Miss Truelove Beckons (Classic Regency Romances Book 12) Read Online Free Page B

stomach, when he returned, to hear some military men, men who knew better, turning the war into a glorious battle of good against evil, with the English and their allies as some kind of God-chosen heavenly army. The truth was so far removed from that, that to experienced ears their stories bordered on the ludicrous.
    “And so you should, my lord,” she replied calmly. “Refuse, I mean. You can do more good by telling the truth than ever you could by glorifying war. I saw so many boys from our village join, expecting glory and adventure, only to come home with no leg or arm, sad and poor, or . . . or not come home at all. The truth needs to be told by men who were there and suffered.”
    Drake swallowed hard past a lump, unable to reply to her calm, measured response. The quick rage that had arisen when he thought he was being counseled to lie, died. He must stop this defensiveness he had fallen into, this inability to allow people their own opinions about something he felt perhaps too strongly about. His own view of the war and the English military was hardly impartial.
    Miss Becket looked down at her soft, worn gloves. “I’m afraid I am one of those whom you will perhaps call foolish, having a tendency to hero-worship those of you who fought so hard for us. But I have since come to think that the burden of worship is not fair. You have done your duty and more. You should not have to live up to some myth of absolute goodness and heroism. I cannot imagine what you have seen, what you have lived through, but I do know that you must have seen friends, comrades in arms, die before you. And the awesome responsibility of command, of having all those soldiers looking to you for their next actions! How terrifying I would find that.”
    When True looked up, she saw a gleam of tears in the viscount’s eyes, and wondered if she had gone too far, reminding him—as if he could forget!—of all that had occurred on the battlefields of Belgium, and so many battlefields before. But she had only said what she had thought as she sat there watching him. Despite his fierce demeanor, she knew somehow that she could say anything to him.
    Drake felt his calm façade crumble. No one had ever asked him, or even mentioned, the friends he had lost, the men whose lives had been in his care and keeping. He had attained his elevated rank at Wellington’s behest, for old Nosey complained that he was surrounded by fools and incompetents and he needed men with the ability to command. But the price paid for that ruthless ability to lead was a lifetime of sleepless nights and a weight that pressed on him always, the weight of the dead. He could bear it—he had borne it all through the war and even now—but it was wearing him down, he feared. Now that the need to maintain a cool head and a cold heart was gone, pain flooded in to fill that hole in his soul.
    He came back to his senses to find Miss Becket gazing at him with ready sympathy in her lovely eyes. Sympathy from some he could not bear; it was too close to pity. But from her it seemed almost healing, a balm instead of a curse. He recalled her last words, and said, “I have seen many friends die, and had to write their wives and sweethearts letters of condolence. It was a most painful duty. If I had known before I bought my colors what I was in for, I do not know if I would have had the courage.”
    “I think you would have always had the courage, my lord. I believe that courage is facing fear, not conquering it. Those with no fear die. We are only human after all.”
    Her sweet voice washed over him. Only human. Horace always said he was vain, thinking he ought to have been better than all the others, all the ones who also lost men under their command. Wellington himself bore the responsibility for all of them, and carried his burden with grace and dignity.
    “I suppose that’s how I should look at things, but I confess—”
    “What are you two whisperin’ about over there?” Lord