The Beast's Bluestocking (The Bluestocking War), Eva Devon [e textbook reader .TXT] 📗

“I shall not aspire to any sort of relationship with you, even though that was my dream, but I cannot abandon you so easily.”

“Why not?” he demanded. “You should. It is my wish.”

“I will not stay when I am not welcome, but nor will I allow this to stand,” she said firmly, her hands balling into fists. “I am your friend, and friends do not allow friends to wallow in the depths of despair as you are doing, Anthony. You are giving up, and that is not at all the sort of thing that I can allow.”

And without another word, she whipped around, picked up her cloak from the chair, and waltzed out of his cottage.

She left like a lightening crack.

And he stared at the vacant space that she had just occupied.

She could not allow?

Who was she not to allow him, a duke, to do anything?

She had been the impoverished daughter of an earl. Except the fact was that Phillipa was and always had been singular.

Of all the people in the entire world who had meant anything to him, she was the only one that had truly mattered.

Which was why he could not bear to ruin her life. She deserved more. She deserved more than to be a nursemaid of an invalid. She deserved a vibrant strong man who could lift her in his arms and make wild love to her.

But now she was accusing him of giving up.

He had decidedly not given up.

He had fought. He had fought tooth and nail to make it this far.

What it had taken him to get off that ship, to get to his estate, to take up his father's castle, and to walk? It had nearly killed him.

The last months had been agonizing and thankless.

The fact that he could walk without a cane was shocking. The doctors had assumed he would be in a chair for the rest of his life. Frankly, there were some days that he wished he'd never made the attempt, but the truth was that sitting in a chair all day long was also agony.

It was all agony if he was honest, except for just this moment, this moment with Philippa, when she'd castigated him and shouted at him and told him that he was making too many assertions about female foolishness.

She was not a fool.

She was far from it.

She was the most remarkable creature he'd ever known.

How could he make her go?

Because he could see it in her eyes that she was becoming more determined to save him. He could not be saved. His soul had leaked out of his body on the last day of the Battle of Trafalgar.

With Joe’s death.

With his broken body.

With those words from Merrill.

No, there had been no words, actually.

It had been silence, silence to his question about Joe. That had truly broken him. He did not know why he had been able to bear all the rest—the screams of the men, the death of sailors all around him, the drownings, the tortures of bodies being pulled apart by shot. But Joe, the boy whose job it was to help keep the cannons roaring? That had broken his soul and heart as much as it had broken his body.

He looked away from the window and to the brandy decanter that was full.

It was so tempting to try to lose himself in it.

He had tried many a time in the last months to use brandy to eradicate his memories, his thoughts, his pain. It did not work.

Brandy was the worst possible enemy, as was laudanum. They both sent him into such extremes of emotion that the pain when in the throes of brandy or laudanum was far worse than feeling the reality.

The dreams, the thoughts, the horrors of it all seemed more terrifying, bigger, more menacing when he partook. No, brandy and laudanum twisted his thoughts into a never-ending nightmare.

So, instead he forced himself to walk to the window.

It was one staggering step at a time, one agonizing moment after the other, but then he came to stand before the thick windowsill.

He pushed open the glass pane into the damp air. He looked out and caught sight of her. She was marching over the horizon. God, what a sight she was. She would make a British soldier envious with her stance.

She looked as if she could take on Napoleon, his entire army, and not shake for a moment.

And he thought, perhaps, if there were more people like her, there wouldn't be a war at all. It all would have been solved before silly men could come to blows over silly things.       She seemed to value life far more than most, and she seemed quite determined to not let him fall into the darkness.

Only, how did he explain to her that he had not let himself fall? That every moment he was pulling himself up, pulling and pulling and pulling, but he could not seem to get to the top.     With each attempt to pull himself up, he slid down a little bit further. Oh, he had not fallen entirely in, but he could not seem to gain purchase.

Only his pursuit of Captain Adams kept him from plummeting now.

He swallowed.

He took in a long breath, savoring the sea air.

Somehow, he would have to convince her to go. No matter what it took.

He hated the idea of giving her more pain in her life.

She didn't deserve it. Her father had been a bastard. She didn't deserve more bastard men in her life. The idea of causing her pain was almost too much to bear.

Perhaps he could find a way to bring it to her gently, to be her friend and push her away at the same time.

Good god. What was he even thinking? He was running mad.

Could he?

Or was this him simply rationalizing his desire to have her in his life? Could he do it? Could he find a way?

Perhaps he could? He wanted it. He wanted it far too much.

He