To Desire a Devil (Legend of the Four Soldiers #4)(53)
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt

“I’m going to marry him,” she whispered to the pitiful marker.

The words were carried away by the wind, whipping through the small graveyard. As if to emphasize her sorrow, the day was overcast and gray. Jeremy’s parents had chosen to bury him in a little churchyard outside of London proper. It wasn’t even a family plot. Perhaps they thought by hiding him so far out of the way, they could forget him altogether. Jeremy would’ve smiled and reminded her that a tiny graveyard was just as good as a cathedral when one was dead.

Beatrice shook her head and frowned fiercely to hold back the tears. Jeremy wouldn’t have cared, but she did. This was no way to memorialize a good man. She closed her eyes for a moment, simply remembering him, and the tears came anyway, whether she wanted them to or not.

When she finally opened her eyes again, her face was cold and wet, and her head was beginning to ache, but oddly she felt better.

She wiped her cheeks and glanced at the churchyard gate. Reynaud leaned against the stone wall there, waiting patiently for her. The drive here had taken over an hour, and he hadn’t made any complaints. Although he hadn’t visited her room in the week since she’d agreed to marry him, Reynaud had made sure to attend her when he could. Of course, he was a busy man. He was in daily consultation with solicitors about the estate and his title, and he met with his friend Lord Vale very often as well. Beatrice frowned. She wasn’t quite sure what they discussed, but she was glad that they seemed to have recovered from their initial animosity.

She knelt to touch the frozen earth over Jeremy’s grave one last time, and then she stood and dusted her hands. In the spring she’d bring some lily-of-the-valley pips to plant here. That would keep him company. Beatrice began picking her way back to the carriage and Reynaud. The little churchyard was sadly neglected, the stone path overgrown with weeds. The wind blew her skirts against her legs, and she shivered as she neared Reynaud.

“Finished?” He put a hand under her elbow to steady her.

“Yes.” She looked up into his stern face. “Thank you for bringing me.”

He nodded. “He was a good man.”

“Yes, he was,” she murmured.

He handed her into the carriage and then climbed in after her, knocking against the ceiling to signal the coachman. She watched out the window as they pulled away from the cemetery, then looked at him. “You’re still set on a marriage by special license?”

“I’d like to be already married by the time I go before parliament,” he said. “If it bothers you, we can plan a celebratory ball in the new year.”

She nodded. After the passion of his seduction, the practicality of his plans for their marriage was slightly dampening. She remembered Lottie’s words about a gentleman filling a position with his choice of wife. Wasn’t that what she herself was doing? Reynaud needed her as his wife so that he could convince others he was sane. Nathan needed Lottie as his wife to further his career. The only difference was that Lottie had believed her husband loved her.

Beatrice had no such illusions.

She straightened a bit and cleared her throat. “You never told me how you eventually escaped the Indians. Did Sastaretsi give up his hatred of you?”

He flattened his mouth impatiently. “Do you really wish to hear this tale? It’s boring, I assure you.”

His stalling tactics only made her curiosity keener. “Please?”

“Very well.” He looked away and was silent a moment.

“Sastaretsi?” she prompted softly.

“He never did give up his hatred of me.” Reynaud was staring out the window, his long nose and strong chin in profile against the wine-red squabs behind him. “But that first winter was hard, and it was all we could do to simply find enough food to feed everyone. I was an able-bodied hunter, if not a very good one at first, so I think he laid aside his animosity for a little while. We were all weak from hunger anyway.”

“How dreadful.” She looked down at her lap, examining her fine kid gloves. She’d never wanted for food in her life, but she’d seen beggars on the street now and again. She tried to imagine Reynaud with that gaunt face, that glittering, desperate expression in his black eyes. She didn’t like the thought of him suffering so terribly.

“It wasn’t amusing, certainly,” he said. “I remember once finding a she-bear. They crawl into the biggest trees, into holes in the wood, to sleep the winter away. Gaho’s husband showed me how to look for the claw marks on tree trunks that meant a bear lay above. After we’d killed the bear, they skinned a part of it and ate the fat without waiting to light a fire and cook the meat.”

“Dear God.” Beatrice wrinkled her nose in disgust.

He looked at her. “I ate it as well. The flesh steamed in the cold winter air, and it tasted of blood, and I gulped it down anyway. It was life. We’d had no food for three days prior to that.”

She bit her lip and nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said quietly. “I survived.”

He folded his arms across his chest then and leaned his head against the squabs, his eyes closed as if he slept, though she doubted he did.

She bowed her head. He’d survived, and she was glad, truly, but at what cost? What he’d endured had changed him. It was as if he’d passed through a fiery furnace, burning away all the parts of him that had been soft or sentimental, leaving a fire-hardened inner core, impervious to pain or feeling, perhaps impervious to love as well.

She shivered at the thought. Surely he felt something for her?

They spent the rest of the carriage ride home in silence, and it was only when the carriage slowed before Blanchard House that she glanced out the window.

She leaned a little forward. “There’s another carriage blocking the way.”

“Is there?” Reynaud said absentmindedly, his eyes still closed.

“I wonder who it could be?” Beatrice mused. “Now a gentleman is getting out, and he’s handing down a very elegantly dressed lady. Oh, and there’s a small boy as well. Reynaud?”

She said the last because he’d suddenly sat up and twisted around to look out the window.

“Christ,” he breathed.

“Do you know them?”

“It’s Emeline,” he said. “It’s my sister.”

HE’D DREAMED OF this moment for nights on end during his captivity: the day when he’d finally see his family again. The day when he’d see Emeline.