Read The Delicate Matter of Lady Blayne for Free Online Page B

Yet, inside, he was still caught in a whirl. Seeing Sunny had proved as painful as a blow to the stomach…
    “You must tell us all about everything you have seen and done since we last saw you,” Donna said. “All your grand battles.” She flashed him another smile. “All your wonderful victories.”
    “Yes, to your wondrous victories.” Sir Carson lifted his wine glass and a toast went round the table.
    God help him. He wouldn’t be able to bear hearing himself speak one word about it. People romanticized it all so. They tended to treat him like he was now some Godlike being, an attitude that filled him with disgust. They didn’t know about the moments of doubt, of desperation. He’d been just a man, pitted against nature and war. He’d had to make the best decisions he could on the spur of the moment, over and over again, risking devastating consequences. But what other choice had he, or the men who had served beneath him, who put all their faith and trust in his judgment? Wars were won one battle at a time. And battle after battle, he’d done whatever he had to win.
    They knew nothing of a ship being rocked by merciless assault waves of cannon fire. They knew nothing of decks washed with blood. They knew nothing of dreams full of the agonized cries of men and boys.
    No, he had no wish to tell stories of bloody battles to satisfy the sensationalist appetites of people who could never understand the true nature of warfare.
    And frankly, he would prefer to forget.
    If he ever could.
    “We followed your actions in the newspapers,” Donna said, still beaming.
    Her smile was beautiful. But it couldn’t warm him one bit. In his mind, he kept seeing her.
    Sunny. That stricken look that had stabbed him in the heart.
    Seeing her. God, seeing her…
    After all these years.
    It had shattered him. He hadn’t a clue as to how to gather the pieces and put them together.
     
    * * * *
     
    “Is what Mrs. Tibbs tells me true, Catriona?” Dr. Meeker asked.
    Reclining upon her bed, swathed from neck to ankles in safe, heavy wool flannel, Sunny glanced up. A man of medium height, his slender build and broad shoulders, as well as his dark physician’s clothing, gave him the appearance of being taller. From behind him,  a single lamp on her dressing table cast an unholy yellow glow upon his silver hair.
    The shadows and dim light distorted the finer details of a face that was at once both aged yet still handsome in a distinguished way. A high forehead made to look even higher by the slightly thinning silver hair. A long, narrow nose. Thin cheeks.
    Upon their first meeting, despite the vast difference in their ages, she had thought him rather attractive.
    Even in the dim light, she could picture those eyes, a brown so dark that they appeared black against the whites of his eyes, cold and hard as lumps of coal strewn on new fallen snow, probing hers intensely.
    Seeking to know all her secrets.
    She turned her head away.
    “Catriona?”
    “Of course you know it is true, so why ask?”
    “I don’t care for your tone.”
    She remained silent.
    He sighed. “You cannot hope to get any better if you continue to indulge your carnal drives. If you continue to nurture impure thoughts, you will never regain control of yourself—never.”
    She rolled one shoulder but refused to return her attention to that cold dark stare.
    “Feeling rebellious today, are you?”
    “Perhaps I am.”
    “This has something to with Lord Blayne’s sudden reappearance.”
    “Well, there’s nothing sudden about it. He’s been home for months, and we’ve been expecting his visit for some time.”
    “Ah, you resent that he waited so long to come from London?”
    Sunny studied the ceiling. “I resent nothing.”
    “The dowager tells me there was some disagreement between you and Lord Blayne, years ago. She thinks this is why he waited so long to return.”
    Oh, Dr. Meeker wouldn’t give up until she told him something plausible. She searched for