Hero, Come Back (Cynster 9.50)

“And you never married?” she asked before she could stop herself. It was none of her business, truly, but she had to know.

He looked away. “No.”

Never married? She eyed him again. “Whyever not?”

“Because…well, you can see why,” he said, nodding down at his leg. “I was injured in the war.”

“I don’t see why that should have any bearing on the matter,” she told him. Certainly his injuries had been grievous, given the scar on his face and his dependence on his walking stick, but he’d survived, lived through it all. “It isn’t like your life ended. You’re a well respected gentleman. You could do anything you want with your life.”

“Yes, except for the important things.”

“And those would be?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “First of all, I’d have to find someone who doesn’t mind this,” he said, pointing at the jagged scar that ran down the side of his face.

She glanced over at it. “I believe it makes you look piratical.”

“Piratical? Is that a word?” he teased.

“If it isn’t, it is now,” she told him. “What else?”

“What else, what?” he asked, glancing up the lane and not at her, evading her questions with as much caution as if she were the magistrate, his defenses rising up around him like a dark mantle of fear.

Amanda was stunned. He was afraid. Jemmy Reyburn was afraid to live. Outlandish!

“What else keeps you from finding a wife?” she pressed.

Jemmy sucked a deep breath. “For one thing, I can’t dance. Can hardly get up the steps to most ballrooms, for that matter. Can’t ride all that well, either.” He paused for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders. “Actually, not at all. Rather hopeless, don’t you think?”

If she wasn’t mistaken, he was appealing to her to agree with him. To add her stamp of approval to his sorry case.

Amanda wound the strings on her reticule into a tight knot. Up until yesterday she probably would have shared his frustration with life— resolved to live to the end of her days trapped by her own deficiencies, or those that her mother liked to point out whenever the opportunity presented itself—which unfortunately was often. But that was until…until she’d learned the truth of her life, and made the fateful decision to take this enormous gamble at happiness.

A chance of a lifetime to discover the joy she’d longed for so very much. The very enchantment Jemmy seemed determined to toss away, because of what…a bad leg and a rather dashing scar?

Besides, the young man she remembered, the one she’d watched at countless routs and balls, would never have let such a minor infirmity stop him. The Jemmy Reyburn of her heart would have slain such a dragon with a teasing quip and a wink of his devilish blue eyes.

But this man beside her, she barely recognized. She’d read the gossip about him leaving London in the company of his mother’s hired companion—it had been quite a scandal. Later she’d found an account about him being in Spain with Wellington’s army, but how he’d gotten there, she knew not. His injuries she had known about as well, for they had been reported in a copy of her father’s Gentleman’s Magazine:

Mr. James Reyburn, Bramley Hollow, Kent, arrived at Portsmouth on the Goliath last month, having suffered grievous harm at Badajoz.

She’d committed the lines to memory, then spent the next year frantically searching the papers for some mention of him. Then after that, she’d waited impatiently through each Season hoping to see some word of his return to Town or even mention of a betrothal. But there hadn’t been a single reference to the elusive Mr. Reyburn in all these years—and now she knew why.

He’d chosen exile from the exacting and critical eyes of society. He was right that he would be viewed with a less discerning eye by some, but surely he knew his character, his charm would leave him in good stead with the people who loved him.

But clearly he didn’t believe that—couldn’t believe it. And instead of pitying him, all that boiled up in her heart, in the tightness of her chest, was anger. White-hot anger. Like nothing she’d ever felt before.

She pressed her lips together, trying to stop the words that sprang forth, but they came rushing out anyway. “Perhaps it is time to stop feeling sorry for yourself and start living again.”

He drew the cart to a quick stop, the horse letting out a neigh of protest. “Sorry for myself? You have no idea what I have endured or the pain I suffer.” His face grew red with anger and indignation. “Start living again, indeed! The life I loved is gone. Lost.”

She straightened and mustered every bit of resolve she could manage in the face of his bitterness. Lost? He thought his life was lost? He hadn’t the vaguest idea what it meant to lose one’s life.

And while she’d never been so outspoken in her life, with every passing moment she felt an odd courage filling her with strength and resolve.

She sat up straighter and looked him right in the eye. “Then if it

is lost, I daresay that is your fault. Because you will hardly find it when you’ve convinced yourself you are better off hiding away in the country than taking advantage of the gifts you still possess.”