The Fury of a Storme (The Storme Brothers Book 6), page 1
The Fury of a Storme
The Storme Brothers
Book Six
Sandra Sookoo
© Copyright 2022 by Sandra Sookoo
Text by Sandra Sookoo
Dragonblade Publishing, Inc. is an imprint of Kathryn Le Veque Novels, Inc.
P.O. Box 23
Moreno Valley, CA 92556
ceo@dragonbladepublishing.com
Produced in the United States of America
First Edition April 2022
Kindle Edition
Reproduction of any kind except where it pertains to short quotes in relation to advertising or promotion is strictly prohibited.
All Rights Reserved.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
License Notes:
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Dearest Reader;
Thank you for your support of a small press. At Dragonblade Publishing, we strive to bring you the highest quality Historical Romance from some of the best authors in the business. Without your support, there is no ‘us’, so we sincerely hope you adore these stories and find some new favorite authors along the way.
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Additional Dragonblade books by Author Sandra Sookoo
The Storme Brother Series
The Soul of a Storme (Book 1)
The Heart of a Storme (Book 2)
The Look of a Storme (Book 3)
The Sting of a Storme (Book 4)
The Touch of a Storme (Book 5)
The Fury of a Storme (Book 6)
A Storme’s Christmas Legacy
Dedication
To M. You know why.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Publisher’s Note
Additional Dragonblade books by Author Sandra Sookoo
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Epilogue
About the Author
Stay in Touch
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank the following people who helped in my research by giving me a snapshot of daily life living with dyslexia and its many forms.
Cecilia R. Rodriguez
Christa Paige
Nicole Stein
Chapter One
September 1, 1818
London, England
The Honorable Caroline Storme huffed in annoyance when a couple drops of rain splattered the page of her drawing notebook. One of them stained the ivory paper while the other smeared the charcoal she used to sketch. It made a few lines of the drawing out of order, and in some irritation, she dabbed at the spot with her sleeve. That, of course, made an even bigger mess of things, so she furiously frowned at the page in disgust.
Though she forgot names with alarming regularity, she never forgot a face, and for the past few months, the subject of her drawings—when she did them of people at all—had been the same man: barrel chest, big frame, golden brown hair that curled just above his collar, tawny eyes like a lion, and a sensual mouth that when curved in a specific grin had the power to flutter her heartbeat. Which was odd because she was never allowed to be in the same room with a man alone… not that any had shown interest in her. Sometimes she would sketch him in wintertime clothing. At others, she would portray him rigged out in ballroom finery. Every once in a while, she portrayed him shirtless to the waist, but that wasn’t an accurate depiction, for she’d never seen any man in such a state of undress. Long ago her mind had buried his name, but her heart never wished to give him up.
Not that she minded. Once she’d done the preliminary sketches and she deemed them worthy enough, she took to her canvas and recreated the art using oil or watercolor paints depending on where the whim took her. Already, she had three such portraits hanging in the rooms of her London townhouse. Her cousin Andrew’s to be precise, and when that same cousin had questioned her as to who the man in the paintings was and she couldn’t say, he’d ordered her to cease drawing him.
She hadn’t followed through with that order. Instead, she’d merely moved the paintings into her dressing room and made certain they were hidden away from his prying, judgmental eyes. The man in her paintings gave her a sense of peace and calm; she had the impression that she’d met him somewhere before, but since her mind often jumbled things up—people, places, things, locations—she had no idea where to put him in those recollections. Perhaps if she ever saw him again, the memories would float to the forefront, and everything would make sense again.
Not that anything made sense. Or rather, it made sense to a point in her mind, but not to the people around her if she should try and explain.
It made for a lonely world.
Another few drops of rain fell to further mar her sketch. Giving into the ever-present anger that simmered in her chest, she ripped the page from her drawing pad, wadded it up, and then hurled it with a cry into the Serpentine River from her position on a large boulder in Hyde Park. It bobbed upon the constantly moving water and the current carried the paper away from her, only to become snagged in a cluster of water plants. A pair of ducks came over to investigate but eventually grew bored.
Caroline sighed. She’d come here to paint in the relative privacy and quiet of the park, for Andrew’s home was often mired in chaos and noise now that he had an infant daughter.
