His Michaelmas Mistress Read Free Page B

with him. She sounded genuine. He didn’t think it was a figment of his imagination and yet…what else could she possibly be?
    “Mayhap, I should call for a footmen and tell him to bring you a whole decanter of whisky—or possibly brandy. No…you prefer whisky, don’t you, Freddie?”
    “Aye,” he whispered.
    He heard soft footsteps padding across the floor. Thinking a maid had entered the room, he looked up and found the room empty, save for him.
    The beer was having a most strange effect on him. “Bloody hell,” he muttered. “I’ve gone straight to Bedlam.”
    “Not yet, you haven’t.”
    There she was back again, needling at him. Was she his conscience? If so, why would his conscience be speaking to him? He had nothing to feel guilty about.
    That was a lie.
    He recalled her look of devastation as he’d left her alone in that little room in the church. She’d looked so Friday faced. She’d looked as if she’d had her entire world destroyed.
    He heaved out a shattering sigh. He did have reason to feel wretched. He’d left her when she’d all but begged him to stay. He’d run out on her. He’d abandoned her. That wasn’t his way.
    His way was to stay and fight, and yet, he’d given her up without a fuss. He was an idiot—he was the village idiot. He should stand right back up and charge back to the church and tell that Lord Charles to hightail it out of Castleton because he wasn’t bloody wanted! He should tell him to go straight back to where he came from, and offer to throw him back into the English Channel himself!
    “Here you are,” Julia said, placing a decanter of whisky and a glass on the table that boasted his empty pints.
    Her fragrance tickled his nose. It was her. She wasn’t a dream…she wasn’t a figment of his imagination. He reached out for her, and pulled her to him. She let out a delighted sigh, and collapsed against him. Her sigh almost undid him. There was heaven in that sound.
    “You are real,” he marvelled, reaching up to cup his large hand against the side of her face. He drank her in greedily with his eyes. She’d changed her frock. She no longer wore her wedding dress. Instead, she’d opted for a dress of the scarlet hued variety. That meant she’d been to their bedchamber. She’d had most of her wardrobe delivered here yesterday in anticipation of coming to live with him as his wife.
    They had planned to away to Devonshire for their honeymoon.
    Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be happening now. He would not be able to enjoy her tonight, the way a husband could enjoy his wife. He’d made a mull of it all. Why hadn’t he agreed to marry her back at the church to horrify and spite Lord Charles?
    He was a sodding bloody idiot.
    “Well, I should say so.”
    “Why are you here, Julia?” he asked gruffly.
    He held her so close he could smell the lavender in her hair. Her glorious dark brown tresses with just a hint of red, and her eyes wide and blue like the sky, stared unwaveringly at him.
    “I am here because you are here, you silly goose. My place is by your side, isn’t it? You left me without a by your leave, and I came here to tell you that you shan’t ever do that again.”
    She kissed him lightly on the lips, and he didn’t reciprocate. Frowning, she took his cravat off, and unbuttoned his shirt, and pushed his shirt down so she could run her hands over his bare shoulders, and his chest. “Oh, you are so handsome,” she sighed deliciously. “And so brawny. I shan’t ever get enough of doing this,” she said, stroking his chest. She frowned, as she ran her hand over a scar on his upper shoulder.
    “I was shot there. My body has many scars, courtesy of my time in the Wars. I’ve been shot and stabbed, and I’ve been flogged for an offense I didn’t commit. I thought I was going to die that day, and if Colonel Elliot hadn’t come along and told the Lieutenant who had ordered my flogging off, and then gave the order to have me untied, I might have