THE ABANDONED DUCHESS BY OLIVIA T. BENNET – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Olivia T. Bennet
- Language: English
- Genre: Historical Romance
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Blackwell Ducal Estate. North of London.
June 1817
Two Years after the Napoleonic Wars.
The dreams came.
He saw his sword, dripping with blood, the dust on his scuffed boots, the rip
in his lapel, the gash over his belly, the wound still lightly bleeding. The
ache in his bones was everlasting, the fatigue in his muscles unable to be
cured by rest—but he still fought.
The echo of a thousand blunderbusses…
The whinny of a horse collapsing…
Fragments exploded from the cannons…
Shrapnel embedding themselves into his skin. White powder… ash from the
battlefield fire. The taste of blood in his mouth, tinny and metallic. The
smell of garbage… the stench of death…
The body at his feet, another Napolean pawn, dead, eyes vacant and body
still warm under his stained uniform. A sensation ran up the back of his
neck and Julius spun on his feet in time to see another Frenchman surging
at him, his sword arching in the air and fear made his blood cold.
The sword came slashing down…
A musket in his hand…blasting…
…And Julius Blackwell jolted from his sleep, the sheets damp with his cold
perspiration, slipped to his waist while his bare chest heaved with the rush
of adrenaline rushing through his body.
A nightmare.
After the war, they’d plagued him nightly, all of them vivid, all of them
making his heart pound through his breastbone. Lately, they had dimmed,
but this one….
Instinctively, his hand lifted to the scar on his face, the sliver of skin now a
silver scar instead of the raw red from two years ago. A fingertip traced
from his temple to his jaw, curving under his cheekbone to end at his chin.
Dropping his hand, he flung the sheets away, slid his legs to the side and
braced his elbows on his knees, cradling his head. “These damned
nightmares… when will they ever vanish?”
The days of him being Lieutenant-Colonel Blackwell were behind him,
well, but in truth, he’d retired with the rank Lieutenant-General after
returning to England, months after Waterloo. He had been gazetted months
before, but the news hadn’t reached him until he’d landed home.
A place that was as suddenly foreign to him. He didn’t see the London the
same way he had before he’d left, no— the reckless, devil-may-care attitude
he saw with the young men in Town and the blind naïveté of the young
woman parading around twisted something in his gut.
It’s as if they didn’t know a war had been fought for them. Who cares which
man died as long as they can blow their fortunes at a table of whist at
Whites.
Pulling his hands from his face, cool air fluttered through the open window
and without the fog and smoke of London, clear moonlight streamed in
through the thin summer curtains. Slumping back to the pillow, he stared up
at the shadows ever shifting on the ceiling.
Falling asleep again was going to be impossible, so Julius slipped out of
bed, reached for his trousers and stepped into them. The summer night was
mild and cool, but something under his skin itched.
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