Love After. Waterloo: Blurb: When Lady Melton and her son, Daniel, are forced to join antagonistic Captain Belling and the last group of wounded British soldiers evacuating Waterloo and traveling back to London, she expects clashes with army deserters. What she doesn’t anticipate is how much she and her son will need the belligerent Captain after they reach London. https://books2read.com/suziloveLAW

Book Hook: Lady Melton had conversed with gentlemen in Brussels who’d held similar views to the Captain, and who had looked down their aristocratic noses at any lady who defied tradition. Explaining her long-term interest in medicine to men who assumed that ladies lived to sip, shop, and embroider had been futile, and one of many reasons that she’d gladly left London and traveled to the Continent to live with her brothers. Ironic that she and her unborn child had been safer in battle-torn Europe than in the country of her birth, and sad that she and Daniel were now forced to return to family members that she disliked and a claustrophobic lifestyle that she barely tolerated.

She glanced around the Captain’s headquarters. Most of the walls remained intact, so at least she and her son would be partially protected from the elements tonight. Her brothers’ house hadn’t fared so well. British infantrymen had commandeered a French cannon and had been dragging it down the road towards Brussels when it had misfired. The shell had gone high over the trees and exploded near Brendon’s camp-side hospital. The majority of the roof had collapsed, dragging down large sections of the walls, and forcing them to sleep in army tents the past few nights.

Despite Wellington’s victory over Napoleon four days earlier, soldiers, to use the term loosely, still lingered around Waterloo. They and deserters from both sides had joined local famers in picking through the remains of bodies, uniforms, and armory to pilfer anything of value. There’d been nowhere safe to hide a lady and her son, so her brothers had packed what remained of their equipment and taken them, along with a few wounded British soldiers, to the Captain’s quarters, knowing that his orders were to protect whoever remained of French stragglers and deserters. 

The twins hadn’t lingered, because Wellington and what was left of his British troops were marching back towards Brussels and Brendon’s skills as a physician were urgently needed. Benjamin, an aide to Wellington, had stayed to organize the repatriation of their soldiers and the departure of their sister and nephew.

https://books2read.com/suziloveLAW