Miss Truelove Beckons (Classic Regency Romances Book 12) (27 page)

Could he have just stood by and turned the other cheek while his people were overtaken by the Corsican monster? No. One way or another he would have risked his life to defend his home, his people, his family, from danger. Maybe when he was seventeen he had joined up for excitement and glory, but he had stayed because he was good at what he did, and he was performing a valuable service. He had felt needed.

But still, nothing changed just because she believed what he did was justified by the threat to his home and family. It was a hard burden to bear, but he would have to do without her and find his way alone.

• • •

The days passed quietly.

Drake sat alone in the library, his face buried in his hands. It was getting tougher and tougher to keep up a cheery front, but finally True had set a day for leaving. It was a good thing, or he would go mad with wanting her. He had sworn just the day before to go and live at Thorne House, where he belonged, but he could not force himself to leave when True still stayed. Every day was torture; to see her and not be able to touch her, to talk with her, watch her pink lips move, and not be able to kiss them, to see her shiver in the chill of the breeze and not be able to pull her into his arms and hold her close.

He loved her utterly and completely, and he was a fool for letting her go, but what could he do? She was betrothed to a far better man than he had ever been or could ever aspire to be. He heard the library door open and close, but he felt absolutely no curiosity as to who it was.

“Drake!”

It was his mother. He pulled himself together and straightened. “Yes, Mother. I was, uh, resting.”

She strolled into the room. She had been out walking, it seemed; walking and reading a letter, from the looks of the parchment in her hand. She strolled to the window and squinted out at the day. “It’s warm outside, like August rather than late October. Last shot of summer-like weather, I shouldn’t wonder, before the cold truly sets in,” she mused. She turned back toward Drake. “I have become very fond of Truelove Becket,” she said without preamble.

Drake stared at her, wondering where she was going after such an odd opening. “It would be impossible not to love True.”

“I have been concerned for her welfare,” Lady Leathorne went on. “I wished her to stay with us for a while, but didn’t want her to feel obligated if it was keeping her from her marriage.”

Drake felt a sour taste in his mouth. “Yes, her marriage.”

“And so I wrote to her father. I expressed my fears, and he very kindly wrote back.”

His mouth now dry, Drake remained silent. He didn’t want to know if the saintly Mr. Bottleby was demanding his bride-to-be back. Was his mother going to persuade her to stay a while, maybe through Christmas? What delicious agony that would be! And yet he must hope she would stay, even though he had just been congratulating himself that she was finally to leave.

Lady Leathorne held the letter up to the light and read out loud. “Let’s see, what does her father say? Ah, yes.
‘My dear madam, I assure you that from everything I have been able to gather from my former curate, there exists no engagement between my daughter and him. My younger daughter concurs. She says that Truelove broke off any possibility of that before she returned to Lea Park to nurse your son. I am delighted . . . ,’
and then he goes on to congratulate me on your return to good health.” She refolded the letter and glanced at her son. “It’s odd, is it not, that she has not spoken of this?”

Drake sat, staring into space. Truelove was not engaged?

Lady Leathorne strolled around the desk and put the letter in front of him. “It’s a beautiful day out, son. I have been walking and it is glorious weather we are enjoying. I especially recommend the river walk, down near the oak tree. I think you would delight in it.”

• • •

Drake took his mother’s advice and walked. A light breeze scudded across the tops of the long yellowing grass of the meadow and it rippled like the ocean while clouds cast their shadows, drifting lazily across the blue heavens. It was warm, and Drake pulled his jacket off and slung it over his back.

Truelove was not engaged. She had broken it off irrevocably with the vicar. He had seen her father’s words with his own eyes. But still, after all he had done and seen, he felt unfit to even dream of a life with True. And yet, had the deeds they did in war ever stopped men from coming home and taking wives, loving them as their better selves? Was he shutting out happiness for them
both
by his scruples? She had loved once, and had sworn never to marry until she loved as much. She had rejected her virtuous vicar; perhaps she could not love him? Should he not just put it to her and let
her
decide if she could ever love him?

The sun beat down on his shoulders, the heat burning into him. He walked mindlessly toward the river, following his mother’s suggestion without thought. He came over a rise and gazed down at the river sparkling in the autumn sunshine, glittering like a string of jewels. He strolled down to the bank, the lush grass dying now and turning to an old gold color, and then glanced over toward the oak tree, where True had first held him.

And there she was, sleeping in the sun on a yellow blanket of leaves, curled up on her side.

Somehow it did not surprise him. All paths led to Truelove. Somehow sleep—dreamless or nightmarish, sound or restless—had played some sort of role throughout their acquaintance. He stepped closer to her and watched her slumber, her face the picture of innocence, her cheek pillowed on her clasped hands.

Every moment with True was like a gift he gave himself. Was there anything he could give her in return? A light breeze lifted her curls and she moved, murmuring sleepily. He thought of the nights she had sat with him, held him, bathed his brow. Had he just imagined the kisses on his forehead, the murmured words of love? Her lips had been cool and her words like balm for his soul. He could not possibly have made them up.

Hope blossomed in his heart, and he tossed his jacket down and lowered himself beside her, brushing her hair off her cheek and kissing the sun-warmed curve. She smiled and turned, and he covered her lips with his own, feeling her quick response and her hands stealing up around his neck.

