I've Got My Duke to Keep Me Warm (The Lords of Worth) (21 page)

Chapter 21

J
amie had forcibly prevented her from returning to her attic rooms. Instead he had smuggled her into the apartment, ignoring her halfhearted protests, and ensconced her on the settee with a blanket and a very full glass of whiskey. Then he had gone about building up the fire so that the pervasive chill soon gave way to an almost overwhelming, drowsy heat.

Sipping the fiery liquid, Gisele tried hard not to think about Valence sprawled out on the floor, his eyes inflamed and glassy and heavily lidded. She tried not to remember her old rooms in their perfect order, as if Valence had somehow known she would be back. Simply being in that house had made her skin crawl and had settled a cold miasma deep in her bones. She shivered.

“It’ll be warmer soon,” Jamie said quietly, coming to sit beside her.

“It’s plenty warm,” she mumbled, staring into her drink. She closed her eyes. “That was… more difficult than I thought.”

“But it’s over.”

“Yes.” She tipped her head back on the upholstery. “Thank you, Jamie. For being there.”

“I would never leave you.”

Gisele shrugged, suddenly feeling more exhausted than she could ever remember. She just wanted to crawl into bed and put the covers over her head and pretend the world didn’t exist for a very long time.

She looked at Jamie. “I should go. You can’t have a woman in your apartment in the middle of the night. You’ll get evicted if they catch you.”

“You’re staying here.” Jamie was watching her with worried eyes. “I don’t want you alone right now.”

“I’m not going to throw myself in front of a carriage, Jamie, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I didn’t expect you would.” He brushed a strand of hair back from the side of her face.

Gisele tried to find the energy to argue, but the whiskey and the warmth, coupled with her fatigue, were making it difficult. “Maybe just for a few more minutes,” she whispered. The idea of a cold, dark, isolated attic room had no appeal at the moment.

She became aware that Jamie had somehow slid a pillow under her head, and she leaned against the softness. She felt him shift as he raised her feet up onto the settee, tucking the blanket carefully around her. He lifted the glass from her hand and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

Gisele sighed and closed her eyes.

The guns had yet to quiet. They continued to belch fire and death, and the smoke hung heavy over the killing ground, making Jamie’s eyes water. Beneath him he felt his mare shift, the exhausted beast anxious to see this nightmare to an end. Her sides were heaving, her once-rich coat now
lathered with sweat and blood. Jamie looked to either side, horrified to see how few remained. One more. One more charge and the French would break or what was left of his regiment would be shattered.

“Stay behind me,” he shouted to Red, who gave him a cocky grin, his teeth ghoulishly bright against his blood- and dirt-streaked face.

“Let’s finish the bastards,” Red yelled, his horse crow-hopping and sidling as another cannon crashed. He raised his sword in salute to Jamie, and then they were charging once more. Through the pall came the crackle of guns, the sick slap of lead into flesh, and his mare screamed, her front legs buckling as she crashed to the earth, her gallop turning into a broken somersault of snapping bones. Jamie was pitched from his saddle, though it was as if he were watching from a great distance above. There was no pain, nothing until he hit the ground, then only a numb disbelief as the twitching carcass of his horse landed across his lower body and then stilled.

Frantically Jamie tried to lever himself out from under the dead mare. Except one of his arms wasn’t working, and he realized with the same disbelief that he’d been shot, blood pulsing darkly against the crimson wool of his uniform. He collapsed back into the filth, clawing at the grass, knowing that if he couldn’t escape, he would die.

Suddenly there were hands beneath him, pulling roughly, and Jamie shouted as a white-hot lance of pain winged through his shoulder and into his chest.

“Stop your bleating, Captain,” came the raw voice at his ear. “You were tougher when you were ten!”

“Goddammit, Michael, what the hell are you doing?” Jamie yelled. “Get on your horse!”

“Damn thing had the nerve to die on me,” Red gasped as he struggled to free Jamie.

“Then get back! Find another.” Jamie was looking around in panic, knowing just how vulnerable a downed cavalryman was. “Goddammit, Red! Leave me! That’s an order!”

“Can’t hear you.” Red gave him another grin, jerking his head to the side. “Damn guns are too loud—”

He stopped, the roguish grin replaced by a look of confusion. His skin went gray, and a French infantryman, barely more than a lad, yanked his bayonet back out from under Michael’s ribs. He glanced at Jamie and, seeing only a dead man, turned and disappeared back into the chaos.

“No!” Jamie screamed and jerked upright.

He was breathing hard, his skin beaded with sweat, chilled in the darkness of predawn. He was not on the field, surrounded by dying men and dying horses, the ground beneath him saturated with blood and entrails and the stench of death. He was in an aristocrat’s bed on a feather mattress, tangled in silken sheets, still dressed in the clothes he’d fallen asleep in.

He pushed himself to the edge of the bed, rubbing his shoulder and feeling the thick ridge of scar tissue beneath the linen. He was desperate for a drink. Standing, he moved to the doors of the drawing room and pulled them open, wincing as the hinges protested with a loud creak. He stumbled toward the sideboard and the decanters.

“Couldn’t sleep?” came a voice out of the darkness, and Jamie nearly yelled.

“Jesus.” His nerves were raw. The dream always left him weak and nauseous.

He peered in the direction of the settee, but realized Gisele was not there. Instead the silhouette of a woman was barely visible sitting on the bench near the tall window that faced the gardens.

