A Highlander's Heart: A Sexy Regency Romance (Highland Knights Book 1) (2 page)

Grace, on the other hand, was shy and retiring. Quiet and bookish. In social situations, she was reserved and thoughtful, naturally poised in a quiet, unassuming way. She’d always been Claire’s voice of reason when her own head demanded she run wild.

“Oh dear.” Grace needed only one look at Claire’s face to know that something was wrong. “What happened?”

Without a word, Claire handed the letter over. Lowering herself into the chair beside Claire’s, Grace read it with a furrow deepening between her brows. Finally, she looked up.

“I know you don’t like anyone speaking ill of him, Claire, but my goodness! This is beyond the pale.”

“It is?”

“This letter is entirely rude. And it contains no reassurances whatsoever. He might as well have been sending this to his solicitor.”

“No less than I deserve,” Claire muttered.

“Come now. I despise it when you’re so harsh with yourself.”

“I have been harsh to him, though, don’t you see? I screeched at him last we laid eyes on each other. And then my pride prevented me from writing to him. And now…” She gulped in a trembling breath. “He’s going back to war.”

Grace laid her hand on Claire’s. “Do you forgive him, then?”

Did she? She had been so angry and hurt for so long… “I…I don’t know.”

“He left you when you needed him the most, Claire.” It was a gentle but significant reminder.

“I know. And…I really don’t know if I forgive him. If I
can
forgive him. But I do know I want him to forgive me. I oughtn’t have said those things. No matter what, he is my husband, and if something happens to him…” The words trailed off.

Grace squeezed her hand, and the sisters sat in silence for several minutes.

Claire had never felt so helpless in her life.

* * *

Claire spent the next days remembering what it had been like to be in love with her husband. Imagining his brief, flashing smiles, his blue eyes filling with a jewellike light, and his joy washing over her. Recalling sleeping with him; how he’d held her close through the night, how his skin was so warm against hers. They’d fit perfectly together despite their difference in size. Rob was a giant of a man at well over six feet tall, and Claire had never measured a hair over five feet.

There had been a spark between them that had set off a raging inferno of heat that had begun on their wedding night and had lasted almost a year. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other. She was fascinated by his hard masculinity, his size and his muscles. She had felt so feminine when she was with him, and he had often touched her with a sort of reverence, gazing at her with soft, awe-filled eyes that had made her heart melt.

And there had been nothing to compare to the way they’d made love. It was equally rough and tender, sometimes the pleasure skirting a fine line of pain that she reveled in, that had almost always made her reach her peak. He was a demanding lover but also a considerate one, always making sure she took her pleasure before he took his.

She locked the letter in her escritoire and went through the routines of her daily life in London. Her father, the Earl of Norsey, was busy as always with his duties in parliament. Claire and Grace ran the household as they had since their mother died when Grace was fifteen years old and Claire was fourteen. Her father received several guests over the next weeks. Usually the busy work of serving as hostess kept Claire’s mind off all of it—her broken marriage, her grief, her husband being in danger…

This time it didn’t work. She’d go to her room every night and unlock her drawer and take out the letter. She read it again and again, until she’d memorized every word and the edges of the parchment were frayed.

Then she’d lie awake, staring at the ceiling. In the morning, she’d wake with dark, heavy circles under her eyes.

Grace looked at her despairingly, but in the end, there was nothing her sister could do to help.

But as each day passed, it grew clearer to Claire what she must do. The only thing she
could
do.

The only way she could cleanse her soul would be to see Rob before the battle. Apologize. Tell him that despite all that had happened, she still cared for him. That she didn’t want him to die and she actually did want to see him again.

Thinking all this, she knew, was a lot easier than saying it out loud. The last time she’d seen her husband, he’d gazed at her with hard eyes, chips of blue ice. His lips had been pressed into a flat line, and his shoulders and back had been stiff. How could she have told someone who looked upon her with such indifference that she was sorry? That she wanted to try again?

It had simply been too much of a risk.

Most of all, she’d been too proud.

