Her Secret Fantasy by Gaelen Foley Page A

welfare of her family off the side of a blasted precipice—and yet, for some reason, she could not even muster the proper good sense to regret it.
             
    Gruesome dreams of war besieged his sleep.
    Derek’s head thrashed slightly against his pillow, his muscles clenching beneath the light sheet.
    The damned cart kept breaking. In the middle of the battlefield. He had to get…something to…someone. Supplies, maybe, to the men. But the terrified horses wouldn’t cooperate and the damned wheels kept getting blown off the supply wagon.
    He could fix it, he told himself. He could fix anything, he was the handiest chap in the regiment, but the journey was endless, and Derek was near his wits’ end with the knowledge that he was getting nowhere.
    Nowhere.
    All the while, the cannons roared so loud he couldn’t hear himself think, and the men couldn’t hear his orders so they’d damned well better know what to do on their own. Had he trained them well enough? What if they could not survive without him? They could barely breathe with all the smoke and here he was, fixing a damned supply wagon wheel in the middle of a battle! Why wouldn’t anyone help him?
    He looked around through the hellish clouds of black powder smoke to get a hand with the stupid wagon, and instead he turned just in time to see a young private get his leg blown off. He choked back a shout, his first thought to get the kid into the wagon. Then he was racing toward the boy. He could hear him screaming through the clouds of smoke but he couldn’t find him, and then all of a sudden he realized he was unarmed.
    Jesus Christ, how could I have forgotten my sword at a time like this?
    He awoke with a horrified start and shot up in bed, reaching about automatically for a weapon. His bleary eyes flicked open, his chest heaving as his panicked glance swept the room. Only then did he see that he was not in his tent and recall that he was not at the war, and there were no Marathas trying to kill him today.
    Not here.
    London.
    Right.
    God.
He shut his eyes again briefly, rubbed his face, blew out a weary exhalation, and did his best to shake off the clinging confusion of sleep. It was only a dream. The same damned one as usual.
    He shuddered, dragging his hand slowly through his tangled hair.
    Lady Amherst slept on peacefully beside him, oblivious to his private hell.
    Derek leaned back against the headboard, tousle-haired and bare-chested, the sheet falling across his naked hips.
    Striving to get his bearings once more in reality, he idly scratched his jaw in need of a shave, but the ugly images still lingered in his brain. To distract himself, he turned his weary attention to the woman beside him, the sound of her soft snores. He stared at her in detachment.
    Her voluptuous curves still drew his admiration by the flat gray light of morning, but Lady Amherst’s face was buried in the pillow, hidden by her hair. Her tranquil slumber left him feeling all the more alone.
    The evidence of their sport, meanwhile, lay scattered around his chamber. Strewn clothes everywhere. The small bottle of exotic fragranced oil that he had caressed into her skin and she his. Empty wine bottles. Candles that had melted into little pools, now solid disks of wax.
    She had indulged his every whim and satisfied him down to the very bottom of the well, but if he’d had his fill of her last night, then why did he awaken feeling empty once again?
    Derek gave a quiet sigh, then looked around, restless and uneasy until he spotted his discarded waistcoat on the floor beside the bed.
    He reached down and fished the mystery girl’s diamond earring out of the inside pocket. Reclining in his bed again, the sight of it sparkling like a star in the palm of his hand, the memory of “Mary Nonesuch” brought back a wistful trace of a smile to his lips.
    Damned minx, who the blazes was she? And what had she been doing out there at the garden folly, anyway, if not waiting for her lover?