The Rakehell Regency Romance Collection Volume 2(128)

There were various unusual objects on the shelves, which had been dug into the walls along the perimeter of the cave. He occasionally paused to look at them. He was sure they were valuable, if only to be put in a museum as examples of how people had lived hundreds if not thousands of years before. Some of them certainly were beautiful.



He banged his head and looked up again in irritation. The constant dripping over the years must have lowered the ceiling, he decided, looking once again at the fang-like projections which jutted downwards, always threatening to poke him in the eye or head if he forgot himself and rose to his full height of nearly six and a half feet.



Life was so strange, a seemingly random series of events. Something so simple as a chance meeting by a river, along a battlement, or even on a beach, in a cave, could change everything, he thought with a sigh.



He told himself he was being a romantic fool. Elizabeth Eltham was not for him. No woman was. Not now, perhaps not ever. His wife's death was still too raw, even admitting all he had to himself about the great number of limitations to their marriage.



Moreover, he had his job to do. Hauling, unpacking, counting, cleaning, repairing, readying all for the order to invade which he was sure would come fairly soon. The weapons were old, not in the best repair, having lain here in the dripping cave for so long, but they could still prove decisive in the fight for freedom.



The question was, freedom from whose point of view? The Spanish, French, Portuguese? The British? The Irish? The British authorities were claiming they would help restore order and their choice of government to the French. Yet the French people had loved Bonaparte. Over a million men had followed him and his vision of the world to the ends of the earth, from Egypt to Moscow to Lisbon to Sicily, and had given their lives for it, for their Emperor.



The British said they fought for freedom, yet the Irish Catholics had none. Ireland itself was a mere colony subject to all sort of injustices such as had been perpetrated upon the Americas four decades ago. They had the same exact British king, the same corrupt monarchy as they'd done then.



He had viewed the Emmett Rebellion of 1803 with horror a little over a decade ago; now, having come back after so long, with all of his bitter experiences of the war still so fresh in his mind, he was not so sure of his loyalty to the Crown any longer.



As he had looked around Dublin and Cork and seen the sleek complacent Protestant ascendancy with their ineffable sense of superiority, it had made him sick to think he had ever fought to preserve that way of life. The sacrifices they had all made, the good men who had fought and died….



The vast irony of it all had not escaped his notice either: the colonizing British fighting to stop the French from colonizing as well. The oppressed Irish making up one-third of the British Army, and thus enforcing the Crown's repressive measures upon their own people in the economic and political spheres. Why, even Wellington himself had been born in Dublin.



His friends had told him to be patient, to wait to see how things would shake down. They would get their own houses in order, and then try to run for Parliament. Thomas Eltham, the Duke of Ellesmere, was a Radical, after all. More and more of them were coming into power all the time.



He sighed and tested his left shoulder, noticing that it seemed to feel even better than it had five minutes ago despite all the strain he had put on it heaving another couple of crates of muskets out into the central part of the cave to unpack, count, clean, and repair them as well.



He sighed heavily. Even if this mission were all over tomorrow, he would still have the Herculean task of putting his own house in order. Enough to ever bring home a wife, start a family? He shook his head.



Times had been hard all over Ireland, he knew that. His only consolation was that his house, despite all the damage which had been wrought, was not nearly as bad looking as some of the others along this secluded stretch of coastline.



But somehow it seemed worse when compared with the jewel of Ellesmere Manor, and the even more precious woman who apparently resided there. She had been dressed with elegant simplicity. A lesser cousin? Quite likely. Surely not the Duke's sister? No, he didn't think so. She had been so simple and unaffected.



At least he hoped not. For if she were, then he would have no chance of winning her for his bride.



Married? No ring… And she had not tried to stop him from... But her being wed already would be another insurmountable obstacle to his hopes. He was simply not that kind of man.



He sighed again. The loss of the lovely young woman from his life was even more unthinkable than the little voice inside his head telling him to use the weapons which surrounded him in the dark cavern for something truly revolutionary.