Chapter Twelve
Shit, shit, shit!
Cecil thrashed about in his bed. The sheets twisted about his legs, while sweat plastered the long sleep shirt to his back. Trapped in throes of yet another nightmare, he couldn’t find his way out. No matter what he did, he returned right back onto those battlefields.
Cannon fire boomed in his ears; the sound was deafening, almost like thunder but more deadly.
The acrid scent of explosives infiltrated his nostrils.
It turned his stomach, for usually that meant once the smoke cleared, dead bodies would litter the ground, red with blood.
The insistent and quite desperate sound of screaming men and horses echoed all around him.
No matter which way he turned, he ran into injured horseflesh or wounded men.
Some of those men lifted hands in his direction as they asked for help, that he couldn’t give.
He struggled through the smoke, stumbled over bodies, limbs, and fragments of broken wagons, both supply and cannon.
Once, he tripped over what he thought was a cannon ball that hadn’t yet been loaded, but when he righted himself, it was only to find someone’s head that had been separated from its body, and the head was that of a young man, perhaps no older than eighteen.
Oh, God.
War was horrid to begin with but to snuff out a life so young and full of purpose? Confusion took hold of his brain; he couldn’t find his way off the field, couldn’t find a way out. Where was his regiment? Where were his fellows?
Then the dream shifted. It was a different day, for the air was no longer oppressive with humidity. In fact, the cooler breeze wafting over his skin was most welcome, but something was off. A horrible weight held him pinned to the ground; the very earth stank of excrement and of blood.
Why can I not move?
Then the realization that his horse had fallen atop him sank into his consciousness.
As the charger writhed and attempted to right himself, his bulk ground further in Cecil’s body.
Every muscle and bone he possessed cried out in agony as she struggled to push the equine off him.
Finally, the horse stood. He limped away, but a few moments after Cecil clambered to his own feet, the explosion of cannon fire erupted all around them.
A wagon housing a cannon for his side that he happened to be hiding behind flew apart into a million pieces.
Heated agony became his world as his skin erupted into some of the worse pain he’d ever known.
The shrapnel went through his uniform to pock mark his limbs.
In fact, the force of the explosion had ripped open his left boot and part of the fabric of his clothing.
It blew his hat from his head; tiny pieces of wood and metal embedded themselves into the left side of his face.
And then he fell to the ground; this time it was him reaching out a hand to help from anyone who would give it.
He screamed into the black void of fear and confusion, hoping that through the smoke someone—anyone—would hear…
Down, down, down he tumbled into a well of terror and pain. In and out of consciousness he went, unable to make heads or tails about where he was.
Then there came the low whisper of voices from somewhere nearby but he couldn’t see anyone let alone recognize who the voices belonged to.
“… apologizes, Your Grace, but I have been unable to guide the duke from the nightmares this time…”
The man speaking sounded familiar but why? Again, he threw out a hand in the hopes that someone on that battlefield would pull him to safety.
“Help me. I’m wounded…”
“…thank you for fetching me, Mr. Childs. It was the right thing to do…”
“…perhaps you’ll be able to wrench him from the nightmare…”
“…I’ll stay with him until the morning…”
“Should I stay?”
“No… if I have need or can’t bring him back, I’ll ring for you at that time.”
“And if you are successful?”
“…ring once everything is well on the morrow…”
A long pause followed the string of disjointed conversation as Cecil tried to move his body in that direction.
“What if it is not, indeed, well in the morning, Your Grace?” Worry threaded through the man’s tone.
“Have faith, Mr. Childs. Eventually, something will break, and if we are fortunate, it won’t be His Grace.”
A sound that reminded him of a door softly closing broke through the haze of confusion clinging to his mind.
Then the tick mattress depressed, and a gentle touch much like fingertips glanced over the side of his face that had been injured.
It was slightly soothing, and he continued to hover there on the periphery of waking and being alone, but he didn’t understand how to come toward the light this new female figure represented.
Just another damned ghost, but this one he didn’t mind, for he nestled into her palm in an effort to seek relief from the unrelenting pain.
But when that delicate hand moved to caress his chest, his head, his neck, Cecil lost every shred of calm he’d gained from this new ghost. Of course it was an attack, for the French were ruthless, and they’d been known to go after wounded men on the battlefield, merely to make certain they would die.
