her fingers in his dark, silky hair. He had fallen asleep.With a smile, she snuggled closer.

  She was almost asleep when Xavier’s heartbeat quickened. Her eyes flew open. His breaths became shallow and irregular. She propped herself up in alarm. His muscles twitched as if he were struggling against invisible bonds.

  She touched her fingertips to his shoulder. “Xavier?”

  He shot upright, his eyes wide and unseeing. Sweat matted his hair to his scalp. His breath was uneven.

  She pulled her hands back. “I didn’t mean to wake you. When I realized you were having another nightmare, I…”

  His head slowly turned toward hers. His face was ashen, but his gaze was cold and dark. He picked her hand up off his thigh and deposited it onto the mattress. “I’m my own nightmare, Miss Downing. I’m the thing in the dark that other people are afraid of.”

  “Jane,” she whispered. “I’m Jane. We just made love.” But he wasn’t listening. He wasn’t even looking at her.

  He was shoving his legs into his breeches and reaching for his shirt.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Out,” he grunted.

  She hated the querulous tremor in her voice. “Out of doors?”

  “Out of this bedchamber. Any other questions?”

  Her heart twisted. “You don’t have to be ashamed of nightmares. Many soldiers who return from battle find that it takes time to assimilate into their old lives. I know war is terrible, but you can take heart in the fact that—”

  “Can I, Jane?” he mocked.

  Her stomach sank. She’d somehow made things worse. “I just meant—”

  “War is terrible?” His laugh was ugly. “You don’t know the first thing about it.”

  “I know you,” she said staunchly. At least, she thought she did.

  He snorted. “You know what you want me to be, so that’s all you see. I’ve told you repeatedly that I’m no hero. I didn’t even return from battle. I haven’t fired a musket in two years.”

  She shook her head in confusion. “You weren’t in battle?”

  “There’s more to an army than soldiers.” His eyes were dark, his mouth twisted. “I wasn’t anywhere near Waterloo. The beau monde romanticizes the military until anyone in uniform is a demigod in their own right. They’re fools.”

  “I wouldn’t say it’s been… romanticized…” She trailed off. He was right. Obviously it had. “You’re still a hero. I meant it when I said that fighting for your country is inherently good, even if you have to do bad things.”

  “I used to think that, too. Now I can’t sleep at night.” His eyes were dark, his face pale. The cords stood out on his neck. “Everyone fought for their country. Not everyone did what I did. They’re calling my friends and me the ‘Dukes of War’ as if we’ve done a noble, heroic thing. Perhaps the others did, but I did not. I don’t deserve accolades or some romantic appellation. I don’t deserve to be spoken about at all.”

  She clutched the blanket to her chest to hide her trembling and her nakedness. “If you weren’t in battle, where were you?”

  His lips were a dark sneer among the shadows. “You mean, what was I doing that could possibly be worse than shooting men with bullets or running them through with sabers?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was barely audible above the beating of her heart. “I suppose that is what I meant.”

  “I helped ‘interrogate’ captives. Is that heroic? Forcing the enemy to spill their secrets? My commanding officers thought so. I was expected to follow orders, like a good soldier. So I did. The assumption was that any enemy soldier we captured might possess useful information. Sometimes they did.”

  “And sometimes they didn’t?” she whispered.

  His face was hard. “Sometimes they died.”

  She scrambled backward in shock. He was right. He wasn’t the man she thought he was. He was the thing in the dark that other people were afraid of. Or at least, he had been.

  Could she accept him for the man he was now?

  Chapter 16

  Xavier had thought disillusionment would be the worst thing he could bring to Jane’s face. He was wrong.

  There was no point in saying, I’m not going to hurt you. He’d taken her virginity with one thrust, and now he was destroying whatever was left of her innocence.

  He swallowed against the sour taste in the back of his mouth. It was time she knew the truth. He would never be the man she imagined him to be. He had lost that hope years ago.

  But he hated to see her hunched against the headboard of the bed they’d just shared, clutching the blankets to her naked breasts and staring at the foot of the bed with… disappointment?

  Perhaps she wasn’t afraid of him. She simply regretted she’d ever met him.

  He hadn’t meant things to go this far. The days with her were so damn exhilarating, and he wasn’t made of steel. He was made of broken promises.

  Xavier shoved his shaking fingers into his hair and looked away as self-recrimination washed through him. He’d wanted her to understand. But not like this. Not now.

  At last she comprehended the imprudence of offering her body to an illusion she’d constructed in her mind. And he hadn’t stopped her. He’d known it was wrong, and he’d done nothing to prevent the natural conclusion from playing out.

  He hadn’t changed at all.

  Perhaps he couldn’t. Perhaps he was doomed to make the same mistakes for the rest of his ill-conceived life.

  “What did you do?” she whispered. Her eyes did not meet his. “Start at the beginning.”

  He almost laughed. The beginning. When was that? He’d been born the year the French Revolution began. No one romanticized battle better than a young boy. He couldn’t aspire to riches or inheriting a title, but could absolutely join the King’s Army and earn the admiration and respect of all.

