The Heaven that is Home

By Sharon Page

New York Times bestselling author Sharon Page introduces readers to Nigel Hazelton, the future Duke of Langford, as he leaves his home, Brideswell Abbey, and faces the dangers and horror of WW1 in this prequel novella...

Beginning with the battle of the Somme, Nigel Hazelton is thrown into the dangers of trench warfare. Memories of his home of Brideswell Abbey and the fiancee he left behind keep him alive. He has vowed to protect his sister Julia's fiance from the dangers of battle--but is that a promise he can keep?

When Nigel commits a daring act of bravery with no thought to his own safety, will his fiancee still love him despite the wounds he has suffered? Or has war changed Nigel too much...?

Read more about Nigel in An American Duchess by Sharon Page, where Nigel meets brazen American heiress and aviatrix Zoe Gifford, who intends to marry--then divorce--his wild younger brother to access her fortune and save her mother from disaster. But Nigel intends to stand in her way...

"Fans of Downton Abbey should reach for An American Duchess...Page's captivating prose evokes the Roaring Twenties with skillful and vivid detail and creates a searing romance with a timeless message." --International Bestselling author Pam Jenoff on An American Duchess

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sharon Page
• Release date: Oct 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9780987864192

Sharon Page

New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author Sharon Page graduated with a degree in Industrial Design (School of Engineering) and worked for years, by day, in the structural engineering field. By night, her secret identity was “Romance Author”. After selling her first book in 2004, Sharon has indie and traditionally published over 20 novels and novellas. Her books have won many awards including two RT Bookreviews Reviewers Choice Awards, two National Readers Choice Awards, the Colorado Award of Romance, and the Golden Quill. Sharon was nominated by RT Bookreviews in 2013 for Career Achievement in Erotic Romance. When not writing, Sharon enjoys time with her family, downhill skiing, and playing tennis. Writing romance has long been her dream and she is thrilled to share her stories. Sharon loves to hear from readers and can be reached at https://sharonpage.com/.

Book preview

The Heaven that is Home

Prequel to An American Duchess

By Sharon Page

This is a work of fiction. Incidents, names, characters, and places are the products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, business establishments, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental. 

Copyright © 2014 by Edith E. Bruce

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author (excepting short quotes for use in reviews).

ISBN: 978-0-9878641-9-2

Cover illustration: CrocoDesigns

Formatted by IRONHORSE Formatting

www.SharonPage.com

Excerpt from An American Duchess © 2014 by Edith E. Bruce ISBN: 978-0-37377929-1

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Excerpt: An American Duchess

More Books by Sharon Page:

About Sharon Page

Chapter One

The Somme, France

July 1, 1916

Through the ash and smoke, despite the pounding of shells, the deafening roar of the guns, the rain of shrapnel, Nigel Hazelton, heir to the Duke of Langford, went over the top and struggled to charge through thick mud.

Bodies lay around him, half-buried in the churned earth. The shells—thousands of them lobbed by the Allies to rip through the barbed wire—had turned no-man’s land into a quagmire. Haig thought all those shells would have torn holes in the wire and beaten down the Germans.

But it hadn’t worked.

They had not subdued the Germans. The shelling had been too spread out to smash enemy trenches and break through the wire. May Germans survived, got out of their deep defences, and manned their machine guns.

Those guns mowed down the waves of British soldiers, moving steadily across No Man’s Land. The men jerked, tried to keep moving, fell.

And still the rest had to go on.

Nigel’s heart pounded. Any moment now a bullet might slice through him. Shrapnel would rip him to shreds. A shell might tear him limb from limb. He kept fighting through the muck that sucked at his boots.

An explosion roared over his head. Instinctively Nigel ducked. Metal rained on his helmet with a sharp clatter. The shrapnel shell was designed to send bits of metal slashing into their bodies, propelled by the force of the explosive to tear their flesh to pieces. Something struck his face and he felt the hot well of blood, felt it run down his cheek.

Right behind him, a soldier let out an unearthly scream.

Holding his pistol, Nigel turned and rushed back as the man—Private Walker—sank to his knees in the mud. The lad’s Tommy helmet was knocked to the side, the brim twisted by the hail of metal bits. Walker clutched at his face. The half Nigel could see was smeared with blood.

