Dreaming
of Waterloo by Lynne Connolly
One
of six amazing novels in a landmark collection honoring the heroes of Waterloo
and the ladies they love!
The
Incomparables
This limited
edition box set includes 6 scorching romances that commemorate the 200th anniversary
of the June 18, 1815 Battle of Waterloo.
From the Duchess
of Richmond’s ball in Brussels to the Battle of Waterloo and beyond, join these
six unforgettable heroes as they journey back from the physical and emotional
trials of war and discover the passion that thrills the body can also heal the
heart.
The
Stories in the Set:
Emma wants only
an interlude with the man she’s adored for years. But Drayton Worth has spent
five years riddled with guilt for hurting her—and he’s determined to have more
than a few nights in her bed.
Daniel Sinclair is
a broken man with war wounds that are physical and spiritual. He’s weighed down
by grief and guilt and tormented by his tarnished honor. When he meets Fia
Lennox, a beautiful and brave Highland lass in dire need of his protection, he
sees in her his chance for redemption…or utter damnation. Because despite his
valiant attempts to resist her, he cannot.
Love After Waterloo by Suzi Love
When
Lady Melton and her son join Captain Belling and the last wounded soldiers
evacuating from Waterloo to London, she expects clashes with army deserters but
doesn’t anticipate how falling in love with the antagonistic captain will
change her life.
Paul “Lucky” Sherstone daren’t even let his wife too close
because of his headaches and the living nightmares he can’t dispel. Hetty
hardly knows the man who comes back from war, but one thing she does know—she
still wants him.
A man who is
determined to fulfill his duty at the expense of his own happiness, a woman who
wants only one taste of true passion, and a case of mistaken identity. Can
Captain Edward Hathaway and Grace Kent overcome the guilt that continues to
haunt them both and find true love?
Captain Roarke
Wooldridge is about to find out that sometimes love does heal all wounds.But
when his need for revenge collides with desires he never believed he would feel
again, will he be able to put aside the scars of Waterloo to embrace his
future?
They
called him “Lucky,” but not all injuries are physical ones. Plagued by
headaches and living nightmares, Paul, Lord Sherstone returns to London to a
wife he doesn’t know and an estate he has to manage. He daren’t let her close,
even though he is falling in love with her all over again.
Married
and abandoned in a month, Hetty learned to manage a large estate and fend off
would-be lovers, but a threat emerges much closer to home and from an
unexpected place. In need of help she turns to Paul but since his return he has
only shut her out. Refusing to give up on the man she fell in love with five
years ago, Hetty has to persuade her husband to let her into his bed—and his
heart.
Read
an excerpt of Dreaming Of Waterloo:
The crowd
parted.
They were not
dancing, having left off in favor of supper, so Paul walked straight across the
room to face Hetty. His gait was loose and easy, but he ate up the ground with
no regard to the careful, mincing steps of the fashionable gentleman. His
Hussar uniform, one of the most flamboyant in the army, looked as good as any
ever did on his broad shoulders, and tall, muscular form. Gold was so heavily laced
across the front that the red cloth beneath could hardly be seen. The pelisse
that hung from one shoulder, red lined with blue, was equally fine.
Despite the
magnificence, the man outshone the uniform, his carefully brushed dark hair and
square jaw more than adequate to the task. The grim purpose delineated in every
spare line of his form embellished the uniform rather than the other way about.
Hetty drew her
hand away from Lewis’s arm, and stood clear of him. Paul bowed to her. “My
lady.”
“My lord.”
Thus, a year of
silence was broken.
She held out
her gloved hand, proud that it did not waver, even though her pulses throbbed
and her throat had tightened so she could scarcely breathe.
He took it and
bowed over it in the approved manner. Then he glanced at his cousin. “Lewis.”
“Welcome home,
Sherstone,” Lewis said, his voice slightly higher than usual.
“Thank you.”
Straightening, his eyes met hers again, and once more he transfixed her.
