Regency Romance Omnibus 2018: Dominate Dukes & Tenacious Women

He closed his eyes. He saw her again.

"Perhaps..." Lord Beckham's voice trailed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

"I'm certain your father will be fine, m'lady," Egan murmured as the carriage pulled alongside the front of the Emerys manor. Her heart shattered, Lady Havenshire had spent the trip back across the moors with her mind awash in rage, in pain; she felt utter loss, betrayal. She had never felt something so acute in her life; something so stinging in her chest as a rou

nd and utter rejection.

"Father is going to die, Egan, and all he wanted was to see my face happy before that happened," she lamented with a sigh. "I loved that man. I didn't know what real love meant, and..."

Her mind flashed back to the first night together. How she had treated him harshly after hearing of his sister. She thought of the laughs; the smile, before a darkness crept across them. She thought of his stormy eyes; how she had seen him, a darkness against the backdrop of Lord Perrywise's gaudy and ostentatious ballroom; she had seen something different in him. Had he truly been different? Or had he used her as any man would - in all that ways that Ms. Mulwray had warned?

As the horses' hooves clopped along the roadway, her family manor looming close, she closed her eyes and saw him again. She saw his dusky expression at the far end of the dining hall; she felt in her mouth the sweet succor of honey-braised meat, a recipe that felt as delectable in her imagination as it had in person. She smelled the steam of fresh food, heard the echo of his darkly-commanding tone rolling through the dining hall. His quips took her heart away to a different place; to a better time, to laughter at his expense as he saw the terrified lord atop the back of a lazy, aging horse.

It brought her back to that day. The rains fell and she thought her very life in danger at the spine-tingling chill of the rain across swaying autumn trees. Hearing his voice call out across the forest, like a rescuing lifeline. She saw the old cabin; the smell of mold, spurts of dust; dried wood. She recalled his scent; his body. An exceptional body; one she wanted to wake up next to, every single morning.

"Your father will be waiting, m'lady..." Egan broke into the reverie; they had arrived at the front door of the manor, the horses clopping their hooves impatiently, wanting for the embrace of the stable. Her eyes opened and that memory drifted away, even as he heard in her mind memories of her name burning passionately from his gaping mouth. She shivered, recalling the rainy cold of that day; a cold she felt now renewed, as a breeze passed through the opened door of the carriage. She stared at the face of the manor - it felt flat; everything felt flat, as if all the color and all the life and vigor of all the world had withered away without the thought of him brimming in her mind. The vibrant, burning fiery-oranges and reds of the trees in autumn, the blanket of fallen leaves and swaying yellows of bushes dying away for the season felt dull compared to the fire he brought to her life.

Soon, she thought, winter would come; a freezing blanket of white would claim the bright colors of autumn, washing away warmth and filling bones that had once felt the sudden, lively surge of love with the icy fingers of contempt; of loneliness. Frozen in the unchanging, gray doldrums of that dark time would be her memories of him, gleaming within the frozen wilds, always beckoning her back to that embrace. But she couldn't have them; she couldn't cling forever to fall, for winter would come and claim everything she had loved. It would claim her father, as it had claimed her mother; it would claim her fortune, and her freedom. She'd be a captive bird shrilly squeaking from a crushing cage.

"M'lady..." once more her gloomy recollections fell victim to the quiet, meek tone of the portly man at the head of the carriage. The horses whinnied and waited; dark-gray clouds gathered at the far edges of the sky, and she could hear faint rumblings of thunder threatening to bring back those memories all over again. Wherever a storm brewed, she saw him - the stormy man she had fallen for, who had slain her dreams.

"Yes, Egan, I... I know," she murmured. As she stepped from the carriage a great wind swept up, throwing dust and rotting brown-gray leaves into her messy hair; she exhaled deep, taking a breath of the air; she couldn't taste it, her senses dulled to their depths by the experiences of the morning. She hesitantly stepped towards the door to the manor. Her eyes closed again, the wind whipping against her, her dress clinging to her body; her hair thrown in tangled masses across her shoulder by the powerful gusts.

I loved him, she thought to herself. She wanted to give herself to him - just as they had promised in those hot, tense, wet throes of flaming passion. When he drew his coat atop their quaking bodies she had everything she had ever dreamed of - a true gentleman, one who respected her; one she loved, a man different from the others.

She entered the manor, immediately greeted by the sight of her father - arms spread, hopeful and caring, at the base of the foyer's grand stairwell.

"Nadia! Dear, how... how did everything go?" he asked, his face crested with pain. Clearly, he had hoped to see the two of them return together, and heartbreak filled his expression at the sight of a lone woman standing in the opened doors.

All he had wanted was to see her happy, before he passed. And she had been happy - happy like she never thought she could be, here in England; here in the moors and forests, where the world had been built against her freedom and happiness. But somehow, she had found it - for those few passing days with him, she had found it.

"Father, remember the story you used to tell? About mother?" Nadia asked, the winds gusting across her back. "About how you met."

"Your mother," he chuckled. "Oh, how I miss her... we met not far from here, remember?"

"Tell me," she insisted, her body shaking.

"Come inside, please, Nadia," her father pleaded through a cough.

"Please, father, tell me," Nadia insisted.

"I tripped in her dress and she called me a scoundrel," her father coughed out a laugh. "She hated me. And yet we met, again and again, at dinner parties, and because our parents insisted upon it," he chortled. "You know the story."

"She hated you, but you never gave up, did you, father?" Nadia asked, her voice shaking.

"Love is... a complicated thing, Nadia. It takes dedication, it takes sacrifice, it takes... well, stubborn, persistence," he advised.

"Stubborn persistence? And what's that you once said of me, father?" she demanded. His vexed expression shifted slowly to a warm smile.

"You're the most stubborn young woman I've ever known, Nadia," he responded gently.

"I have somewhere I need to go - I need to be rather stubborn, father," she said with a smile, "as I've a very... stubborn man. A man I love."

"Egan will get you there I'm certain," he replied.

"No, I must move with great haste. Shadow will take me there far faster," she responded, hurrying towards the stables. Her father beamed with pride as the door slammed behind his daughter. He'd finally gotten to see her so awash with that feeling - love.