  Nothing ever went according to plan.

  “I purchased my commission with my closest friends,” he said at last. “But we were separated after training. I found myself surrounded by strangers. All of them young, all of them scared, and all of them willing to die rather than be seen as less of a soldier than their compatriots.” His throat grew thick. “I fit in perfectly.”

  Silence stretched through the chamber.

  When Jane again spoke, her voice was hesitant. “This is why you said that not everything one does for one’s country is good after all?”

  “I understand why you believe that. I did, too. We all did.” He could hear the bitterness in his voice. And the repressed anger. “I gave everything I had to everything I did, and was rewarded handsomely for it.” His mouth twisted. “But it wasn’t until I was assigned to help oversee the ‘questioning’ of prisoners that I realized how deceptive our beliefs had become. The ‘good of our country’ now justified any atrocity against our fellow man.”

  “Overseer.” Her face cleared. “You weren’t the perpetrator of the crimes.”

  “Worse. I was a captain.” He would never stop hating himself for earning a promotion under such conditions. “I held rank, power, and the keys to unlock every manacle. I never used the latter.”

  Her expression grew pensive. “Could you have?”

  “I didn’t think so.” He asked himself that question every day. His inability to correct the past gnawed at his soul. “But we always have choices.”

  “Then why didn’t you?” she asked softly.

  He closed his eyes. “I believed defeating Napoleon was the greater good. What was the discomfort of
one man if the secrets he spilled saved tens of thousands? But there was no way to know which captives might hold the clue to ending the war without interrogating them all.” His legs trembled as memories flooded him. “Some of them were simple soldiers, fighting for their country. They didn’t deserve to die.”

  Her expression was guarded. “You held the keys. But you couldn’t just walk around unlocking manacles. Not if it might endanger more people.”

  He nodded. “Had I balked, they would’ve thought me a spy myself. A traitor. I would’ve been ‘questioned’ until my dying breath.”

  She squared her shoulders. “Then you didn’t have a choice.”

  “That was the other choice.” He shrugged. “I made the wrong one.”

  Her eyes flashed. “Martyring yourself would’ve saved the other captives?”

  He shrugged. “It would’ve made one less monster.”

  Silence fell.

  His skin prickled. He looked away. What was left to say? Some soldiers were heroes. He was not. End of discussion.

  “That’s a horrible story,” came her quiet voice at last.

  He nodded. He was a terrible person. The stain on his sheets proved it. He was destroying lives all over again.

  “You’re right,” she continued. “You were following orders, and those awful men could’ve done the same to you, but it was still despicable to allow torture to be inflicted on another person.”

  He winced. Those very words careened about his brain a thousand times a day. Awful. Despicable. Torture.

  “It’s also over.” She met his eyes. “And something you deeply regret. As you should. But just because the past will always be there doesn’t mean you can’t make the most of your future.”

  His laugh was harsh and ugly. Just like the man he knew himself to be. “What future do you suggest? Puppies and babies? Shall I call the banns?” He spread his arms wide. “In three short weeks, all this could be yours.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting marriage,” she snapped.

  Of course she wasn’t. No sane woman would.

  He lifted a shoulder. “At least you got the meaningless affair you’d wanted.”

  Her back pressed higher against the wall. “What I wanted was to make love with someone I liked, and who liked me. I wanted to feel… like a woman. To connect with another person.”

  “Well, I’m a man, and men copulate because we have cocks.” He knew he was being cruel. She deserved anyone but him. He needed to ensure she ran back to safety and never returned. “Men like me don’t connect, Miss Downing. We think with our ballocks, not our brains.”

  Her lip trembled. “Or hearts?”

  “I don’t possess one.” He turned his back to the bed. “Get some sleep. You’ve a long trip ahead of you tomorrow.”

  Chapter 17

  She might never sleep again.

  Jane lay in the center of the still-warm bed she’d shared with Xavier just moments before and stretched out her arms in despondency.

  How had something so perfect turned out so wrong? She’d meant what she’d said about one’s past not determining one’s future. But he was right. He wasn’t the man she’d thought he was. Possibly not even a man she wanted.

  She stared up at the canopy. Perhaps he was right to believe one couldn’t escape one’s past. Or at least one’s past decisions. The faint soreness between her legs loudly proclaimed her own folly.

  He’d warned her, time and again. That she couldn’t change her mind and recover her virginity. That the loss of her maidenhead was permanent. That he was the wrong man to give it to. She gulped. Too late now. She could never undo those choices.

  A chill swept across her skin. The past might not fully determine the future, but she now saw how one’s actions might stick with you.

  His experiences under the umbrella of war had been horrific. They’d turned him into someone he didn’t like, or even recognize.

  She couldn’t let the same thing happen to her, just because she no longer had her virginity.

  But what did that mean? Her fingers grew cold. She’d never really thought about the future. She’d wished for love and friends and passion, but she’d wished to have them right now, without considering where she might be five years from now.

