Come the Dawn Read Free Page A

chosen finery and attend all the balls and routs the duchess arranged for her. If a decent and kind man of suitable family asked for her hand in marriage, India decided she would accept him, as long as he understood that her heart would not be given in the bargain.
    For India Delamere knew she had no more heart to give. Devlyn Carlisle had taken it with him to the grave.
    Outside the window came the low howl of a frightened animal. Instantly India turned, her eyes dark with anxiety. “That’s Luna!” She shoved off her satin gown, revealing a pair of Ian’s snug breeches.
    “India Delamere, I told you no more of your brother’s clothes!”
    “But I must go, Grandmama.” India grabbed up Ian’s old white shirt and jerked it over her head, already halfway to the door. “If those repellent men have come back to shoot at Luna, I swear I’ll fill their backsides full of buckshot.”
    The Duchess of Cranford shook her head as her stubborn granddaughter bolted out the door in a blur of leather and white cambric. Then slowly her lips curved up in a smile, for the white-haired duchess was recalling a particularly reckless exploit of her own that had taken place half a century before.
    ~ ~ ~
     
    Shadows clung to the corners of the room. A tall figure stood near the dancing fire, lost in thought. His eyes were the color of polished steel and his hair but one shade lighter than black.
    Yet it was the mouth that set him as a man apart. Framed in tiny lines, the full lips showed that this man had once been quick to laughter.
    But no more. Now the lips were tight and flat. There was no gaiety or joy about his hard shoulders or deeply tanned face, not this night of late autumn, 1816.
    Home again, he thought, looking at the fine old prints, at the row of books and the intricate models of ships he had once made so patiently.
    Everything about the room felt strange, as if it belonged to someone else.
    When had he read those books or touched the old prints? It seemed ten lifetimes ago.
    He gripped the marble mantel and laughed then, the sound flat and bitter in the empty room. For he could never truly go home again.

CHAPTER 2
     

     
    “Don’t seem right. Not a bit right.”
    Resplendent in amethyst satin and puce velvet, the seventh viscount Monkton studied the glittering throng jamming the ballroom of the Duchess of Cranford’s London town house. “Thorne ought to be here. He was always the charmed one. Don’t know what he was doing on that blasted hill at Waterloo anyway.” He sighed and stuck his quizzing glass back in his waistcoat pocket. “Nothing to see here. Same faces. Same tired stories. Not even any decent scandal this season.” Suddenly he frowned. “Good lord, isn’t that Wellington over there flirting with the Countess of Marchmont? Bad blood there, mark my words. Her husband isn’t even a fortnight in the grave and she’s prowling for new partners to fill her bed.”
    His friend, the Earl of Pendleworth, shook his head. “She prowled even before he was dead. But the problem with you, Monk, is you’re spoiled. You always expect the best of people and most of them don’t measure up.”
    “If I’m spoiled, it’s Thorne’s doing. He always knew how to do a thing devilish fine, Penn.” As he spoke, Monkton’s long face grew even more melancholy. “Don’t seem right,” he repeated. “Who else could race Alvanley to Brighton in his curricle, then be back in time to fight a duel of honor over an indiscretion with Repton’s wife? The whole town’s flat, I tell you. I miss Thorne. He could always set a spark to things.”
    Lord Pendleworth’s myopic eyes narrowed. “I beg you will conceal your tristesse, my dear Monk. From the things I saw during my brief time in Belgium, I’ve come to suspect that Lady India has been deeply affected by his loss. Hardly kind to dredge up her sadness with more memories. She’s only just come back to London, you know. When I saw her yesterday on Bond Street, she