Her mind
flashed back to the first time they had met. Like this, in a ballroom, before
she knew he was to be her husband.
But of course,
this was nothing like that time. He was a soldier, but not a major, as he was
now. He didn’t have that hard expression in his eyes then, either.
Five years had
passed between that day and this, and a wealth of experience. Not to mention
heartbreak, on her side at least.
Because of the
woman she was now, not the one she had been once, Hetty put on her practiced
society face of mild interest, allowing her lips to tilt upwards very slightly.
“I had not known you were coming.”
“My arrival was
somewhat confused, my lady. I was prepared to accompany Wellington to Vienna,
but he had other plans. So I climbed on to one of the many ships transporting
the wounded to England instead.” His lip curled in a self-deprecating sneer. “I
was assured I was not taking the place of someone who needed it more than I
did.”
For this was
the hero, the talisman of the army. “I see you are not hurt, sir. Or is some
part of you damaged beyond repair?”
The sneer
turned to a smile and his dark eyes lit with amusement. Eyes that dark caught
every spark of light that passed by, reflecting it with an adamantine glitter.
Hetty had never been sure if she imagined the volatile moods that shaded them,
or whether it was the light affecting them. But this was unmistakable. “I am
never wounded. I thought you knew that.”
“Yes.” She wet
her lips and watched his gaze settle there before lifting once more to
encompass her face. “You have that reputation.”
“I do seem to,
do I not?” His nickname of ‘Lucky’ had never been bestowed on a worthier
candidate. He had been at the heart of every battle Wellington had sent him
into. Men fell around him, but Major Lord Paul Sherstone remained upright and
unscathed. Men strove to join his company, which had fewer casualties than
others. Prints were made of him standing in bloody battlefields, staring at the
carnage going on around him. Handsome and tall, the picture of a perfect
officer, Paul had captivated the popular imagination.
He was doing
the same now. Around them, a hush was barely broken. People watched him, most
of them with awe or smiling. He ignored them all in favor of his wife and
cousin, but Hetty was painfully aware of all of them. Usually she moved around society
as one of many, as part of it, but not standing out. Just the way she liked it.
Suddenly she was the center of attention. “I—I went to Horse Guards. They
wouldn’t tell me where you were.”
He shrugged.
“They probably had no idea. I told them I was selling out. My superior officer
should have told the authorities.” He frowned. “You mean you did not know if I
was alive or dead?”
“Exactly.” Good
of him to put it so succinctly.
Fire sparked in
the depths of his eyes. “That is not acceptable. It’s been ten days since the
battle. I wrote to you. Did you not receive my letter?”
She shook her
head. “But you are here now, my lord.” His words eased her somewhat. Before,
she had imagined that she was of little importance in his scheme of things, but
it appeared he had made efforts to contact her.
“And you are
not one to sit before the fire, wringing your hands, are you?” A steely tone
had entered his voice.
Did he expect
as much? Once she might have done just that, but these days Hetty was more
inclined to take her fate into her own hands. “I will find out more here than
at home, waiting for something to happen.”
He gave a
brief, terse nod. “True enough.”
He glanced
around. “You were heading for the supper room? Allow me to escort you.”
After a nod to
his cousin, Paul took Lewis’s place. He offered her his arm and she laid her
hand on it. Now she trembled. Heat rose from his body through the unblemished
cloth to her hand. Like this, Paul appeared as nothing more than a dandy,
dressed more flamboyantly than anyone with a dozen fobs to his waistcoat.
Underneath, his body was honed and sharpened to a killing edge.
As they moved
away, leaving Lewis behind, chatter rose up once more.
Paul let out a
long breath. “Well that was difficult.”
She felt cold,
numb with shock.
“I had no idea
you didn’t know I was alive.” He cast a glance over his shoulder to where Lewis
was standing. “I regret you had to discover it in such a way. I suggest I find
you something to drink, and then we may sit and try to appear unobtrusive.”
There was an
edge of wildness to her laughter. “You? Unobtrusive?”