Not that he wasn’t loud on his own—he often reminded her of a bull stomping his way through London—but he’d been the one to remove her from the institution for the insane when no one else in the Storme family had cared. Odd, that, for she’d always thought of him as quite selfish. She’d spent twenty long years there, for her mind didn’t work like other people’s and her parents hadn’t known what to do about that. Twenty years of her life had been locked away from society, from her family, from anything that would have brought her joy, but now she lived in London, at a Mayfair address in her cousin the earl’s home, yet it still felt as if she were a prisoner, still waiting on the day when someone—anyone—would rescue her and set her free.
Like in the storybooks Isobel used to read her.
Were there such things as heroes and knights of old in the modern age?
When the rain began in earnest, Caroline closed her notebook and then slid from her perch on the boulder. Drat, drat, drat. Perhaps it hadn’t been the wisest decision to send the Hadleigh carriage back to the house, but she’d been intoxicated with a freedom of sorts, for her cousin had finally consented to let her take an outing by herself. Of course, she would not say no to being out of the townhouse. Andrew had been distracted with his babe as well as demands to his title, which had no doubt precipitated the decision, and truly, she was always someone’s responsibility.
Which never failed to annoy her. But she’d declined the accompaniment of her maid, and her cousin would bluster once he discovered that. There was too much pressure to talk and make her mind work correctly when others were with her. So, she’d come to Hyde Park alone, for it had sounded thrilling, and there’d be inspiration everywhere.
After a couple of hours wandering the grounds in unabated solitude, she’d decided to sketch for a bit. Then the dratted rain had ruined a perfectly good afternoon, and that meant a return to her gilded prison.
With another huff of annoyance, Caroline reached into her reticule. She yanked out a map of the area she’d drawn to help jog her memory and remind her of where she’d been and where she needed to go. Though she’d thought she had put clues and landmarks onto the paper to encourage her broken brain to identify her location, they were nowhere to be found on the map now. Perhaps she’d been distracted when she’d drawn it, or perhaps she was too flustered by the unexpected rain to locate them on the drawing.
Oh, yes, that was it. There’d been a pair of white swans on the water, and she’d wanted to sketch them. Then she’d let her mind wander back to her childhood when her sister Isobel would read fairy stories to her about brave knights who’d rescue trapped princesses from high towers and such. Sometimes there’d been swans in those stories. And then she wondered where the swans had spent their days when not on the water…
But none of that helped her now. The rain-spotted paper quickly lost its integrity, so it too was wadded up and hurled into the river.
“Why I cannot normal be?” she asked of no one in particular as the rain came down in earnest. Caroline cried out in frustration, for once again, the words that came out of her mouth had arranged themselves into an awkward pattern.
But she wasn’t and she never would be.
Having no choice except to run along the many pathways that intersected and crisscrossed through the park, all too soon Caroline was lost and disoriented. The rain had seeped through her spencer. The sensation of wet cloth against her skin wasn’t pleasant, and it took every shred of control not to rip the clothes from her person. Every direction she looked seemed unfamiliar. There was no clear way to proceed. Hot panic rose in her throat, for she didn’t know what to do.
And the rain kept coming down. Being wet had knots of worry pulling in her belly. Water had the tendency to bring on terror, for in the asylum they often dunked patients’ heads into tubs full of it in an effort to gauge their reactions and emotional responses for no reason Caroline could fathom. She was fine looking at water, but the second too much of it touched her skin, memories assailed her and often brought more confusion with them.
The panic intensified until it threatened to choke her. Blindly, she ran down paths and indiscriminately through shrubbery and landscaping in an attempt to find her way out of the park. As she spared a second to glance back over her shoulder, her forward momentum was abruptly halted when she ran bodily into the chest of a large man who promptly enclosed her into a protective embrace.
“Oh!” Immediately, the comforting scents of salt, sun, a breeze laden with exotic things, and beneath that leather and man. I’ve smelled that before. Some of her anxiety calmed. When she curled her fingers into his lapels, determined to hang on until the memory could surface in her brain, the man moved his hands to her shoulders to steady her.
“My apologies, miss. I sometimes need to be more careful as to where I’m going, but in an area as beautiful as Hyde Park, that’s a difficult endeavor.”
As much as she didn’t want him to talk and disrupt a delve into her mind, the rumble of his deep voice paired with that scent and the golden-brown eyes she stared up into yanked them from the jumbled attics of her mind. Excitement shuddered down her spine while at the same time, an odd sort of awareness prickled over her skin. Of course! “Mr. Butler, correct?” He was the man she’d met while at a Christmastide house party for the Stormes in the Derbyshire countryside, the man who had treated her with kindness and respect.
And he was the man she couldn’t stop painting. Perhaps now she would discover the answers as to why.
