Ann Lethbridge – More Than A Lover (страница 1)
‘Thank you,’ she murmured. ‘I think I will be able to sleep now. I will be up and ready to leave first thing.’
For a moment he thought she might rise up on her toes and kiss his cheek, like a sister or a friend, but it was his mouth where her gaze lingered. Heat rushed through him. His blood headed south.
The distance between them was so very slight he could feel the graze of her breath against his throat, see into the warmth in the depths of her melting soft brown eyes. Could such a kind, gentle creature, such a respectable woman, really want a man like him?
I have wanted to write Caro and Blade’s story for ages, and finally had the chance in
Also, I hope you enjoy this opportunity to catch up with the twins and their brides from
More Than a Lover
Ann Lethbridge
In her youth, award-winning author ANN LETHBRIDGE re-imagined the Regency romances she read—and now she loves writing her own. Now living in Canada, Ann visits Britain every year, where family members understand—or so they say—her need to poke around every antiquity within a hundred miles. Learn more about Ann or contact her at annlethbridge.com. She loves hearing from readers.
I would like to dedicate this book to all the wonderful editors at Harlequin Mills & Boon who have helped me write more than twenty-five stories to date, and in this particular case to Nicola Caws, who let me write the story my way and then helped me to make it better. Thank you.
Contents
March 30th, 1820
Bladen Read, erstwhile captain of the Twenty-Fifth Hussars, stretched his legs beneath the scarred trestle table in the corner of the commons of the Sleeping Tiger. Nearby, a miserable fire struggled against the wind whistling down the chimney while the smell of smoke battled with the stink of old beer and unwashed men oozing from the ancient panelling. He might have stayed somewhere better these past five days, but it would have been a waste of limited coin he preferred to spend on decent stabling for his horses and a room for his groom. After all, it wasn’t their fault he’d been forced to tender his resignation from his regiment.
That was his fault, fair and square, for not blindly following orders. And not for the first time. It was why he’d never advanced beyond captain and never would now.
Hopefully, his letter to his good friend Charlie, the Marquess of Tonbridge, would result in an offer of employment or he’d be going cap in hand to his father. The thought made his stomach curdle.
He nodded at the elderly tapman to bring him another ale to wash down the half-cooked eggs, burned bacon and day-old bread that served for breakfast in this establishment. Not that his rations while fighting for king and country on the Iberian Peninsula had been any better, but they also hadn’t been that much worse.
He opened The Times and placed it beside his plate. The tapman wandered over with a fresh tankard. He slapped it down on the table, the foam running down the sides and pooling in a ring around its base. His lip curled as he pointed a grimy finger at the headline—the words were stark: ‘Hunt. Guilty of Sedition’.
‘Sedition?’ the old man growled. ‘It was a massacre. There was women there. Families. It’s the damned soldiers what ought to be up on a charge.’
‘You are right.’ Blade knew, because he’d been at St Peter’s Field. Hunt had been invited to Manchester to speak to a populace suffering from the loss of work or low wages and high prices for bread. He advocated change. What the powers that be had not expected were the vast numbers who would come to hear the man speak.
People had come from miles away, the women in their Sunday best, many of them wearing white, holding their children by the hand and carrying the banners they’d stitched. They’d come to hear Hunt, a radical who was famous for his opinions and wearing a white top hat. Scared to the point of panic, the government had sent the army to break up the gathering because they had learned of the careful organisation behind the event. Curse their eyes. The crowd had been peaceful, not starting a revolution as the government claimed. Hunt had barely begun addressing the crowd from a wagon bed when the militia had charged.
The potman snorted derisively. ‘You were there, then, were ye, Captain? Got a few licks in?’
Not this soldier. He had tried to turn the militia aside. As a result, he’d been deemed unfit to serve his king. His years of service had counted for nothing. Not that in hindsight he would have done anything different. Waking and asleep, he heard the screams of women and children and the shouts of men, as the soldiers, his soldiers, charged into the crowd, laying about them with sabres as if they were on the battlefield at Waterloo. Eighteen citizens dead and over seven hundred injured, some by the sword, others trampled by horses. Just thinking about it made him feel ill.
No wonder the press had labelled it Peterloo. Britain’s greatest shame and a tarnish on the victory over the French at Waterloo a mere four years before.
The potman spat into the fire. ‘The people won’t stand for it. You wait and see. They might have put Hunt in prison, but it won’t be the end of it.’
Blade’s blood ran cold. ‘I’d keep that sort of talk to yourself, man, if you know what’s good for you.’
The government had spies and agents provocateurs roaming the countryside looking for a way to justify their actions of last August and the laws they had changed to reduce the risk of revolution. The Six Acts, they were called. The radicals called it an infringement of their rights.
He swallowed his rage. At the government. At the army. At his stubborn dull-witted colonel. And most of all at himself for remaining in the service beyond the end of the war. He had wanted to fight an enemy, not British citizens.
The man gave him a narrow-eyed stare as if remembering to whom he was talking. ‘Will there be anything else, Captain?’
‘Mr and, no, thank you. Nothing else.’
‘That’ll be fourpence.’
The waiter plucked the coins Blade tossed him out of the air and sauntered back to the bar. Blade finished the ale and pushed the food aside. He had no stomach for it this morning.
Time to check on his horses. With studied movements born of hours of practice, he carefully folded the newspaper and tucked it under his left arm. It never failed to irritate how the simplest things required the utmost concentration. He donned his hat and walked out into the sharp wind of a typically grey Yorkshire spring morning.
He strolled through the winding lanes, heading for the livery.
As he turned onto the main street, the walk of a woman ahead of him caught his eye. A brisk, businesslike walk that did nothing to disguise the lush sensuality of her figure, even though it was wrapped in a warm woollen cloak. In his salad days, before Waterloo, he might have offered to carry her basket. Women, young and old, loved the dash of an officer in uniform.
Well, he was no longer entitled to wear a uniform. He’d retired. Hah!
The woman stopped at a milliner’s window, revealing her profile.
Caro Falkner. Pleasure rippled through him. Desire was certainly a part of it, a hot lick deep in his gut, but there was also a lightness, a simple gladness at the sight of her. Not that the gladness would be reciprocated. She had made it quite clear she wanted no remembrances of the past. Of youthful folly, before the carnage of war had taken his hand and killed her soldier husband.
He’d met her in a small village not far from Worthing, where his regiment had been stationed, but had been far too tongue-tied at her beauty to utter a word. How he had hoped, with the desperation of the very young, to ask her to stand up with him when he and his fellow officers had been invited to the village assembly. Naturally, she’d only had eyes for the older and far more charming Carothers. She’d been a delight to watch, though, as she danced and flirted her way through his more experienced companions.