The Jacobite's Return (The Georgian Rebel Series) by Jane Godman

way.
    One thing had saved him from the abyss. Or rather, one person had. It was only his adventures with the Falcon that had prevented him from succumbing to the twin miseries that afflicted him. In addition to the loss of Rosie, he had also been dealing with the trauma of what he had endured at Culloden.
    Jack was a seasoned soldier. He was also one of the highest-ranking Jacobite rebels. He had never shirked his duty on the battlefield. He knew he was liked and respected by the brave highland warriors because of his willingness to fight alongside them. A fair number of injuries had come his way in the course of the prince’s campaign, but his first brush with death had come at Swarkestone Bridge.
    Jack’s was a restless spirit which needed—nay, demanded—action. He and Fraser had eagerly accompanied the party of seventy highlanders sent to protect the bridge so that the prince might cross to commence his triumphant march on London. All had been quiet—unknown to them, events in Derby were already shaping the prince’s retreat—and, tired after the long ride south from Scotland, Jack had dozed in a small copse, wrapped in his cloak as he tried to ignore the freezing ground. When he woke suddenly, it was to find a young redcoat standing over him, sword in hand. Springing to his feet, Jack had been unaware that another soldier stood atop a small incline, just a few paces away. The impact of that redcoat’s shot threw him down the slope towards the riverbank.
    Fraser, alerted by the gunshot, had rushed to his aid. Stealing a horse from a nearby blacksmith’s yard, he leapt upon it, supporting Jack before him, slapped the steed’s scrawny flanks, and sent it scurrying away from the skirmish.
    As always, the face of a young woman intruded into Jack’s memory of that day, soothing him and causing the horrors to recede. Her hair was dark as midnight and fell in shining curls about her shoulders. Concern shone in the luminous depths of her grey eyes as she studied his face. His vision had clear, creamy skin with a light dusting of freckles across her dainty, upturned nose, and the most inviting, delectable, cherry-ripe lips he had ever seen. Together with Martha and Tom, Rosie had saved his life.
    I was so busy falling in love, I didn’t have time to be traumatised by my experience at Swarkestone. But Culloden was different, and not just because he didn’t have Rosie to take his mind off what had happened to him. Before the devastating blow that had felled him, the shock of what he saw had brought him close to breaking. A series of monumentally disastrous decisions led the Jacobites to a defeat that was little more than a wholesale massacre. Before his eyes, men he had loved, admired and grown up with—cousins, uncles, childhood friends, loyal servants and noble clansmen—had been slaughtered.
    Not given to introspection before that day, Jack was not so unyielding that he couldn’t see what had happened to him over the last two years. Wounded, and suffering severe mental strain from the aftereffects of what he had witnessed at Culloden, he had no one to turn to. No home, no family, no lover.
    Donning a mask, riding beside the Falcon, thumbing his nose at the king and the Duke of Cumberland…those things had given his life a purpose. It had proved to be his cure. The nightmares of blood and death remained, but they no longer ruled his life. Had the Falcon known how much his intervention was needed? Looking back, Jack suspected he had.
    If only there could be a similar panacea for the loss of Rosie. Once he had believed the restless, burning ache in the middle of his chest would get easier as time went by. It hadn’t. How could it when you loved as we loved?
    But he had seen her and survived the experience, something he had convinced himself could not happen. His heart and pride had endured. He had not disgraced himself by throwing himself at her feet and pleading with her to love him once more. He had managed to