“Yes!” He bent his head and peered into her eyes, and she knew a moment of profound peace in those golden-brown—almost tawny—pools. Oh yes, she remembered those eyes! “Well, if this isn’t providential, I don’t know what is.” As his lips curved with a wide grin, butterflies set up a ballet in her belly. “Miss Storme. Imagine that.” Though the rain fell steadily onto both of them, he didn’t seem to mind. Neither did she, not now that he was there. The prickling panic regarding water wasn’t as prominent now that she could concentrate on something else. “How are you, aside from being wet and from the looks of it, frightened?”
When she’d seen him at Christmastide, he’d taken the lead in whatever situation where they were both together. His big, commanding presence meant that she was never disrespected or ignored, and then just as now, she felt safe with him, as if he were a calm harbor to her storm-rocked boat. Giving him a small, tight smile, Caroline nodded and concentrated on her next words. “I am well.” Her throat was entirely too dry. She gripped the edge of her sketchbook. “Passing time. Painting is how I’ve been.”
Of course, her mouth wouldn’t say what her brain wished to convey. They never worked in tandem, and it was maddening, which was why she seldom talked in public if she could help it.
Mr. Butler didn’t seem to mind. Rain dripped from the brim of his beaver felt top hat. It also seeped into her hair. Only then did she realize she had forgotten her dratted bonnet. Such trivial things, fripperies like hats and gloves. They served no purpose except to be silly… or set her apart from others. Neither did he make jest of her, much like he’d been all those months ago. When he didn’t immediately attempt to usher her away, some of the tenseness left her shoulders. “That’s wonderful, Miss Storme. I knew you could draw, for I’d seen some of your creations at Christmastide, but I wasn’t aware your talents went to painting too.”
“Yes.” She nodded. What would he say if he knew he’d been the subject of far too many of her pieces in ways she couldn’t quite fathom?
As if realizing it wasn’t quite proper to keep standing there with his hands on her person, he backed away, and as he did so, some of the cozy protectiveness went with him. How she despised that widening gap between them. It felt much like he would vanish into the mist surrounding her mind and she might never see him again.
Threads of panic began to return. “Don’t go.”
“I won’t.” Again, he grinned. “Continuing to talk about your drawings, I admire people who are artistic. It’s not something I’ve been blessed with.”
Caroline lifted her face to the rain. Perhaps it would cool her overheating cheeks. “It is nothing.” When she transferred her attention back to him, the sapphire blue color of his jacket stirred her muse. Could she capture that exact hue for her next painting? How much of each paint would she need to blend? It would be nice for the color of a midnight sky sprinkled with stars…
“So says the woman with natural talent.” His grin never faded. “You wouldn’t say that if you could see my pathetic attempts at drawing of any kind. Imagine being surrounded by your creations, to look at them and study them whenever one wished.”
“Oh?” He liked them that much?
“Damnation.” The jovial attitude vanished under a cloud of concern. “I beg your pardon, Miss Storme. What a nodcock you must think me for keeping you out in such dismal weather.”
She snorted. “I enjoy the rain.” Until she didn’t because it touched her skin, wet her clothing, or ruined her sketches. Oh, thank goodness the words were in the correct order. “When it ruins except my drawings.” And her mind was back to mucking things up. “I had a map but turned around was from fright.” Annoyed at the disconnect of her mind, she plunged onward. “You can help me at home?”
Mr. Butler frowned. Though it took him a few seconds, he managed to puzzle out her intent. For that she was grateful. “Of course I’ll take you home.”
Caroline almost sagged with relief when he didn’t correct her speech. Her siblings and cousins meant well—probably—but they didn’t need to keep telling her that she’d put together a sentence wrong. Every minute of every day, she was already well aware of her speech patterns. Lady Jane was worse than all of them, but she was so nice it didn’t rankle that much. Usually. “Thank you.” She wiped the moisture from her forehead.
“Where is your carriage? I rather doubt Hadleigh would have let you walk or hire a hack.”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged.
“Never mind. The earl will have my head in any event once you arrive wet and bedraggled and in my company.” He huffed with apparent frustration. Caroline didn’t like it when he wasn’t smiling. “My vehicle isn’t far from here.” Then he offered an arm bent at the elbow. “Once you’re safely inside and out of the rain, you can tell me your favorite spot in the park. I don’t get up to London much, but the next time I do, I’ll visit Hyde Park again. It’s a wonderful place for reflection.”