“What are you doing?” he asked finally, his voice rough.

“Same thing you are.” Gisele tucked her bare toes beneath the hem of her skirts and tugged her blanket tighter around her shoulders. “Once the dream wakes you, there is nothing that will ever convince you returning to that place is a good idea. It’s much easier to wait out dawn.”

Jamie made an indistinguishable noise, recognizing his own truth in her words.

“I think it was being in that house again. It’s been a long time since I… dreamed.” She didn’t look at him.

Jamie moved away from the sideboard and lowered himself down beside Gisele, close enough to feel her warmth, but not close enough to touch her. She’d pulled open the curtains just enough to allow a sliver of moonlight in, and he watched her for a long minute as she stared out, unseeing, into the darkness. As strong as Gisele was, going back into that house tonight had cost her. She looked weary and drained, and the vivacity that usually surrounded her had diminished.

He realized he had underestimated or had not understood the effort it required for her to keep her own ghosts at bay. Tonight she had been forced to come face-to-face with them. But she’d done it.

They sat in silence, listening to the wind push at the panes of glass.

“I killed my brother.” The words were gone before he could call them back.

Her breathing stopped for a moment before it resumed, though she didn’t look at him.

“At Waterloo.”

She turned and rested her cheek against her knees, her eyes shining in the shrouded moonlight. “I don’t understand. Your brother is the Duke of Reddyck.”

“My youngest brother is the duke now. Malcolm. There were three of us.”

Gisele only watched him, a faint line marring her forehead.

“Michael inherited the title after our father passed. He was two years younger than me and the favorite of the family. Witty, kind, clever. My father refused to allow him a commission. Said Michael had duties and responsibilities to the title, not to the army. I always teased Michael and called him Red, short for Reddyck—the sum of his future.”

“Your father let you enlist.”

“I was never going to be the earl. A cavalry officer was a noble profession for a bastard son, and my father was lavish with his support and praise of my service. After he died, Red continued to supplement my officer’s pay so that I might retain the distinction of captain. He thought I was a bloody hero.”

Gisele closed her eyes, understanding written over her face. “That wasn’t your fault.”

“Yes, it was. I never convinced him otherwise. I sent letters regaling him with tales he wanted to hear, and I never told the truth. I liked the idea that my little brother looked up to me. When Napoleon escaped from Elba and raised another army, Michael’s first order of business was to buy a commission. With my father gone and
me unreachable, there was no one left to stop him. Just showed up one day kitted out with a fine Irish hunter, a uniform so new the color bled, and a sword so shiny it hurt my eyes. Told me he wanted to be just like me. Live a life of adventure and glory.” The memory was so bitter it nearly choked him.

“Your brother was a grown man, Jamie.”

“A grown man who thought war was a game. Who had never heard or seen artillery flense a dozen men into an unidentifiable mess of bone splinters and flesh. Who had never seen an infantry square broken by the last strides of a dying horse and then gutted from the inside out. Who had never had to earn his pay by killing.” Jamie looked bleakly into the darkness. “It’s funny, how you become inured to the business of death. In India, in Spain, I saw and did horrible things. Yet I never stopped to consider that they were, in fact, horrible until my little brother rode beside me, filled with illusions and misconceptions of reality, and I realized there was nothing I could do to protect him. There was no adventure or glory. There was only the interminable wait for death, interspersed with terrifying, ruthless moments in which you must kill or be killed.”

“I’m sorry, Jamie.”

“He was trying to save me when he died. My horse had me pinned, and I’d been shot.” He barely heard her words. “He wouldn’t listen—” He stopped, terrified he was losing whatever tenuous control he had left over his emotions. He took a shaky breath. “I had to go home and tell my mother I couldn’t save him. That he died in front of me and I couldn’t save him.”

“Jamie—”

“I don’t think my mother had ever really gotten over her grief at my father’s passing, and she was already ill when I arrived. I think Michael’s death broke her. She died two months later.”

The wind rattled a loose pane, and Jamie concentrated on keeping his breathing even. Gisele was the first person he had ever spoken to about Red. And he had no idea what he had hoped in doing so. That by confessing his complicity in the death of his brother he would be absolved of his sins? That she would pat him on the back and tell him it was all going to be all right? That he would distract her from her own demons and she would be grateful? He was afraid to look at her, and he was afraid not to.

“And this is why I found you drunk in that tavern.” It was a statement, not a question.

He couldn’t even answer her.

“I’m not sure what you want me to say, Jamie.” There was no inflection in her voice, and Jamie hadn’t a clue what she was thinking.

“I don’t know either.” He turned to look at her then and found her eyes on him, staring hard.

“Is this why your brother hates you?” she asked.

Jamie sighed heavily. “Malcolm hates me because he holds me responsible for Michael’s death. He hates me because Michael followed me into war, and my actions, or lack thereof, cost him a beloved brother and forced him into a life of responsibility he never wanted.”

“That sounds very… small.”

Jamie made a pained sound.

“I am sorry about Michael.” She searched his face. “But you’ve punished yourself enough, don’t you think?”

“No,” he mumbled miserably.

“No?” Now there was passion in her voice. “You figured, if you drank yourself to death, then everything in the world would be put right?”

Jamie rubbed his face in agitation. “It wasn’t—I don’t—” He stopped. “It was my fault.”