The Dukes of War: Complete Collection

by Ridley, Erica

  “…cradling them in your arms…” Her eyes went dreamy.

  “…the way their eyes light up when they first recognize you…”

  “…the smell of their skin…”

  “…how they both have a single tuft of curly hair…” He lifted a piece of his own to portray the tuftiness of it.

  Sarah waved him away. “They’re perfect angels. I adore their cunning little baby gowns…”

  “I adore the way they snore like lumbermen…”

  “Noah does not snore!” she huffed.

  Edmund arched a brow. “What’s he doing, then? Speaking ‘pig’ to us?”

  She cuffed him on the shoulder before turning to Bartholomew. “You’ll see. It’s the little things that make everything so worth it. Just the way they snuggle into my chest as if there’s nowhere else they’d rather be…”

  “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be,” Edmund stage-whispered to his brother.

  A cry sounded from upstairs.

  Sarah squeezed Edmund’s hand before letting go to rise to her feet. “If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen.”

  They both leapt to their feet until she’d disappeared up the stairs.

  “You’re happy, then? With everything?” asked Bartholomew once they’d retaken their chairs. “Not only did it take longer than hoped to reunite with Sarah, your return home wasn’t as smooth as one might’ve liked.”

  “Happier than I’d ever imagined,” Edmund assured his brother. He was not surprised to find it was true. There were things he hoped might improve, but there was nothing he would wish away. “Neither my long trek home nor the circumstances of my reunion with Sarah were any fault of yours, brother.”

  Bartholomew flinched. “I cannot help but feel ashamed for my cursed silence. I am sorry I did not tell you immediately about what had really happened at Waterloo.”

  Edmund shook his head. “Don’t be absurd. Were you meant to shout it out in front of everyone? I had already crashed the wedding, so there was no hope of making a bigger commotion than that.”

  Bartholomew swallowed. “Ravenwood—”

  “—was being a true friend. I might not have seen it at the time, but I see it now.” Edmund’s smile was wry. “All of you were willing to sacrifice for the sake of my unborn children. How could I condemn any of you for that?”

  His brother seemed unconvinced. “Oliver felt wretched about being forced to choose one of us to save.”

  “I forgive Oliver. His choices were limited.”

  “I felt wretched for being the one that he’d saved.” Anguish filled Bartholomew’s face.

  Edmund softened his voice. “I forgive you, brother. You didn’t have a choice. Besides, had the decision been left to me… I would have made the same choice.”

  “As would I,” Bartholomew said fiercely, his eyes glistening. “Given half the chance.”

  “You would save yourself?” Edmund teased.

  “I would have to, for Mother England.” Bartholomew peered down his nose at Edmund’s dusty attire. “With that cravat, you embarrass the entire country.”

  Edmund’s throat tightened. He had missed his twin dreadfully. The teasing. The camaraderie. The sense of belonging. Of being half of a whole.

  “I love you too, brother,” he said gruffly, then popped a biscuit into his mouth before he could be forced to say it again.

  Chapter 18

  When the supper gong sounded, Sarah stepped out of the nursery just in time to collide with her husband. He caught her in his arms and did not immediately release her.

  A familiar warmth spread through her at the feel of her breasts pressing up against the hard strength of his body. Not just a familiar warmth. A familiar want. An endless aching need that made it impossible to let him go.

  “May I escort you to the table?” he asked, his words a soft whisper caressing the shell of her ear.

  She nodded jerkily. She had no voice to do anything else. Her pulse pounded. Had she been able to respond, she would not have invited him to the supper table, but to their bedchamber. To the bed they should have been sharing all along.

  He proffered his arm.

  She slipped her fingers about his elbow and reveled in the strength of his muscles beneath her palm. She missed his touch. In keeping him from seeing her unsightly new body, she had been keeping herself from enjoying his.

  The brief passion they had shared the other night had not extinguished her ardor, but inflamed it. Now she could not look at him without remembering his mouth, his fingers, his tongue.