His mouth
tightened in a mirthless grin. “I try. I should have more success soon.”
He said no more
until he had procured wine for them both. After she refused food, he took her
to a seat by the side of the room. “Let us hope that our reunion deters people
from approaching us.”
But that was
not to be. First one person then another offered him their felicitations and
expressed their admiration of his prowess. Paul greeted them all with a smile,
reminded them that his wife was with him, so they had to get to their feet and
bow and curtsey.
“This will not
do,” Paul said. “I wish to speak to you privately. We have much to discuss, my
lady.”
She wished he
wouldn’t call her that. She was Hetty. Henrietta if he had to, but not “my
lady.”
“May I call on
you tomorrow?” he asked her.
Startled, all
she could do was blink at him. “I had thought—”
“I arrived far
too late last night to disturb you, so I went to the club.”
“You’re staying
at White’s?”
“No, at the Incomparable,
farther along St. James’s Street.”
She frowned. “I
don’t recall the name.”
He nodded. “It
used to be the Classical. We’ve revived it. It’s now a club for people who
fought at Waterloo.”
If she was not
on her best behavior, she might have whistled. “So fast?”
“We had to move
quickly, or the building would have sold elsewhere.”
“We?”
“We formed a
committee. We have yet to meet and discuss the details of the club, but we felt
the need to ensure we remembered the battle.”
“I see,” she
said. She did indeed. Battle was an essentially masculine affair, and like
turkey-cocks, they would want to strut their achievements. “To relive its
glories.”
His lips
twisted and he shook his head. “Not in that way. We need somewhere we feel
safe.” Abruptly, he stopped looked away. He finished his wine before putting it
aside on a table next to the sofa they shared. “We have bedrooms, so I used one
last night. I will stay there tonight, and come to you in the morning.”
“At what time?”
“Does a man
need permission to enter his own house?”
That made Hetty
guilty. She was so used to having the house to herself but of course, that was
at an end now. “Of course not. I merely wanted to ensure everything was ready.”
He lowered his
voice and leaned closer. “That phrase could mean something entirely different
in certain quarters.” Leaning back, he observed her discomfiture.
A flush rose to
her cheeks. “Then I apologize.” She would be up with the dawn tomorrow. She had
no desire for him to find her still abed.
He still
disturbed her, still made her want—things. Their marriage had not been marked
with passion, except right at the beginning. Sometimes she considered those
heady days as the only truly happy ones of her life. That was foolish, of
course it was, but in her more melancholy moments, she remembered them.
She would never
get them back. They had gone on and their union had become something completely
different.
“My cousin
seemed very thick with you,” he said, leaning back.
She breathed in
relief, as if he’d taken all the air when he’d moved closer to her. “He’s been
of great help with the estate. It is in good heart.”
He frowned.
“But you take the decisions, do you not?”
“Yes.” She had
ensured that. Working with the men of business, the estate managers, the
lawyers and other professional people she had managed to keep her finger on the
pulse of his estate. Not that Paul had cared much, or so it seemed. He was not
the first son of his parents, but had inherited the earldom when his brother
had died unexpectedly shortly after Paul had joined the army. He could not be
reached for some time, and when he finally returned home, he was an earl.
Wellington had demanded his return. The earldom could wait, Wellington had
said, and so it had.
Now it would
not. “Your men of business will be anxious to talk to you,” she said.
“It appears
that they talk to Lewis far more than to me.” He shrugged, his shoulders moving
powerfully under the fabric of his uniform. “I have a new skill to learn.” He
got to his feet and held out his hand.
After only a
moment’s hesitation, she took it and let him help her to her feet. “You look
weary,” he said softly. “I won’t tax you with my presence tonight. Go home and
get some sleep.”
“Yes, I believe
I shall.” She smiled brightly, forcing back the shadows.
Perhaps they
would do better this time, after all. This time as friends and colleagues, not
passionate lovers. That chapter had ended a long time ago, and she should not
regret it.
And yet she
did.
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