Forever Betrothed, Never the Bride (Scandalous Seasons #1)(38)

In a short span of time, he’d come to the realization that nothing was or had been as it seemed for perhaps, ever—and it left him feeling off-balance. It was as if the world had been flipped upside down and he was hanging on by his fingernails.

Crash!

Drake flung himself on top of Emmaline, and knocked her to the ground, burying her body beneath his.

His breath came fast as he waited for the crack of the gunshots, the ensuing cries and screams. They never came. His mind remained embroiled in the hellish world of roaring cannon fire and the blinding thickness of gunpowder smoke.

“Drake.”

Drake’s heart hammered wildly in his chest and under any other circumstance he would have luxuriated in the feel of Emmaline’s lean, lithe body under his. In that particular moment, however, mind-numbing terror gripped him in a tight vise. It sucked the air from his lungs.

Emmaline wrestled a hand from between them stroked back the hair that had tumbled across his brow. “It was just the tools,” she whispered, as though speaking to a fractious mare. “They fell. All is well,” she assured him.

It wasn’t Emmaline’s words that reached through his tortured remembrances and wrenched him back to reality, but the soft, soothing cadence of her words that managed to penetrate the devil’s unyielding hold.

She stroked his cheek. Drake leaned into her touch. His eyes slid closed, needing her touch. It was like a balm on his wounded soul.

Please, don’t stop touching me. In Emmaline’s embrace he felt…whole. Drake swallowed painfully and through sheer will forced himself to pick up his head. Emmaline’s troubled eyes caught and lingered on the vivid scar traversing his cheek. He flinched under her scrutiny.

She spoke again. “Are you all right?”

His mind conjured a trail of blood beneath her fingertips as she traced the mark.

“I-I am sorry,” he stuttered and climbed to his feet. He helped her up from the ground. “Have I hurt you?” Of course you hurt her, you bloody monster.

Emmaline shook her head. “No, no, I’m not—"

“Please, forgive me.” In his haste to be free of the nightmare unfolding before him, he stumbled backwards, and tripped over the metal gardening tools.

Emmaline reached for him but he recoiled.

He mustered a hasty, distracted bow and fled.





Chapter 17

My Dearest Drake,

I had a nightmare last night. I dreamt the war had ended and you forgot to come home. You were wandering about an empty field. If you forget how, promise you will write me…I will help you.

Ever Yours,

Emmaline

Emmaline sat on the window-seat in the Floral Parlor. Her copy of Glenarvon rested haphazardly upon her lap. She surveyed the gardens below.

On any other day, the small patch of nature, awash in the glow of the sun’s bright slanting rays, would have soothed her. She pressed her forehead against the cool pane and stared down. Not this day.

With all of the hurts Drake had unknowingly inflicted, it should be easy for her to go to Sebastian and request he terminate the betrothal contract.

Except this morning in the gardens with Drake changed everything.

Resting her chin on her knees, she rubbed it back and forth over the smooth fabric of her dress. Funny, the greatest concern she’d had upon waking had been the neglect she’d shown toward the gardens.

How could so much change in the span of a few hours? Her earlier concerns about the weeds and her garden sanctuary now seemed so trivial. She didn’t think she would ever be able to see her garden as any sort of refuge again. Not when it had revealed the inner Hell that gripped Drake.

When Drake had been on the Peninsula, she had penned him a note each day he’d been gone. She’d signed every letter. Sealed them. And stuffed them into the bottom of her trunk.

Reflecting back on the contents of the notes, she cringed. In her unsent letters she’d blathered to him about the mundane. She’d gone on and on about her aggravation with her brother and lamented the boredom she felt in the country. There had never been a moment when she’d truly stopped to think about Drake’s time on the Peninsula. She hadn’t stopped to consider that Drake had been a young man who would be irrevocably changed by his experience.

That wasn’t to say she hadn’t worried over his safety or thought about what he was seeing and doing—she had, every day. But she hadn’t thought about war in the graphic sense. Instead, she’d seen it as more of a grand adventure. Why, he’d had the opportunity to travel and see different landscapes and meet exotic individuals, who were most definitely not the prim, proper members of English society.

She hadn’t been able to think about the violence and death that went with war...until she’d confronted the soldiers who’d returned to London Hospital. Still, even visiting the wounded soldiers, Drake had somehow seemed removed from those men who’d lost limbs and eyes. The physical scars they bore were very obvious. Drake however, had returned physically intact and yet, how hard it must be for him to move about Society scarred, but in ways that only he knew. How very lonely for him.

Her fingers distractedly toyed with the copy of Glenarvon in her lap, fanning the pages, and absently thinking about her unsent notes. All those years ago, she’d written letters but had been too much of a coward to send. After all, why would a man who’d sought out a war to avoid her, ever welcome any words from her?