She closed her eyes and imagined how it would be if she chased him to the Continent and told him those things. He’d be furious with her for going there. He’d made it clear to her more than once that he’d wanted her to have nothing to do with his military life or with the Gordon Highlanders.

He’d stare at her, bristling, his anger at her presence compounded no doubt by the anger she’d incited with her caustic words to him that last time he’d come to Norsey House.

But she wouldn’t allow any of that to inhibit her. No, she’d shed her pride and tell him everything. Beg his forgiveness. Beg for him to live.

He might reject her. He might toss her on the next ship back to England.

She needed to decide if cleansing her soul was worth the price of his rejection.

Days passed, then weeks, as Claire’s mind struggled with her need for her husband’s forgiveness and her fear of him turning her away. Of the look of absolute dispassion on his face when he laid eyes on her.

With June came a hesitant summer, clouds gathering and dumping rain, then clearing to frigid temperatures that bled into warmth. And on the tempestuous morning of the fifth of June, Claire finally settled into a decision.

There was no other option. She needed to take the risk. Her heart would never forgive her if she didn’t.

She knocked on Grace’s door. When she entered the room, Grace looked up from her desk, where she was writing a letter.

“Grace,” she said quietly, “will you come with me to the Continent?”

June 19, 1815

The Waterloo Battlefield

She would not falter.

Claire had never imagined it would be like this. The thought of such things ever being possible in this world had never crossed her mind. Her stomach churned, threatening to toss back up her breakfast. Her knees wobbled, and her teeth began to chatter, but she clamped her jaw shut so they wouldn’t.

These men had endured this, and they’d been in the thick of it. Their lives had been at risk, not hers. So many of them were injured and in pain. If they could bear it, then so could she.

Thanks to delays first by her father, who’d needed cajoling and settling before he’d even consider allowing them to go to the Continent, then by difficult weather, she and Grace hadn’t arrived in Flanders until the seventeenth of June. She’d learned there had already been a battle at Quatre Bras, and because Colonel Cameron of the Gordon Highlanders had been killed, the leadership of the 92nd had fallen to her husband.

He was still alive. But the campaign was by no means over.

She and Grace had slept an anxious night at an inn in the port town of Ostend, and the following morning hired a carriage to take them to Brussels, hoping to meet Rob and his Highlanders there. But by then, the army was already in the thick of another battle near the village of Waterloo. Agitated, Claire had asked their driver to leave for Waterloo before dawn this morning.

They’d just arrived at the camp, their travel excruciatingly slow due to the number of soldiers and horses and carts crammed on the road. The morning was cloudy and the air thick with mist. Claire, her sister, and their maid, Mary, had stepped out of the carriage to be accosted by an English officer who knew nothing of the fate of the Gordon Highlanders. Busy handling his own injured and dead, he’d gestured them to a clearing where the 92nd had congregated.

Claire walked toward the men, most of whom were sitting in small groups on the muddy ground, haggard, muddied, and war-shocked, awaiting their orders. As she approached, they all turned wide-eyed gazes upon her as if she were some sort of apparition.

“Is Major Campbell here?” she’d asked, scanning over the group, trying not to allow her composure to crumble at the sight of all the bloodied bandages and pale faces. Trying not to allow tears to brim in her eyes at the realization that Rob was not among them.

There were several negative responses, and one red-haired man frowned at her and asked, “What is it ye want from ’im?”

“He’s my husband.”

Several brows shot up, and Claire’s heart twisted. Well, then. Rob had clearly never told his Highlanders much about her. If he’d told them about her at all. That hurt more than it ought.

After the initial shock of hearing her identity, every single one of the men rose and removed their hats in respect. One man stepped forward. He was older and steadier than most of the other men, and he was very handsome, with an angular face, a shock of dark hair, and bright green eyes. He doffed his ragged cap and gave her a small bow. “Captain Sir Colin Stirling, milady.” He lifted his head, studying her intently. She thought that this man might have known of her existence. He didn’t gaze at her with the fascinated surprise of the other men, but rather with curiosity.

