For Your Arms Only Linden, Caroline (top romance novels TXT) 📖

shirt. “Was I happy?” he rasped, and pulled the shirt over his head. “I was almost dead, Julia—left for dead by my mates, named a traitor to my country by men I fought and bled beside, unable to show my face or say my own name. Do not think I have suffered less than you or Mother or anyone at Penford when I wear the scars of those five years and feel them with every breath I take!”

His sister’s eyes flitted over the scars, the long puckered tracks of French swords that crossed his chest and side where a Flemish farmwoman had stitched him back together as he lay unconscious on her hearth, without finesse or skill but just well enough to save his life. The scars twisted around his back, over his shoulder, stopping less than an inch short of his collarbone. Alec knew from the breadth of them that those wounds had nearly killed him, and the fever that had left him unconscious for a week ought to have finished the job. Only through some happenstance—and at times Alec thought it had been a pitilessly cruel one—had he lived, to bear the scars and the disgrace for the rest of his life.

Julia must have guessed as much; her face crumpled, and she turned on her heel and fled, her footsteps dying with the slam of the door.

Alec’s anger faded into embers as quickly as it had flamed to life. What he had done? It accomplished nothing to shout at Julia, when she couldn’t have known what he’d endured—precisely because he had not told her or anyone. It was his private shame, concealed as much as possible and yet always there, contaminating every fiber of his being. Alec felt lost again. Penford held all he thought he wanted, all he thought he was fighting to reclaim. Why did he feel so alien? He bent to retrieve his discarded shirt and wondered for a moment if Stafford would take him back and send him to France, to the Continent, anywhere he could be unknown again.

A noise behind him made him glance over his shoulder. Cressida Turner stood just inside the doorway from the small drawing room, one hand still on the knob. There was a book in her other hand, as if she had come to return it to the shelf. She was staring at him with her lips parted in shock, her eyes roaming over his exposed back.

But it wasn’t horror in her face. When she raised her gaze to his, for one everlasting moment, Alec saw his own longing and desire mirrored there.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice a thin whisper of sound. “I didn’t mean—Please excuse me—” She took two steps forward, laid the book on a table, and quickly turned back to the door.

Alec lunged. “Wait.” He caught her wrist. She pulled, turning her face away from him in a vain attempt to hide her blush. “Wait.” With one hand he pushed the door shut, wanting to keep her, to hold her, to feel her desire him, even if all he could say was an inarticulate “Wait.”

She twisted in his grip. “I should have knocked,” she said, breathing rapidly. Her golden eyes flickered down his bare arm, his bare chest, and lower before jerking back up to meet his gaze. Her lips glistened when she licked them. A dozen things ran through Alec’s mind as he stood looking down at her, mesmerized by the flutter of her eyelashes and the pulse in her throat. She tugged once more against his grip, but without effort; Alec shuddered, and reached for her.

She gasped and closed her eyes. He moved toward her at the same time she turned toward the door, and the momentum of those actions brought them to the closed door. Alec exhaled a silent moan as their bodies collided full-length against the wood, her back against his chest and his arms on either side of her. Her hands came up to brace herself, but she didn’t protest or wriggle away. She smelled of fresh air and, faintly, of gardenias from his mother’s garden. Alec laid his cheek against the silky coil of her hair. Good God, he wanted her, more than he could ever remember wanting another woman.

Cressida leaned her forehead against the door, breathing so hard she trembled. He was holding her, his bare arms almost around her. His hands slid up the door, his forearms taut and flexed beside her shoulders. She could feel his breath on the nape of her neck, and couldn’t stop thinking what they must look like, pressed together like lovers. If she had had any notion, any suspicion he would be standing in the library bare from the waist up, she would never have opened the door…or so she told herself. The truth, Cressida shivered to think, was probably somewhat different. The truth was that when she unwittingly stepped into the library to replace her book, she had been rooted to the floor by the sight of him standing there, naked to the waist and head bent as if in penitence. Not until Alec saw her did it occur to her to stop looking. He was magnificent, lean smooth muscle and sinew despite the blemishing scars. She had seen scars before, although not of the breadth and length of Alec’s. One went over his shoulder and across his back, as if the enemy had tried to cut him in two. They must be years old, yet still stood out against his skin in stark lines as if they hadn’t healed very cleanly.

She curled her fingers into fists against the door to keep from turning in his arms and touching those scars that must have caused him so much pain. She wanted to hold him and console him and ease whatever darkness lingered in his soul. Julia was wrong, wrong about him, she thought fiercely. He wasn’t grim and arrogant; a man with those scars had lived through something