Ever His Bride by Linda Needham

Author:Linda Needham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sensual, orphans, victorian england, british railways, workhouse, robber baron, railroad accident

Chapter 13

Felicity woke slowly out of a dreamless sleep, kept her eyes tightly closed and savored the warm breeze that eddied gently across her cheek. Must be a bright morning, the sun was streaming in from some nearby window. Where exactly was she? In which charming village inn, above which neat little public house. Must have had a late night to be this drowsy. She yawned and stretched and would have slipped back to sleep on a lazy morning like this, but for some reason her body felt pummeled and bruised and she smelled of cinders and steam. . .dear God, the train!

She opened her eyes and the nightmare rushed at her like all the horrors of hell; brimstone and broken bodies, a conflagration of smoke and flame. And Hunter standing amidst the inferno—doing battle with the devil!

“Hunter—where?” She sat bolt upright, then breathed out a sigh of relief. He was right there beside her in the tiny bed, sleeping soundly, his head half on her pillow, breathing softly – the source of that eddying breeze—his chest bared and smudged with mud and rust and probably blood, but not his own. A bruise had taken root on his forehead, and his face was so smeared with soot and grime he might well have been coalman, or one of the street urchins he despised so much.

That he wasn’t among the gravely injured or the dead was a miracle. Every disaster needed a hero; he was that and more to her, to everyone, last night.

She had wanted so much to dislike him, for the hundred different faults she could count against his large and brooding character. And yet she’d seen such startling moments of virtue in him. He’d been gentle and generous with the injured, taken command of the rescue, and hadn’t let go.

Yet how could she ever forgive him for his callous, uncalled-for intolerance in his everyday life, his hatred of the helpless and the innocent. He’d treated Giles like a beast, as though the boy were nothing more than leavings to sweep into the gutter. Had become a wild-eyed madman when he’d found her near the slums; had nearly drowned her until he’d scrubbed the muck off her clothes.

Where did a man come by such blind prejudice? In a home filled with hate? A brutal father could as easily teach a son to loathe as he could to fish; could beat a boy and abuse his heart until that son learned to raise himself up and fight back the only way he knew how, with a cold heart turned against the world, against the light. Living in a house as gray as a tomb, and as silent—a refuge against the encroaching wildness of the heath.

Though he wasn’t particularly miserly, nor was his pride propped up by the imperious trappings of his wealth and position. When she had dressed her chamber like that of a princess, he’d only asked after her comfort. When she opened all the windows to the sunlight, he’d shied from the brightness at first, but hadn’t complained.

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