A Lady's Wish Read Online Free PDF

that she never expected to see him again. For months she had dreamed. For years she had wondered. But she never truly believed she would, convincing herself that her young, hungry imagination had invented him.
    But England was not such a large place after all. She had been a fool.
    “Thank you, sir.” Her voice sounded odd and stiff, the rain dulling sounds all about. “We have horse trouble and cannot continue to the inn ahead.”
    “There is a farm not a quarter mile behind,” he said without hesitation, winning a titter from within the carriage. “I will ride back and return with an alternate conveyance. Does your coachman carry a pistol?”
    There was no gracious solicitation here, no hint of recognition beyond that first brief pause. Only attention to necessity.
    “I believe so. Carr?”
    “Yes, mum.” Carr pulled aside his coat to reveal the butt of a weapon.
    “See that you use it if necessary.” He spoke with complete authority, as though accustomed to giving orders. He turned and remounted. “I will return shortly.” He bowed from the saddle, circled his horse about and with a smacking of hooves in mud, set off at a canter.
    Patricia pressed a hand to her chest, to force breath into her lungs or to still her pounding heart, she hardly knew.
    Tristan . The man over whom she had cried a thousand tears. Come to life. Appearing upon a rainy road in the middle of nowhere.
    “He has gone to fetch us another carriage, Auntie,” she heard Calanthia say cheerily. “And you will not believe it when you see him—he is very handsome. I daresay we should be stranded upon the road more often if such gentlemen will appear to rescue us.”
    T here was no carriage to be found at the farm, of course, only a wagon without covering. But it must suffice. Afternoon was fast waning and the rain would darken the road before the sun set. So it was on land, just as on the sea.
    Nik commandeered the wagon and the farmer to drive it. In a lengthy exposition the farmer explained his eldest son’s inability to drive now on account of an injury involving a bale of hay, a pitchfork, an overly feisty cow, and a pretty dairymaid.
    “Females,” the farmer spat. “Always a female, ain’t it, sir?”
    Always a female, indeed.
    Nik had sailors as loquacious as the farmer aboard his ship; he did not mind the chatter. Indeed, he welcomed it. Anything to force his mind into a semblance of order resembling the order that had reigned in his life for eight years since he ran away to the Navy because of a woman. The woman stranded upon the road before him now.
    You must join the Navy and become a great ship captain! You will be the scourge of Napoleon’s fleet.
    She was entirely altered. Her cheeks, once rosy as a ripe peach and dimpled, were now hollowed and pale, rendering her chin more angled and casting shadows beneath her eyes. Her hair, then as multifaceted as autumn leaves and shining in the sunlight as it slipped out of its ribbons, now disappeared in a tight knot beneath her sober bonnet. And her mouth, lips he remembered as the sweetest, softest dusky rose, and full enough to drive a man mad imagining them upon him . . .
    She had smiled until she recognized him. Then her smooth cheeks and sensuous lips had gone pale as a specter’s.
    If Nik needed any sign to confirm that she remembered him and had no desire to meet him again, he now had that sign. His chest felt tight and he felt like a reckless, uncertain youth still. A war hero brought down finally by a woman’s blank stare.
    But it was merely confirmation of what he had suspected even then.
    From the moment he had first caught a glimpse of her that morning, her hair sparkling in the early summer sunshine and elegant dress caressing her young curves, he’d known he was not good enough for her. He had never been good enough for anything, as his father and elder brothers never hesitated to remind him. Never intelligent enough, never disciplined enough, never talented