A Highlander's Heart: A Sexy Regency Romance (Highland Knights Book 1) Read Free

her. He might toss her on the next ship back to England.
    She needed to decide if cleansing her soul was worth the price of his rejection.
    Days passed, then weeks, as Claire’s mind struggled with her need for her husband’s forgiveness and her fear of him turning her away. Of the look of absolute dispassion on his face when he laid eyes on her.
    With June came a hesitant summer, clouds gathering and dumping rain, then clearing to frigid temperatures that bled into warmth. And on the tempestuous morning of the fifth of June, Claire finally settled into a decision.
    There was no other option. She needed to take the risk. Her heart would never forgive her if she didn’t.
    She knocked on Grace’s door. When she entered the room, Grace looked up from her desk, where she was writing a letter.
    “Grace,” she said quietly, “will you come with me to the Continent?”

Chapter Two
    June 19, 1815
    The Waterloo Battlefield

    She would not falter.
    Claire had never imagined it would be like this. The thought of such things ever being possible in this world had never crossed her mind. Her stomach churned, threatening to toss back up her breakfast. Her knees wobbled, and her teeth began to chatter, but she clamped her jaw shut so they wouldn’t.
    These men had endured this, and they’d been in the thick of it. Their lives had been at risk, not hers. So many of them were injured and in pain. If they could bear it, then so could she.
    Thanks to delays first by her father, who’d needed cajoling and settling before he’d even consider allowing them to go to the Continent, then by difficult weather, she and Grace hadn’t arrived in Flanders until the seventeenth of June. She’d learned there had already been a battle at Quatre Bras, and because Colonel Cameron of the Gordon Highlanders had been killed, the leadership of the 92nd had fallen to her husband.
    He was still alive. But the campaign was by no means over.
    She and Grace had slept an anxious night at an inn in the port town of Ostend, and the following morning hired a carriage to take them to Brussels, hoping to meet Rob and his Highlanders there. But by then, the army was already in the thick of another battle near the village of Waterloo. Agitated, Claire had asked their driver to leave for Waterloo before dawn this morning.
    They’d just arrived at the camp, their travel excruciatingly slow due to the number of soldiers and horses and carts crammed on the road. The morning was cloudy and the air thick with mist. Claire, her sister, and their maid, Mary, had stepped out of the carriage to be accosted by an English officer who knew nothing of the fate of the Gordon Highlanders. Busy handling his own injured and dead, he’d gestured them to a clearing where the 92nd had congregated.
    Claire walked toward the men, most of whom were sitting in small groups on the muddy ground, haggard, muddied, and war-shocked, awaiting their orders. As she approached, they all turned wide-eyed gazes upon her as if she were some sort of apparition.
    “Is Major Campbell here?” she’d asked, scanning over the group, trying not to allow her composure to crumble at the sight of all the bloodied bandages and pale faces. Trying not to allow tears to brim in her eyes at the realization that Rob was not among them.
    There were several negative responses, and one red-haired man frowned at her and asked, “What is it ye want from ’im?”
    “He’s my husband.”
    Several brows shot up, and Claire’s heart twisted. Well, then. Rob had clearly never told his Highlanders much about her. If he’d told them about her at all. That hurt more than it ought.
    After the initial shock of hearing her identity, every single one of the men rose and removed their hats in respect. One man stepped forward. He was older and steadier than most of the other men, and he was very handsome, with an angular face, a shock of dark hair, and bright green eyes. He doffed his ragged cap and gave her a small bow.