Since the Surrender Read Online Free Page B

his ribs. His breath left him in a single painful gust, and he stared, struggling for equilibrium, and tightened his grip on his walking stick to brace himself against the force of memories blowing him back and back through the years, to Waterloo, to Brussels, to all the other times he’d seen her do precisely that.
    And, inevitably, to the last time he’d touched Rosalind March. Roses. He should have known.

Chapter 3
    Mrs. Rosalind March had known Captain Eversea was approaching even before she heard the floor squeak. She’d forgotten he had a way of disturbing the atmosphere of a place, like any proper thunderstorm. The little hairs on the back of her neck stirred with it. The backs of her arms were cold with nerves.
    He’d come. Triumph!
    She supposed.
    But now she was uneasy. She decided to allow him to approach her. Or, rather, this is what she told herself. She preferred this to the version where she hadn’t the nerve to speak to him, despite the fact that she’d been impulsive enough to send for him.
    “Your…messenger…gave me inadequate directions to this rendezvous, Mrs. March. Or should I say, Mrs. Smithson.”
    The words contained all the warmth of a commanding officer chastising a subaltern and were steeped in irony. But…oh. The voice. How had she not been prepared to hear his voice again?
    Deceptively gentle, dark and velvet textured: it lulled like opium smoke when the conversation was casual and close—during a waltz, at one’s elbow during a dinner party.
    In command, he could make a single word crack like a pistol shot. His voice was a weapon.
    The irony in it was because he understood precisely why she’d chosen her messenger: if she’d sent for him, he very likely would not have come.
    Quite rightly he associated Rosalind March with trouble.
    “And good morning to you, Captain Eversea. Very good to hear you once again exerting yourself to charm.”
    She held out her hand for him to bow over.
    As ever a gentleman—in the little niceties and rituals that bound together his class, anyway—he didn’t hesitate, didn’t twitch a brow: he bent, took her fingers lightly in his.
    Hardly a touch at all.
    She glanced down at his fingers and knew a vertigo comprised of a rush of years: she’d seen his hands cleaning weapons, absently knuckling away the black powder from his lips after he’d loaded a musket, hoisting weapons to his shoulders in drills, lifting up the heads of dying soldiers to offer water. She’d seen them lift brandy snifters, clap her husband on the shoulder in camaraderie, help silk-clad women in and out of carriages.
    She knew the weight and heat of them pressed against the small of her back during a dance. She knew how his bare fingers felt threaded through her hair, cradling her head, to tip it back to—
    She withdrew her fingers from his quickly. Her rib cage tightened, fortifying herself against a tide of memories.
    She pointedly looked into his face, and not at the hand gripping the horse-head-topped walking stick, his Waterloo souvenir, which he horse-head-topped walking stick, his Waterloo souvenir, which he was grinding into the floor as if to punish it for being necessary. He’d always seemed etched from something more enduring than mere human flesh; he’d always seemed somehow more distinct than anyone else in any room. She was not surprised to find his face even harder now. Time and sun and pain and long nights involving God only knew what manner of male diversions had engraved lines at the corners of his eyes, sharpened and deepened the angles and hollows of his long face, made an implacable thing of his mouth. From the looks of things, it would make a veritable creaking noise should he attempt to turn it up into a smile now. His eyes…his eyes could still cut diamonds. Could light a mine shaft.
    They were blue.
    No: “blue” was an inadequate word for what they were. She turned from him to gaze at the painting. Rubinetto was painted in the corner in tiny,