Miss Truelove Beckons (Classic Regency Romances Book 12) by Donna Lea Simpson Page B

usual he was carelessly dressed, and his boots were already badly scuffed, so a few more scratches would not even be noticed. “Sounds like your perfect match, Miss Becket. What are you hesitating for?”
    True could not answer, taken aback by the dryness of his tone and the violence of his jerky actions. They had become used to talking with a degree of comfort and amity, but at that moment she felt separated from him, in feeling as well as in actuality.
    “All I have ever done with the less fortunate is kill them in battle,” he said morosely, the dark mood that was never far away descending upon him.
    Ah, now this she understood. She moved back to his side and took his arm. “My lord—”
    “Can you not call me something other than ‘my lord’?” he said. His eyes were dark and his expression moody. “Call me Drake, or even better, call me by my name.”
    “Which is?”
    “Wycliffe. My mother was used to call me ‘Wy’ when I was a boy. She said it was an appropriate name for a child who was always asking ‘why.’”
    She was grateful to hear him under control of his voice again. The wry tone had returned. “We are both blessed with unusual names,” True said. “Wy and True. I shall call you Wy, but only when we are private like this. It would not be seemly in public. Will you call me True, in private?”
    “I will. Though I have come to think of you as Truelove, in my mind, you know. Such a perfect name for you, I thought, the minute I met you.”
    Drake covered her hand, which rested on his arm, with his other hand, and she felt the warmth of him flood her as his broad hand engulfed her small one. He gazed down at her, his eyes fixed on her lips, and for one dizzying moment she felt that he meant to kiss her again, but he did not. She should have been grateful for his restraint. He guided her to a large tree, stripped off his jacket and laid it on the ground for her to sit on.
    “We ought to find the others,” True said, hesitating. “They may come back from their walk at any time.”
    “We shall. Soon.”
    They sat down. The grasses and wildflowers around them were tall, and it felt like they were sheltered from the world.
    “Do you really see yourself that way, Wy? As a killer, and nothing more?” True shed her bonnet and drew her knees up, putting her arms around them.
    Wy reclined under the tree and gazed up into the green leafy boughs, his curls tangling with the weeds around his head. “I was in the army for fourteen years. Do you know how many battles I have been in, and how many men I have killed?” A lark fluted a trilling song somewhere nearby. Stretching his full, long length out, he cupped his hands and put them behind his head. “How far away it all seems now, but it was only months ago that I was butchering men . . . men who had done nothing but take a side opposite my own. I dream about them, you know, all the dead soldiers. They howl, in my nightmares, for my blood. And then I awaken, screaming, sure that I am once more on the battlefield at Mont St. Jean, and I am dying.”
    The dark subject matter was ill-suited for such a brilliant day, but True took no notice. Heartsick, she gazed down at the handsome man reclined so close to her. This explained some of the strange noises she had heard during the night on a couple of occasions in the last week, the wild keening. How she longed to gather him to her and soothe the anxious lines from his gaunt, noble face. “And so you do not sleep.”
    “No. I do not sleep. Or at least I do, but only for a time. That is why I was pacing the stable yard that night at the inn. I knew I would not sleep.”
    “And you dream of dying?”
    He nodded. “I dream I’m back there, where I almost did die. I fell, you see, wounded by a saber cut to the thigh, given me by a gallant Frenchman whom I then slaughtered. Andromeda, my horse, was blasted by artillery fire just then and fell on top of me as I went down, and then Captain Lewis, one of my men,