  When they reached the bottom of the stairs, he paused but did not let her go. She held her breath as his hot gaze met hers. He, too, was not thinking about food. Their interlude had awakened his passions as well as his own. She had but to say the word, and he would carry her right back up these stairs.

  Her mouth dried. She was too frightened to say yes. Too aroused to say no. He was right here. He was hers. This was their chance at a better future. Her body yearned for his touch. Needed to feel him, to have him.

  She was tired of waiting. Of letting fear limit her marriage. She wanted all of him.

  Tonight.

  A loud crash sounded just outside the front window.

  Edmund tackled her to the carpet before the first screams even rent the air. He lay across her in a protective shell, his back toward the danger, his eyes glassy and unseeing as the clatter continued.

  Her heart was racing, but not nearly as loud or as fast as her husband’s. The color had drained from his face in seconds, leaving his skin pasty white and slick with sweat.

  He didn’t move. Not a twitch of a muscle, nor even a rise and fall to his chest. Were it not for his hot, clammy flesh, he could as easily be a statue. Or a cadaver.

  She reached up to touch his face. “Edmund?”

  “It’s a carriage accident.” His voice was empty.

  “Yes. Outside.”

  His body began to shake. “I told you it was dangerous. Someone might have died. Perhaps several people did. It sounded…”

  “Darling, I’m right here. It wasn’t me or the twins.” She caressed his cheek. “We’re safe. Your family is safe.”

  “It could be you. Not today. Tomorrow.” His voice cracked. “I won’t let it be you. I won’t let… I can’t…”

  She pulled him into her arms and stroked his hair. “I know you won’t. I trust you. You’ll keep us safe.”

  His body began to shiver.

  She held him in her arms until the squeals of horses and metal faded away and the shouts in the street finally quieted. She held him until her arms trembled from maintaining the same position for minutes, hours. She held him until he could feel her love, feel the beating of her heart, feel his wife alive and safe beneath him.

  He rolled onto his back and pulled her into his arms. Now that the noise was gone, he could breathe heavily. She pressed her ear to his chest. His heart thundered alarmingly. The linen of his shirt was damp with sweat.

  “I’m sorry.” The vibrations of his voice rumbled against her cheek. “You must think me as prone to hysteria as my mother.”

  She reached up to thread her fingers in his hair. “Nothing of the sort. You are right. It was a carriage accident.”

  “A bad one.”

  “Yes,” she agreed.

  “The screams…” He shuddered as if he’d caught a sudden chill. “The horses…”

  Her throat tightened. “It reminded you of Waterloo?”

  His muscles tensed. “It didn’t remind me. It took me there. As if no time had passed at all.”

  They lay for a long time in silence.

  “I won’t ask if it was awful,” she said in a soft voice, “because I know it was. Nor will I ask for details you’re not ready to share. Just know that I am here—right here—if ever you need me.”

  “I don’t want to talk about the war,” he said after a moment. “Ever.”

  She nodded against his heart. “That’s fine.”

  He hesitated
. “But I will tell you what happened after.”

  She mentally prepared herself for the worst. “After being shot?”

  “After waking up.” He took a deep breath and his heartbeat settled slightly. “A week had passed. I think. It was impossible to judge time.”

  “You had been taken to a hospital?”

  “A Flemish convent. Deep in the countryside. They had row after row of soldiers…”

  “How did you get there?”

  “I never knew. I couldn’t ask. I didn’t speak Dutch then.”

  She blinked. “Do you speak Dutch now?”

  “I had to learn in order to survive.”

  Her mouth fell open in outrage. “They treated you badly at the convent?”

  He shook his head. “Anything but. The nuns were miracle workers. Most of the soldiers died, but ’twasn’t their fault. To wind up in one of their cots meant you had been given up for dead.”

  She snuggled into him and held on tight.

