Miss Truelove Beckons (Classic Regency Romances Book 12) Read Online Free PDF Page B

into the distance and frowned. “Do you know, I never had to buy a single drink for myself those first weeks in London. And I was invited to more parties celebrating our victory than I could go to in a hundred lifetimes. But I was restless. Something about it all seemed fraudulent, empty. I haven’t been able to sleep well since coming back. One night I was staring out the library window at the street outside . . .”
    His voice trailed off and his eyes, misty with remembrance, showed a shadow of pain.
    “You were staring out at the street?” True urged him on. She gazed up at him, memorizing the high arch of his rather beaky nose, the strong line of his chin, noticing the faint sandy stubble. There was something about this moment, standing on the terrace of Lea Park with the scent of the herb garden drifting around her and the smell of him, a musky, sandalwood scent, filling her nostrils, that would stay with her forever, she thought. This day was one of those she would remember even as a very old woman. The slanting sun filled his curls with light and it was like a nimbus around his head.
    “There was a man,” he continued, finally. “Probably about forty or so, though he looked older, and he was walking, or rather limping. He was not wealthy, and I thought he must have been a soldier in the war, for he was an amputee, as many of our poor fellows are. He was struggling along on homemade crutches; he was not used to them—I deduced that he must have been injured late in the war, at Waterloo or the run-up to it—and it was painful to watch his slow progress. I did not know what he was doing in Mayfair, but it didn’t really matter. I was going to run out the door and “halloo” him, ask him if I could stand him a pint somewhere. Horace—my batman, you know—was off visiting his family and I was lonely for companionship with someone who would understand my . . . well, who would understand.”
    “I can imagine,” True said when Drake paused. “You must feel separated from your friends who were not in the war. You have not those shared experiences and they cannot know what it was like. None of us can.”
    He gave her a grateful glance and laid one long-fingered hand over her arm where it rested on his. His tawny eyes darkened to brown and his halo of gold faded as the sun was obscured behind a drifting cloud. “I was just coming out of the front door when I heard a clatter, and these young ‘gentlemen’ came racketing down the street on prime bits of blood and bone, whooping and hollering like savages.” His voice had become bitter and the words dropped from his mouth like pebbles to pavement. “One of ’em had a cricket bat, and he leaned over as he rode and knocked one of the man’s crutches right out from under him.” Lord Drake made a swooping motion with his free arm, as if he held that cricket bat, then laid the hand back over hers again. “The fellow tumbled to the ground with a cry of pain.”
    “Oh, no!” True cried, the vivid picture of the dark night and the soldier tumbling to the street making her heartsick.
    “Yes!” Drake said, through gritted teeth, his lip curled. His eyes flashed with anger and bitter hatred. “At that moment I wanted to kill that young man! If I had had my pistol, I might have. As brutal as the offense was, it did not merit death, but I would have meted it out to that disgusting young demon without a second’s thought.” He glanced down at his companion and saw tears shining in Miss Becket’s eyes.
    “What happened to him? The fellow on crutches? Was he all right? Was he hurt? Did he get up?”
    Unerringly she had struck to the very heart of the matter, Drake thought, humbled. She did not pause to reassure him or commend him for his reaction; she did not rush to condemn the young men for their actions. Her first thought was of the soldier, for the truly important part of his story was that man on crutches, not Drake’s own anger and bitterness, nor his desire