Rescued By a Lady's Love (Lords of Honor, #3) by Christi Caldwell Page B

familiar panic. He drew in slow, rhythmic breaths and concentrated on those ragged airflows to keep from descending into the pit of madness that had followed him since that day. Derek pressed his eye shut to keep the memories at bay. But Toulouse would always be there. Just as the scars and the eye patch and the useless leg would always be there.
    The screams of men blended in a hideous symphony with the explosion of cannon fire and filled his senses, deafening. Derek thrust the note into the fire and the flames eagerly licked at the ivory velum until the note was no more. He spun on his heel so quickly, his left leg nearly buckled with the suddenness of his movement. Relishing the pain that radiated up his thigh and momentarily distracted him from the memories of battle, he limped across the room, escaping the fire.
    Escaping when he’d been unable to on the field of battle. Derek drew to a jerky stop beside the window and, in a reflexive movement, pulled the curtain back. Light streamed through the crystal windowpane, momentarily blinding him. He jammed the heel of his palm into his remaining eye. White orbs danced within his vision and he blinked frantically. Derek made to release the curtain and then stopped.
    The London streets below bustled with activity as lords and ladies went about their daily business. Carriages rumbled by. Phaetons being driven by dandies rattled along. Life was...the same and yet, not. For those satin-sprigged ladies and perfumed dandies in the streets below, the world carried on as it always had and would continue to do so. The hideous visage he went out of his way to avoid reflected back at him in the windowpane. Only this time, he did not look away but stared boldly at the stranger, burned for his efforts on the fields of Toulouse, forever transformed into a person not even a mother could love. Nausea twisted in his belly; a deep sickness that had nothing to do with the memories and everything to do with the beast before him.
    “You are the same bloody, weak fool you always were,” he whispered into the quiet. Thrusting aside the maudlin thoughts, he let the curtain go, just as a hackney came to a quick halt directly outside his townhouse.
    Derek adjusted the band of his eye patch that bit painfully into his temple. A hired hack? No one had business here. He opened the curtains once again and cursed as the sunlight streamed inside, temporarily blinding his eye once again. His vision cleared just as the driver opened the door. A flash of blue penetrated the opening of that carriage; that color so vibrant and powerful, it conjured memories of summer in the country, traipsing through the hillside, while he’d hidden from his tutors.
    The driver reached inside the carriage and handed down the owner of that flash of color. All the breath sucked from his chest and he pressed his brow to the warm windowpane.
    The young woman, a stranger in a wool cloak took several tentative steps toward the front of his townhouse and then, as though she felt his beastly gaze upon her, paused. Tilting her head toward the sun, she raised a hand to her eyes and stared at the front façade of his townhouse. Only, what would one such as she have business with here ?
    Derek quickly ran his gaze over her. A powerful surge of desire slammed into him, at the sight of her lean, lithe frame and generous décolletage pressing against the fabric of her cloak. The man he’d been had appreciated beauty. He’d relished the satiny perfection of a woman’s skin, celebrated the silken tresses of a woman’s hair as it had fanned about them upon satin sheets. The man he was now still appreciated beauty, even knowing he would never again experience the taste of passion he’d sampled through the years. And this woman, frozen outside his townhouse, evinced the heart-stopping beauty that drove men to sonnets.
    The silly straw bonnet atop her head did little to conceal the raven color of her curls. Several strands hung haphazardly