The Secret Life of Lady Julia (32 page)

BOOK: The Secret Life of Lady Julia

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Epilogue

Waterloo, June 1815

M
ajor Lord Stephen Ives tightened his hands on the reins. The stallion was nervous as the guns crackled and the cannon boomed. He was nervous himself, and he looked at the grim faces of the dragoons around him, all of them waiting for the order to charge across the plain to overrun the deadly French guns.

He thought of Julia, as he had every single day since she left Vienna with Thomas Merritt. She was probably in Louisiana by now. Was she happy? He could not wish her otherwise, though the familiar ache of loss filled him.

She and Thomas had stayed for Doe’s wedding, and she helped his sister pack for her journey to England. Peter had wanted their child to be born in Kent, at his family home, and Doe was eager to start her new life. He missed her company.

The peace conference had been a failure. It had ended when Napoleon fulfilled Talleyrand’s prediction and escaped from Elba. He’d marched on Paris, gathering an army, and declared himself Emperor once again. Wellington had no time for peace talks then.

And so they stood on yet another battlefield, this time in Belgium, churning up peaceful farmlands, leaving them red with blood once more.

Stephen stared ahead at the French bastion. The bugle would sound and they would charge. His feet twitched, eager to set his spurs to the stallion’s flanks, to get on with it, to stem the pain, to cover himself in glory before—if—he was fated to die today.

“A forlorn hope, if ever there was one,” the captain next to him muttered, his eyes on the muzzles of the French guns, belching fire and death across the very path they would ride.

Stephen heard the signal and drew his sword, raising it over his head. He opened his lungs to let out a battle cry as the stallion lunged forward, leaping into the fray, as eager as he was to see it done.

He felt the wind in his hair, smelled gunpowder and blood, felt the hot June sun on his skin. “Julia,” he whispered, and wondered if she’d hear.

About the Author

LECIA CORNWALL lives and writes in Calgary, Canada, in the beautiful foothills of the Canadian Rockies, with five cats, two teenagers, a crazy chocolate Lab, and one very patient husband. She’s hard at work on her next book.

www.leciacornwall.com

[email protected]

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Romances by Lecia Cornwall

T
HE
S
ECRET
L
IFE
O
F
L
ADY
J
ULIA

H
OW TO
D
ECEIVE A
D
UKE

A
LL
T
HE
P
LEASURES OF THE
S
EASON:
A
N
OVELLA

T
HE
P
RICE OF
T
EMPTATION

S
ECRETS OF A
P
ROPER
C
OUNTESS

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE SECRET LIFE OF LADY JULIA
. Copyright © 2013 by Lecia Cotton Cornwall. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition JUNE 2013 ISBN: 9780062202468

Print Edition ISBN: 9780062202451

FIRST EDITION

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