  If she’d truly wanted a husband, she could’ve set about making herself into the sort of woman who would be more likely to attract a suitor. She might’ve been married off years ago.

  But she didn’t want to pretend to be someone she was not. She curled her hands into fists and slammed them down against the blankets. It wasn’t fair to have to become someone else, just to hold the interest of another person.

  She swallowed thickly. Was that what she had done to Xavier?

  Before they’d exchanged their first word, she’d already decided what sort of person he was. Romantic, dashing. A hero. She’d painted him with broad, fanciful strokes and never bothered to look at the details.

  He hadn’t deceived her. She was the one who’d drawn conclusions on no more basis than her own imagination. Her chin slumped.

  She’d forced him into the role of someone he’d never claimed to be. What right did she have to be disappointed in him for not living up to a standard she’d imposed on him against his will?

  Her chest grew tight as she considered it from his perspective. She’d spent four-and-twenty years hating the people who judged—and dismissed—her for her labels, rather than bother to get to know her as a person.

  She was not only a bluestocking. She was also a person. A very headstrong, very foolish, very ruined person. She let out a ragged breath.

  When she’d focused on Xavier as the object of her desire, perhaps she’d done so more cynically than she’d realized. More selfishly. In order to experience a night of secret passions, she needed a man who fit specific criteria. Handsome enough to arouse her interest. Virile enough to share it. Honorable enough to be trusted with the secret.

  She needed the perfect man. So she’d forced him into the part.

  But he wasn’t a perfect man. No one knew that better than Xavier. What he didn’t realize was that he was no longer the man he’d been, the man he’d despised. He didn’t need to try to be better. He’d already changed.

  The question was… could she?

  She’d come to Chelmsford believing herself a wallflower who would never find love. Hoping one night of passion would sustain her during the next forty years of spinsterhood. But why did she have to settle for that? Why couldn’t she be a bluestocking and a lover and a wife?

  Insight she could’ve used weeks ago. Her eyes stung. It was too late. By lying with Captain Grey, she’d thrown away her best chance at landing a proper, Society-approved gentleman… But when had she ever wanted one of those?

  She squinted up at the dark canopy and tried to be honest. What was she truly looking for in a man?

  She’d wanted handsome. Xavier had that in spades. She’d wanted virile. Last night had proved her fantasies were only the beginning.

  She’d also wanted honorable. Her fingers slowly unclenched. Captain Grey was not the pristine, sparkling war hero she’d painted him to be, but did that make him any less honorable? She’d forced herself into his house, his life, and his bed, and he’d been the one fighting to keep her honor intact every step of the way. Did that make him less perfect, or more so?

  She loved him, she realized dully. She loved him, and it no longer mattered. He had chosen to walk away.

  Xavier would never be hers.

  She hauled herself to her feet and trudged over to the basin of water. Sun streamed through the cracks between the shutters. The faint crunch of carriage wheels rumbled in the distance. She stumbled at the sound. No more snow. Her limbs were sluggish with a mixture of disappointment and relief.

  The adventure was over. Time to go home.

  She dressed herself as best she could and got all her belongings stuffed back into her trunk. All she needed was Egui—and a ride to the inn—and she and the cat would be o
n their way back to London. This was the last she’d see of Captain Grey.

  Good. She didn’t need another man in her life who didn’t want her in his. That’s what Egui was for.

  New carriage wheels sounded from outside the window, then rolled to a stop. Someone was here!

  She flung open the bedchamber door and raced to drag her luggage out of the room before anyone caught her in the master chamber.

  Xavier strode into the room and took the trunk from her hands without a word. She followed him out to the corridor, but he edged her back inside.

  “Let me at least fasten your stays first,” he muttered crossly.

  “Yes, Captain Crotchety.” She lifted her chin. What did he have to be cross about? He was finally getting his wish. She was going home.

  “It’s my servants,” he said, his voice gruff. “They’ll be inside at any moment. Egui’s in the parlor. I’ll bring your luggage.” He finished buttoning her gown and tapped her lightly. “Go.”

  She made it to the parlor just as two loud, ruddy-faced individuals tumbled through the door. If she had to guess, the housekeeper and a stable boy. Mother and son, by the looks of it, and both equally shocked by her presence.

  Their congenial laughter died at once. She squirmed under their frank interest.

  Xavier walked around the corner with her trunk, his expression and manner as placid as if he were snowbound with bluestockings once or twice a week. “Please summon the hack driver before he leaves. I have his next fare.”

  The young boy rushed back out into the cold.

  The housekeeper had turned her eyes to her employer, as if by carefully avoiding locking gazes with the unknown woman in their midst, the situation would cease being awkward for all of them.

  It wasn’t working. Jane was mortified.

  The stable boy returned with the driver. “There ’e is, sir.”

  “Thank you, Timmy.” He nodded to both servants. “You are excused. There’s tea in the kitchen. We will reconvene in an hour.”

  At those words, the twosome had no choice but to disappear into the servants’ quarters and give their master privacy.