The Untamed Bride Read Free Page A

away.” Face and voice both uncharacteristically sober, he placed his empty glass carefully on the tray. “After the last months of chasing the Black Cobra’s gangs, seeing the results of their methods firsthand…it’s only wise to ensure that if they do take any of us, the others will be safe. We can’t tell what we don’t know.”
    A moment passed in silence, each recalling the atrocities they’d seen while leading troops of sowars on raids into the hinterlands and hills, chasing the Black Cobra and the robber gangs that formed a large part of the cult’s forces, searching for the evidence—the incontrovertible, irrefutable proof they needed to bring the reign of the Black Cobra to an end.
    Gareth drew a long breath, let it out with, “So, we find our proof, then we take it home.” He glanced at the others. “On leave, or are we finally resigning our commissions?”
    Rafe passed a hand over his face, as if wiping away the stark memories of a moment before. “I’ll resign.” He, too, glanced at the others, reading faces. “We’ve all been thinking about it—chatting, joking, but considering nonetheless.”
    “True.” Logan spun his empty glass between his fingers. “And after these last months—and the months to come until we get the proof we need—by the time we do, I’ll have had more than enough.” He looked up. “I’m ready to go home permanently, too.”
    Del nodded. “And me.” He looked at Gareth.
    Who nodded. “I’ve been campaigning all my adult life—as have all of you. I’ve enjoyed the campaigns, but this, whatwe’re doing here now, is no longer campaigning. What this country needs isn’t military, not cavalry and guns. It needs rulers who rule, and that’s not what we are.” He glanced at the others. “I suppose what I’m saying is our role here is done.”
    “Or will be done,” Del amended, “once we take down the Black Cobra.”
    Rafe looked at James. “What about you, stripling?”
    Although he’d been one of them since before Waterloo, James was the baby of the group. There was only two years in age between him and Rafe, yet in experience and even more in temperament the difference was immeasurably greater. In knowledge, attitude, and sheer hardened command, Rafe was as old as Del. Rafe had remained a captain by choice, had turned down promotion the better to merge with his men, to inspire and lead. He was a remarkable commander in the field.
    Del, Gareth, Logan and Rafe were equals, their strengths not exactly the same but equally respected, each by the others. James, no matter the actions he fought in, the atrocities he observed, the carnage he witnessed, still retained some vestige of the apple-cheeked innocence he’d had when he’d first joined them, a youthful subaltern in their old cavalry troop. Hence their paternalistic affection, their habit of seeing him as much younger, of ribbing him as a junior officer, someone whose welfare they still felt compelled to keep a watchful, if distant, eye on.
    Now James shrugged. “If you’re all resigning, then I will, too—my parents will be happy to see me home. They’ve been hinting for the last year that it was time I came back, settled down—all that.”
    Rafe chuckled. “They’ve probably got a young lady picked out for you.”
    Entirely unruffled as he always was by their ribbing, James merely smiled. “Probably.”
    James was the only one of them with parents still living. Del had two paternal aunts, while Rafe, the younger son of a viscount, had countless connections and siblings he hadn’tseen in years, but like Gareth and Logan, he didn’t have anyone waiting for him in England.
    Returning home. Only James had any real home to return to. For the rest of them, “home” was a nebulous concept they would have to define once they were back on English soil. In returning to England, the older four would, in a sense, be venturing into the unknown, yet for himself Del knew it was time. He wasn’t