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frightened her away?
    “Even that’s enough to flood your mind with grisly images, isn’t it? You do not need to hear any more. Once you’ve seen things like that, you can’t make them go away. I can no longer see the back of my hand, but the color of human blood? Unforgettable.” He needed a drink. Needed to be alone. Right now he didn’t want to have to talk. He sure as hell didn’t want to hold anyone. He lifted her off his thighs, intending to plant her on the floor, but when he let her go, he heard her gasp in shock, heard her fall to the floor.
    “You need to get away from me,” he barked, furious with himself. “Go up to your room.”
    “I should stay. In case you have another nightmare—”
    “And you’ll try to wake me? Put your pretty neck in my reach? What if I strangle you? Or start beating you to death because I’m out of my wits?”
    “Y-you won’t.”
    But she wasn’t sure, was she? He wasn’t bloody well sure. “I’ve hurt people, Cerise. Don’t you remember how I grabbed you and threw you to the floor when you first came here, because you touched me? And what kind of a touch was it?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean what did you do to me that made me leap up and slam you onto the ground?”
    “I—I brushed your hair out of your eyes.”
    “Exactly. It was an inconsequential touch, but it set me off like a flame reaching a keg of gunpowder. I’m mad. The war, the battles, the blindness, the killing and the grief—I wasn’t strong enough to let it all just glance off me. I’m no war hero—all throughout the damned thing, I was filled with pain and fury and grief and doubts. A hero is a man who is filled with confidence, who takes action and doesn’t waste time on remorse. He doesn’t hide in the blasted dark. He gets a damned grip on himself. But I can’t. I’ve gone out of my wits, and I’m going madder by the day. I’m not getting better, I’m getting worse. That’s why I have Treadwell to scare people away.”
    “You are drinking too much,” she said firmly. “That is probably why you are getting worse. If you were to stop drinking—”
    “I like drinking,” he snapped. What was wrong with the chit? Didn’t she recognize the need to get away from him and stop arguing?
    “But it doesn’t help—”
    “It helps me. And I intend to do a fair bit of drinkingright now. So you need to get out of this room and leave me alone. For the rest of the night, you will stay in that bedchamber. You will not come out until I summon you.”
    Devon expected to hear her footsteps patter across the floor. If there ever was a cue for a woman to hasten out of a room, this was it. But, no, the stubborn wench was not moving.
    “Go,” he roared. “Get out
now
.”
    He should have felt satisfaction as her feet slapped against the floorboards, then the door slammed—obviously behind her as she left. Instead, he now needed a drink because he felt like a blackguard.
War hero
. His bark of laughter rang in the room. What a blasted joke that was.

Chapter Four
    HEN SHE WOKE , Anne dazedly thought she was at home again. At Longsworth.
    Rain drummed against the windowpanes with the patter of an excited heartbeat. A window had been left slightly open, and the room was filled with country smells she remembered: the crisp, cool scent of early morning, the rich aroma of wet hay, the nose-tickling perfume of meadows as wildflowers went to seed.
    Dazedly, she rubbed her eyes. A forest-green silk canopy soared above her head. It was so very much like the one that had been over her father’s bed. Once when she was very little and playing hide-and-seek with her nurse, she’d hidden beneath Father’s bed. The hiding place had proved to be too good, hours had passed, and she’d fallen asleep there, sending the whole house into an uproar—
    Sitting up abruptly, Anne kicked back the heavy counterpane and the silky sheets. She shook her head, shook away memories that made her throat ache and