The Brigadier's Runaway Bride (Dukes of War Book 5) Read Online Free PDF Page A

nights. Laughter and sensuous kisses. The other half of her heart.
    For months, she’d longed for the dashing, carefree young man who was always happy to chase butterflies or swim in the river or spend lazy afternoons on their backs in the grass to look for pictures in the clouds. The Edmund who’d responded to her love letters with a fervor to match her own. The Edmund who had nicked her garter ribbon as if it were a maiden’s medieval token bestowed upon her knight, and promised to bring her a ring as soon as he returned home from war.
    But the man who’d returned was a stranger. No ring. No smiles. No love words, or even a simple kiss. He’d come back… but he hadn’t come back Edmund .
    “I don’t know where he’s been,” she said dully. “He won’t talk to me. He just demanded that we wed posthaste and then left me. Again.”
    Anthony frowned. He dragged her into the furthest corner of the sitting room and lowered his voice. “Do you still have the blunt I gave you?”
    Sarah nodded guiltily. It wasn’t enough money to ensure independence, but it would have covered several months rent for her parents’ London townhouse. If she had been a good daughter, she could have offered it to them before they’d had to resort to selling the family library.
    If she’d been a good daughter, she wouldn’t have gotten pregnant and turned her life upside down.
    Well, now she had new priorities. That money was for emergencies. A few months’ security, should something financially terrible happen. Something like: not being a duchess after all. Something like: the love of her life returns, and their relationship disintegrates because they can’t keep food on the table. She shivered. Money might not solve everything, but poverty was a dark tunnel into Hell.  
    Had she finally got Edmund back only to be dropped into a new nightmare?
    “Those funds are yours.” Anthony squeezed her hand, keeping his voice low. “Don’t you dare give that money to our parents.”
    She nodded, but her throat tightened with worry. Would it be enough?  
    Her brother had opened an account for her the very day she told him about the baby. Every time he won at the gaming tables, he brought a portion to their father and deposited another sum in her secret account. Her brother loved her. He wanted to save her.
    He’d given her enough money to escape into the countryside, have the baby someplace no one knew her name, give the child up to an orphanage, and return home as if nothing had happened.
    Sarah could think of nothing more horrid. The child was hers . Hers and Edmund’s. Come what may.
    “What am I to do?” She laid her forehead on her brother’s shoulder. “Where are Edmund and I to live? How are we to live? If you could have seen him, Anthony. He didn’t look like Edmund. He looked like—like a street beggar.” She swallowed hard, hating that poverty terrified her. Hated what it meant for her future, for her marriage, for her baby. “He clearly has nothing. No clothes. No home.” She stared up at her brother in desperation. “Am I to be poor again? To raise my child as we were raised—never knowing if tomorrow’s meal would come from footmen or from animal troughs?”
    “ Never .” Her brother’s green eyes flashed with determination and reckless zeal. “I’ll win you more pin money than a person could ever spend. Just you see. We will never again lie awake hungry, I swear it.”
    “Anthony, wait —”
    But her brother was already gone, flying out the front door just as quickly as he’d blown in.  
    Tears of frustration stung Sarah’s eyes. She rubbed her temples to try and ease the pounding in her head. Perhaps Anthony would return home in a matter of hours, flush with pride and success. Or perhaps the next she saw him, he would lie coughing in a wretched cell in debtor’s gaol for betting—and losing—more than he could afford.
    Again.
    She eased down onto the worn sofa and set her jaw. No more feeling sorry