“I’m sorry to tell ye we havena found him yet,” the captain said softly. “We’ve been searching the field, but there’re so many—”

Claire’s hand flew to her chest. “Is he dead?” she gasped.

The tightness around Captain Stirling’s lips exposed his worry. “We canna be sure. Not till we find him.”

“Will you take me to the battlefield? May I help in the search?”

He hesitated, then nodded. “Aye, milady, if that is what you wish. We’ll go now.”

Flanked by soldiers for protection from the rabble, they walked down a pitted road to the site of the battle, Grace and Claire, side by side, following the major, while their maid followed behind. Mud sucked at Claire’s shoes, the mist beaded on her cheeks, and a chilling cold began to creep into her bones.

They passed through a narrow line of trees, and Captain Stirling came to an abrupt halt. Claire looked past him and sucked in a breath.

“Oh God,” she whispered.

A trampled field heaped with bodies of horses and men. Debris everywhere. Smoke still rising from scattered fires. People sobbing and calling. Others standing still, as she was, just taking in the destruction…the sea of desolation and death…

But it was impossible to take it all in. It was so oppressive as to be unbearable.

“He was there,” Captain Stirling said, his voice full of gravel. He gestured to his left. “My troops were just there, but I couldna see him, the smoke of cannon and musket fire was so thick. I didna ken…” The words dwindled away.

Grace laid her hand on the captain’s shoulder, and Claire saw that the man was trembling. The horror of yesterday would not be leaving these men anytime soon.

Claire swallowed past her bone-dry throat. “You ought to go back, Captain. I’ll search for him. I shall let you know if we find him.”

“Major Campbell would never forgive me if I left ye alone in this place. I’ll stay.”

“Thank you,” Grace said softly. She and Claire agreed to separate so they could cover more distance. Claire went to the right, where Captain Stirling had said Rob had started the battle. Grace went farther to the left, at the other end of the line of the Gordon Highlanders.

And then it began. The endless slog through destruction and misery. Death felt like a living thing, shimmering up into the air in stinking waves of blood and flesh and smoke.

Rob couldn’t be dead, Claire thought firmly as she walked through the nightmare. She wouldn’t stand for it. She hadn’t apologized yet, and Providence wouldn’t allow her to travel to the Continent at all if she wasn’t able to come in time for her apology.

She picked her way over the battlefield—instantly dismissing those in blue coats, looking closer at those in red. She found two Gordon Highlanders, one man who’d lost both his arms and who stared blankly up at the sky with cloudy blue eyes. One a private who was injured and moaning softly, apparently having suffered a terrible blow to his leg. She called one of the surgeons over to attend to him and continued to search for her husband.

It was hopeless. Her stomach was so twisted, and she was growing lightheaded. It was too much. Just…too much. How did one take in all that she was seeing? It was simply impossible.

Ahead in the distance, a russet-haired, broad-shouldered man crouched on one knee, looking down at one of his fallen comrades. Judging by the fit of his jacket, he could be one of the Gordon Highlanders. But she couldn’t tell if he wore the Gordon tartan by the way he was positioned behind the body.

Claire took a step in his direction, and he looked up. He studied her for a moment from across the battlefield, then he rose unsteadily, his hand moving to doff a hat that wasn’t there.

The way he held himself… God, could it be Rob? Claire chewed on her lip, trying to beat back her clambering hope. She lifted her skirts and walked toward him.

Don’t be a frightened ninny. Don’t burst into tears. It is absolutely not allowed. You must seem calm. You must appear composed.

She carefully stepped over the debris, and as she drew closer, the wind ruffled his hair and his square jaw came into focus, and she knew, without a doubt, that this was her husband.

“Rob,” she whispered. As much as she tried to beat it back, the emotion she’d been trying to suppress came bubbling free, and she gave a little, wild laugh. “Rob?”

Thank the Lord, he was alive. Her husband was alive!

Joy burst through her the likes of which she’d never known, and for the first time she realized the true extent of her fear for his life.

His face compressed into a tight mask of wariness, but she didn’t care. Let him be angry with her. He was alive, and that was all that mattered.