I’ll be damned if I leave this mortal by being stabbed through with a bayonet’s blade.
With a slight cry, for he couldn’t summon any more sound than that, Cecil put his hands around that slender, elegant neck, flipped them both over until she was trapped between his body and the tick mattress, and then he pressed his thumbs into the hollow of her throat.
“I want out of this damned war, but I refuse to let you do that prematurely,” he said in a graveled whisper.
“Cecil…” His name came out on a wheeze. She clawed at his hands. “It’s me… your wife, Emma.” Fear and pain mixed in the halting explanation.
“Fucking French.” Tightening his grip slightly, he glared down at her. “I don’t know how you managed to do that.”
A gasp escaped her. “Thornton!” A gurgling sort of sound issued from her.
Finally, her voice made it through his subconscious, and he recognized it through the cloud of confusion in his brain. “Shit. Emma!”
Her hands were on either side of his face, those elegant fingers scrabbling for purchase as she peered up at him in the darkness. She gasped for breath. When she uttered a plea, the word didn’t make it into the air.
“I’m so sorry.” Immediately, he released her as horror for what nearly happened poured over him, “God, Emma, I nearly killed you.” Then he dove onto his side next to her and bundled her into his arms. As he held her close, she gulped in lungsful of breath.
“I’m so sorry.” This was exactly why he didn’t want to have her back in his life.
“I tried to stay away, to keep us apart, so that you would remain safe, from the monster I’ve become. ”
“No.” She shook her head. “Not a monster, just a man.” With another gasp, Emma freed a hand and laid it against his left cheek.
“It’s not your fault. All of that is in your past.” With the shake of her head, she continued.
“You’re safe, Cecil. You’re at home and no longer on the battlefields.
You will never be there again.” As she spoke, her fingertips traced his scars, the angry flesh there made from fire and hot metal fragments, of force-driven wooden splinters.
“But everything you’ve done since then? That is your fault. If you want to change, then do it.”
As the words sank into his jumbled brain with vestiges of the nightmare clinging but shrinking the longer she was with him, he brushed his lips against her temple. “I don’t know how. I’ve been away from everything …”
“You can start by reentering society,” she said in a rushed whisper. “Be the duke I know you are capable of being.”
He forced a swallow into his tight throat. “But I’m hideous, not the same man you married. How can I do that when everything has changed?”
As if she were used to doing it all the time, she continued to stroke her fingertips over his scarred flesh. “You are exactly the man I need now. Why can’t you see this?”
Good question. “Yet my mind…” God, how much did he want to believe her?
“We will work on that.” She pressed a line of tiny, hungry kisses behind his jaw. “Do you trust me, Cecil?”
Did he? Several moments went by in silence before he nodded. “Yes.” The slight touch she teased him with, the fact her body was pressed against his all worked toward his undoing.
“Then let me in. Let me help you, Thornton.” Her eyes glimmered in the darkness. Had tears welled there? “Together we’ll find ways to manage your nightmares and horrible memories. Perhaps you merely need better ones to take their place.”
How could it be that easy? “I don’t think that will work.”
“Then we’ll keep on until something does.”
In his mind’s eye, he grasped at the hand she extended to him from where he was trapped in the swirling vortex. “Do you promise that you won’t leave?”
“I promise.” She framed his head with her hands. “But you must promise me the same. No more leaving me in London or fleeing from this manor to elsewhere without me. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” Oddly, so much. If possible, he held her closer. “I am often haunted by the ghosts of the men I couldn’t save, the ones I feel guilty about because I couldn’t be there.”
“War is difficult to survive for oneself. You can’t hold it against your own abilities that you couldn’t bring everyone home.”
They were words he’d needed to hear for so long.
Moisture pooled in his eyes. “I remember one young man in particular. Barely eighteen. Hell, I doubt he was even that. Lied to join up, no doubt. He was enthusiastic, to a fault, but he followed orders.” He nuzzled into the crook of her shoulder.
The perfumed skin sent awareness flitting across his skin.
“And he followed me right into battle one night.”
“What happened?” Her hands went beneath his sleeping shirt, and he swore his soul nearly separated from his body from need.