  “All I had was what I was wearing. That’s all any of us had. Bloodstained uniforms with bullet holes or pieces missing.” His words came choppier now. “As soon as it was clear I might survive, they gave me a clean set of clothes. Likely cobbled together from scraps of usable cloth taken from the uniforms of dead men.”

  Sarah shivered.

  “A great many of us had been trampled by fleeing men and fleeing horses.” He gazed into the distance. “It took months to recover, to learn to walk again, to pick up a heavy object.”

  “Were there many heavy objects?”

  “Many.” His lips twisted. “I had no money, no people, no way to communicate. Once I left the convent, my only choice was to take any odd job I could find, for any pay I could scrabble. Sometimes it was a scrap of food, a hayloft for a bed. Other times, it wasn’t even a sou. I couldn’t argue, because I didn’t speak the language.”

  “But you learned,” she said quietly.

  He nodded. “I learned.”

  She held him tight.

  “I learned to muck out stalls,” he continued presently, his voice flat. “To clear quarries. To build stone fences. I learned about hunger. I learned botflies from horses could lay their worms in humans. I learned how to walk for miles and miles, with or without shoes.”

  “You were heading to the coast?”

  “First, to Waterloo. I didn’t realize how much time had passed. At first, I didn’t know the war was over. If the troops were still there… If my brother was still alive…”

  She lifted her head. “Who was left at Waterloo when you arrived?”

  “No one.” His voice was flat, his eyes haunted. “By the time I got there, even the fallen’s teeth had been squirreled away for making sets of false teeth. There was nothing left for me. Nothing and no one.”

  She burrowed into him. “Did you try to catch the troops?”

  “I didn’t care about the troops. I cared about Bartholomew. Oliver. Xavier. What if I was the sole survivor? What if I’d walked a hundred miles until the clothes rotted off my back, and there was nobody left to find?”

  Her heart pounded. She couldn’t imagine the terror of such a moment.

  “But there was always you,” he said quietly.

  She stared up at him. “Me?”

  “You were safe in England. Safe and alive. All I had to do…” He swallowed. “…was return to you.”

  “And you did,” she said softly.

  “You were the one thought that kept me moving forward. The dream that kept me sane.” He lifted his hand to his waistcoat pocket, then pressed a scrap of silk into her palm.

  Her mouth curved in wonder. “The stocking ribbon you stole in Bruges! But how—”

  “I stayed alive for you, Sarah.” His eyes were intense, magnetic, as he lowered his lips to hers. “I knew finding you would mean I’d come home.”

  Chapter 19

  After supper, as Sarah went upstairs to nurse her children, her heart was heavy. Her husband had been through something unimaginable… and, quite possibly, insurmountable in their current environment.

  The carriage accident had indeed caused fatalities. The footman had stepped outside to get the news. It was dreadful.

  A chimney boy had darted in front of the horses to retrieve his master’s top hat, which had been taken by the wind. The horses had startled, and reared. The child had been kicked to the ground. The driver had tried desperately to control his horses. The hackney coach behind him—unaware of what was happening—tried to pass the first carriage, but the panicked horses incited his own. When the two carriages collided, the first carriage became imbalanced and careened to its side.

  The driver and passengers were bruised, but would survive with little harm.

  The chimney boy trapped beneath the horses and fallen carriage would not.

  Startled horses or broken axles occurred with regularity, but rarely was the outcome fatal. Sarah doubted that fact would bring much solace to her husband. If he had been apprehensive before about the safety of his children on the street, he certainly wouldn’t allow the twins out of the townhouse now.

  Not after a child had been killed right outside his door.

  Sarah shivered as she gazed down at the suckling infant in her arms. She was not a fearful person, but the terrifying proceedings had unsettled her as much as it had her husband.

  Well, no. They hadn’t reacted exactly the same.