Miss Truelove Beckons. It had been like a prophecy, when he had first uttered those words. “True,” he whispered, pulling her into his arms and onto his lap, glorying in the small bundle of feminine sweetness that he loved so very much. Her eyes fluttered open and she looked up at him drowsily. She touched his cheek and threaded her fingers through his hair.

“Wy! I must have fallen asleep. We seem to have a bad habit of sleeping in each other’s company.”

He gazed down at her in his arms and felt as though the world had shifted, and he had found the one place that everything made sense. “Truelove Beckons. It’s as if I knew, the very first second I saw you.” He had been talking to himself, but now he said, “True, I love you.” It had rushed out, straight from his heart to his lips, and he felt fear clutch at him. What if she did not care for him that way?

“Wy!” Her eyes were wide open now, the sun lightening their color to sky. “Do you mean that?”

He threw back his head and laughed. True felt her body robbed of breath as she watched joy transform Wy’s handsome face into the very picture of Apollo, the sun god. His golden curls, sun-touched and glinting with threads of bright silver, fell back off his face.

“Do I mean it? I have never spoken a word to you I did not mean, Truelove, my own true love. I love you. I have
always
loved you and I’ll never stop.”

True reached up and framed his face with her hands, staring deep into golden hawk eyes. The were alight with joy and life and love. It was true! He loved her. He said he had always loved her, and perhaps that was the truth, but his heart had been so clouded with pain and guilt that he had not been able to release it.

His expression clouded. “True, you haven’t said anything. Am I being presumptuous? Is there another?”

She shook her head. “There is no one else. I’ve loved you since the first moment I saw you!”

“But you wrote that you were going to marry your vicar!”

“I thought I should. I was thinking with my brain and not my heart. But I let him go, and Faith wrote to me and told me that he has asked another girl to marry him, a girl I know who has been pining after him for a long time.”

“But you love me,” Drake repeated, anxious to establish that incontrovertibly.

“I love you,” True whispered.

He lowered his lips to hers again, and she felt love bubble up like springwater. But there was something else, too, something forbidden, some deep desire that threaded through her body. Every rational thought fled as he did delicious things to her with his lips, kissing her throat and under her chin and her ear and her neck. His breath was warm in her ear and she giggled, breathlessly. His hands traced the outline of her hip and her bottom, and she realized that she was sitting most improperly on his lap. She squirmed, but he would not release her.

“True, don’t try to escape from me.” He captured her chin in his hand and turned her face toward his. “While I have my courage, I need to ask you. Will you spend your life loving me as I shall spend my life loving you? Will you marry me?”

He was holding his breath, and she looked down into his eyes from her perch on his knee and was touched to see that doubt and fear still lingered, even after her shameless response to his kisses.

“Yes, Wy, oh, yes! I’ll marry you. I love you!”

• • •

On the prominence overlooking the river, Lady Leathorne gazed down at the distantly perceived scene of her son and her future daughter-in-law—more than daughter “in law,” the daughter of her heart—most improperly engaged in premarital bliss. It was why she had sent him in this direction, with the knowledge that True was there, and not, as they had supposed, betrothed. Once she knew the truth about the girl’s supposed engagement, it had not taken her long to understand the reason for True’s deception, and she honored her for not wanting to take advantage of so splendid a catch as Drake was, just because she was compromised. It ended any doubt the countess had entertained as to True’s suitability.

How to manage an estate could be learned; nobility of spirit was ingrained. She would do as viscountess and then countess. But more importantly, Truelove Becket would love Lady Leathorne’s son to the end of her days, and a mother could not wish for more for her child.

She turned away to give them their privacy. They would be each other’s sanctuary, loving each other in ways Lady Leathorne had never experienced, but could envy. Truelove Becket was a woman to whom a mother could hand her son over, knowing she was worthy of him.

Drake would always be her son, but now he would have an attachment closer and more intimate than even the mother-son bond, and that was how it should be. She had been forced to watch her little boy march away and engage in a brutal war that had robbed him, for a time, of his happiness, and she had longed to restore his joy, but that was for his wife.

His wife. Soon to be her daughter, as much daughter as if she had been born of her body.

With tears in her eyes, Lady Leathorne glanced one more time back at the happy couple, and then turned away and walked back to Lea Park.

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The Rogue’s Folly

Lady May von Hoffen has been plagued all her prim young life by the scandalous behavior of her widowed mother and the licentious men she consorts with. When she finally finds herself free of her mother and in sole possession of Lark House, she relishes the sense of decorum and freedom it gives her. But the surprise discovery of the injured Frenchman Etienne hiding on her estate—the man who once rescued her from an attack on her virtue and the only man she’s ever been able to trust—turns her newly peaceful solitude into a maelstrom of bewildering thoughts and disturbingly passionate curiosity.

Etienne is a self-avowed rake, and even now is on the run from ruthless adversaries who accuse him of trying to murder a marquess and seduce his wife. Following a stabbing that nearly claimed his life, he finds sanctuary on the land of an unfamiliar estate, hoping to recover and evade capture. But when the lady of the house turns out to be none other than the lovely and innocent Lady May, his feels his heart stir even as his body is gripped by pain and the fear that she will renounce him.

As May nurses Etienne back to health and learns the truth of his supposed crimes, along with a much-needed education on the relations between men and women, a burning desire smolders between the two opposites, and soon they will be forced to trust each other and their feelings in order to save one life and two hearts.