One Wicked Winter (Rogues and Gentlemen Book 6) by Emma V Leech

Author:Emma V Leech [Leech, Emma V]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-12-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

“Wherein a winter’s night is cold indeed.”

Once he’d escaped the hell of the wedding breakfast, Edward hurried to the stable and paced with ill-concealed impatience as his horse was saddled. What the staff must think of him, running away from his own wedding celebrations, he could hardly imagine. Nothing complimentary to either him or his bride he imagined. One fool actually stepped up to doff his hat and wish him happy before swallowing his words at the look on Edward’s face and scurrying away.

Damn them. Damn them all. Forever judging him, remembering who he had been and what he’d been like and all their hopes for what he would make of Longwold. Sooner or later, they would realise the Marquess of Winterbourne had died in the fields surrounding Waterloo, and the man who had returned was a wraith. He was something neither living nor dead, fit for neither world. He found no joy in living yet he felt no desire to die, not after having fought so hard to survive, but to what end? There was no place that could be called home.

The Dials had been a temporary refuge, but he’d known that he didn’t belong, even through the fog that had held his memories at ransom. But even his childhood home no longer fit him. Everywhere that had once been familiar and reassuring seemed awkward now, unfamiliar, like the memory of a place visited once as a child and seen again through the eyes of an adult. Everything he had once loved and longed to return to was foreign to him. It was almost as if Longwold hadn’t existed to him before; it was a place he had read about in a book, that he had imagined in his mind’s eye, and now the reality didn’t match his expectations. Even the vast castle seemed smaller than he’d expected, and strangely confining, his title a noose around his neck, trapping him and holding him in place.

And now he had a wife, too.

The weight of it, of what had once been familiar, of everything that was expected - it bore down on him, crushing him and pushing at his chest until he couldn’t breathe. The terrifying sense of panic was stealing up on him again, closing cold hands around his throat, and he had to force his hands to his sides to restrain himself from snatching at his cravat and flinging the wretched thing in the dirt.

Once the horse was saddled, he vaulted up without a word and rode hard, finding the track that only he knew into the very heart of the forest that surrounded the castle.

Finding the familiar spot at last, he dismounted, tethered the horse, and jumped down into the small, muddy hole in the ground, careless of his fine clothes.

It was foolish, he knew that.

But nonetheless he had taken the spade a careless gardener had left in the grounds, found a place far from any well-trod paths, and dug this deep hole in the dirt. It

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