  Edmund, she had to admit, was not meant to live in the city. Perhaps neither were she and the twins. As suffocating as it would be to go from privacy to living with his mother, the countryside would no doubt be a much better place for Edmund to raise his sons. Safer. Happier. More peaceful.

  She would tell him tonight. The day he deemed the children old enough to travel, off to Kent they would go. She would not put him through this torture a moment longer.

  Maidstone would be better for all of them. They would finally be able to go out-of-doors. To enjoy life.

  As a family.

  She tucked the last infant into his cradle after his feeding and touched a hand to her unsightly stomach. It didn’t matter. The scars, the loose skin—none of it mattered. What mattered was her family.

  Sarah was a good mother. Of that, she had no doubt. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for her children.

  She was also a good wife. Or at least, she tried to be. She loved Edmund more than her heart could hold. She hadn’t wanted to disappoint him with what her body had become… but her body was her. Just because she couldn’t undo the effects of pregnancy and childbirth, did that mean she was to withhold the physical love they both needed for the rest of their lives?

  He deserved love. She deserved love. The one thing they should always be able to count on was each other.

  Tonight, she would prove it.

  She shook the wrinkles from her day dress as best she could and pushed fallen tendrils of hair back into the twist behind her head. Her babies had just been fed, so she would not need to fear another embarrassing leak. She only had to fear her husband’s rejection.

  Her fingers trembled. If he were repulsed by her body… if he could no longer make love to her, her heart would break. But she would no longer prevent him from trying. She forced her spine straight and adjusted her bodice. Not tonight. Right now.

  She would seduce her husband.

  She strode out the nursery door. Edmund, she discovered, was at the fireplace in their bedchamber stoking a few orange embers into a fire. His jacket lay across the back of one of the small sitting chairs, leaving his shirtsleeves to billow about his arm muscles as he worked.

  Sarah paused in the doorway to watch. She loved the singleminded concentration he focused on everything he did. She loved the strength in his body. Watching his muscles move. She loved how the crackling fire cast a warm glow over his hands and profile, highlighting his strong chin, his firm lips, his dark brow.

  She loved Edmund.

  When he replaced the poker in its stand and turned to face her, she rea
lized he was not surprised at her presence. He’d known she was watching him. And had given her the space to do as she willed.

  His eyes met hers. Blue. Arresting.

  “Have you come to mother me because of my outburst?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve come to seduce you.”

  His pupils dilated as his gaze heated.

  She smiled. He hadn’t been surprised at her presence, but he’d been very surprised at the reason.

  He held up a palm. “By all means.”

  Heart pounding in sudden nervousness, she turned and headed for the bed.

  He did not follow her.

  She bit her lip. “Aren’t you joining me in bed?”

  “Aren’t you going to seduce me?” he countered softly.

  Her eyes widened.

  He was right. Had their roles been reversed, the seduction would have to begin long before they tumbled into bed. She cocked her head and gazed at him for a moment.

  What would seduce her husband? Should she untie her garter ribbons and roll down her stockings one inch at a time? Or should she grab him by the hand, boldly, beguilingly, and tug him beside her underneath the covers?

  None of those things, she decided. She was no longer a coquette, nor would she allow herself to keep hiding her body. This was a new kind of seduction. Her husband stood before the fireplace. Therefore, she would go to him.

  She approached the fireplace without attempting to mask her nervous hesitance with false confidence. She was Sarah. For better or for worse. And she would seduce him without pretending to be anything other than who she was.

  Stepping out of her slippers and onto the thick carpet made her feel bolder. The soft texture against the silk of her stockings meant she had begun. There was no going back. There was only Edmund.

  She took his fingers in hers. “Good evening, husband.”

  “Good evening, wife.” His eyes glittered in the firelight.

  She gestured toward one of the chairs. “Please, have a seat. Allow me to remove your boots.”

  He chose the closest one and sat. He dwarfed the slender chair. It was armless and expertly carved and had barely been used in the two months they’d been living here. They’d been too busy with the infants to take time for themselves.