“Yes,” she said in hushed tones. Until you thought you’d go mad. Until you wanted to clamp your hands over your ears and blot the always present echo from your tortured musings.
Lucas stared at her open-mouthed, shock emblazoned on his harshly beautiful features. Unable to meet the pain ravaging his eyes, she dropped to a knee and retrieved her cloth. “My...” She glanced down at the tips of her boots, hating herself for being a liar. It proved her father’s treachery lived in her own soul. “My husband was a soldier.” Except, unlike her departed sire, she was no coward. She lifted her eyes to Lucas’. “I followed the drum.” Her lips twisted at that vague descriptor handed down to the wives and daughters of military men. Followed the drum, a tone that conjured music and instrument and not the death and dying Lucas had spoken of.
A muscle jumped in the corner of his right eye as he searched her face. She braced for a stingingly accurate reminder that she’d not held a bayonet in hand or shoved a blade through another man’s flesh, ending his days.
“That is why,” he said slowly.
She shook her head. “I don’t—”
“That is why you reacted to the tray hitting the floor,” he said with a softness she’d believed him incapable of.
Eve hesitated and glanced about. Those momentary lapses in sanity came to her at the most unexpected times; with the crack of lightning, with the slam of a door, and then in her dreams, sleeping and waking. It was the manner of madness that saw a woman sent away to Bedlam. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said hollowly.
He peered at her through thick, black lashes. “You worry people will think you mad,” he predicted.
She braced for his jeering. Instead, there was a regret there that sent her toes curling into the soles of her boots. Oh, God. He knows that. How did he know that? Eve retreated a step.
Lucas’ eyes revealed nothing. “Those memories don’t mark you as mad, Eve,” he said quietly and she gasped at his accurate supposition. “They make you human and strong.”
A dratted sheen of tears blurred her vision and she blinked back that useless moisture. “Strong,” she spat. “Where is the strength in being unable to save so many?” A desperate fury sent the words she’d carried deep inside for so long tumbling forth, at last set free. “Where is the strength in lying abed when the nightmares come, cowering under blankets like a scared child when other men lie in their graves?”
Lucas palmed her cheek That gentle caress brought her eyes briefly closed. “Those same nightmares keep me shut away. In your living and control of your own life, you are far braver than I could ever hope to be, Eve Nelson.”
His words drew a soft gasp from her lips. Since she’d returned from the battlefields of Europe, she’d seen only her failings to help so many men. Their pleading, dying faces had haunted her. With his resoluteness, Lucas almost made her believe his words were true.
A fledgling bond stirred to life. But then reality intruded, leaving in its place, desolateness. Eve Nelson. Were he to learn her identity, he’d see nothing good or honorable in her. “I do not presume our experiences were the same,” she said quietly. “For I didn’t endure what you—”
Lucas pressed an index finger to her lips, ending the rapid flow of words. “Do not diminish what you saw there. Or the weight you yourself carry.”
She curled her hands into her drab skirts. They each, men and women, who’d endured the battlefields and the horrors after, bore the memories as scars brought back. How long she’d felt alone and, yet, there was this man.
His gaze moved beyond her shoulder. “I would wager all the men and women who marched through those fields battle their own demons.”
“And I would wager you are correct,” she said quietly. His gaze fell to hers. “Thank you for...being there—”
“Do not thank me,” he said quietly.
For the days’ worth of terse, tense exchanges and angry looks, some of the hardness left his eyes. They stood frozen, the rapid rise and fall of their chests in like rhythm as their breaths mingled. His grip loosened, but he retained his hold on her. Only... He ran the pad of his thumb along the place where her pulse beat hard at her wrist. Her heart tripled its beat. How was it possible for a touch to elicit this wild yearning for so much from this man?
Lucas hooded his eyes; those thick, long, black lashes that curled at the corner, concealing the depth of emotion burning from within his green eyes. But not before she detected the hungry flash to spark in their depths. Her lips parted of their own volition. He sucked in a sharp breath and then released her, stepping quickly away. A wave of shameful regret assailed her. Regret that he’d not dipped his head and claimed that kiss. For one breathless moment, she’d craved that kiss with a greater hunger than air. “I do not want anyone else in here,” he said with a calm, matter-of-factness.
How could he be so indifferent when her heart raced so?
“You may continue overseeing your responsibilities.” He proceeded to tick off a perfunctory list. “I do not want you probing, asking questions of my past, speaking of the war, urging me outside.” With that he limped back to his bed. “Are we clear, Eve?”
He wanted her here, but on terms that would keep him safely insulated. “No. We are not.”
***
Desire raged through Lucas, still. A hungering for the spirited Eve Nelson, unlike any need he’d known for any woman before her. And surely in his desirous musings he’d merely imagined those four bold words, a declination of his orders.
“I said, we are not clear,” the lady repeated, taking a step toward him.
“Are you challenging me?” he whispered, reveling in her intrepidity. After being feared, reviled, and pitied, her bold, honest response made him feel alive. Alive in ways he’d been deadened. Until her.
Undaunted, Eve nodded. “Yes.” Then, given this lady’s tenacity, was it a wonder she’d defy him, when men under his command had only ever obeyed? She turned her palms up. “I know...knew, countless men who’d lost one or both legs. Other men, who lost use of their bodies from the waist down. Men whose movements kept them confined.” Eve came over in a rush of noisy skirts. “You have the ability to go out and—”
“Do you want this post?” he demanded tersely, staving off the lady’s flow of words. She pursed her lips. “Then, I suggest you attend your responsibilities.” And not challenge him to live again. To live, when he knew not how. How to step outside these walls and interact freely with people. He’d been a beast too long.
Eve stood, her chest rising and falling rapidly, as she bravely met his eyes. And for a sliver of a moment, he thought she’d challenge him. Then she dropped a stiff curtsy. “As you wish, Captain Rayne.”
Lucas flared his nostrils. She was the only bloody person who, since he’d returned, had looked at him. And now she’d strip him of that connection. He rose from the bed and strode over, his movements quick and jerky. “I ordered you not to call me—”
Whipping her head back, Eve planted her hands upon her hips. “You cannot demand I call you by your Christian name and then refuse to speak with me about things that matter. Either you are my employer or you’re Lucas. You cannot be—”
He caught her around the waist and covered her mouth with his. Eve went stiff in his arms, but then a breathless moan spilled past her lips as she melted against him. Lucas slid his tongue inside, swallowing that breathless sound of her desire. She tentatively touched the tip of hers to his, in an innocent gesture, and then all hesitancy melted away. They tangled tongues in a bold dance, simulating an expert thrust and parry.