In vain, Nigel shouted for a stretcher. No one could hear him over the constant explosions, meant to make your eardrums explode and your brain go mad until the one with your name on it finally got you.

He eased Walker’s hands away from his face. Steady on, man. We’ll get you to help.

Then he saw what was left of the boy’s face and he almost was sick. Half the face was caved in by shrapnel, leaving it a bloody mass.

Medic, Nigel shouted. I need a medic here. Now.

Walker had his hands at his face again, sobbing. The poor lad was screaming.

Hang on, Walker, he said.

My face is gone, sir. My face is gone! The nineteen-year-old’s voice rose in shrill horror.

Another shell burst, throwing mud and gore over them both. Nigel shouted again for a medic but when he turned back to Walker, the lad’s eyes were blank.

He was gone.

Sound faded into a distant roar. The booms, the cracks of rifles, the repeating howl of machine guns all turned into a dull, constant thud like a heartbeat.

I’m sorry, lad, Nigel said. But maybe the lad had been spared by dying. He’d gone on to a better place. A heaven away from this hell on earth—

Look out, sir!

Nigel jerked up at the sound and he grabbed the soldier—Corporal Cane—at the same moment the man grabbed him and they threw themselves back together.

Mud rose over them like a wave. Nigel drank in mud. Breathed it in as it washed over his nose.

All sound was far away again. He was shouting for Cane. Shouting at the top of his lungs, but he couldn’t hear.

Then all the sound rushed back in.

Cane was hollering. His lower right leg was gone. Nigel pulled Cane’s body over his shoulder. Bleeding heck with going forward. He had to get Cane to safety.

Weaving like a drunken man, with Cane’s weight making him sink down in the mud, Nigel fought his way back to the trench.

He passed so many corpses.

God, he knew their faces. They were men from his estate of Brideswell. Men from the same area had been assigned to the same regiment—one of the ‘pals’ units. They’d died together.

Nigel got Cane onto a stretcher and the medics slogged toward the field ambulance. The stretcher bearers had a tough lot in this. They were two young men, open targets for bursting shells and machine gun fire, with no weapons and their hands full.

But one of the medics had been cheerful when he’d been pressed into that duty. His regiment was waiting back in reserve and they were not to see action. This way, he’d said, I can hold my head up with me mates.

Nigel hoped the lad survived to do that.

He climbed the ladder, heading back over the top, only to step into an explosion that sent him flying back.

Into blackness.

***//***

Hours later, Nigel was in his makeshift quarters, exhausted but unhurt, going through the lists of the dead and wounded.

He had regained consciousness to learn the assault had been called off. Men were scrambling back toward the trench. Many didn’t make it. The survivors of the British regiments retreated back to their reserve line, carrying the wounded.

Getting blown into senselessness had saved his life.

There were a hell of a lot of men who hadn’t been as lucky.

Of the men in his regiment who came from the Brideswell estate, three quarters of them were gone.

In one bloody day.

One of his men, Sergeant Davis, came into his room. Nigel had invited the man for tea, made by his batman, Private Lane, who was a tenant farmer’s son from his estate. Nigel was only three years older than Lane, but the lad looked on him with awe. Even now—even after learning Nigel was as bloody scared as any other man out there.

Davis drained his tea and offered Nigel a cigarette. He took it. The smell masked the stench of rotting bodies.

Having a smoke also gave Nigel an excuse to pause in writing the list. The sheer number of names made him sick. Drawing on the cigarette, puffing out the smoke gave him a chance to steady his roiling gut.

He could see their faces. The young men of the Brideswell estate. His estate. His home.

Thank god his family was still there. He could imagine them waking up tomorrow morning. Both his younger brothers, Sebastian and Will, were away at school. His mother would be taking her breakfast on a tray in bed. Julia would come downstairs to have her breakfast with their father in the dining room.

Julia—

He had made his sister a promise. He had vowed to keep her fiancé safe. An insane promise to make—one made by a man who had no idea what he was walking into when he’d left for war. He’d done his best to keep Anthony Carstairs, son and heir to the Earl of Worthington, out of the action, but Anthony had refused to miss out on the fun, as he’d put it.

Nigel had told him he was insane.

Then Anthony’s jaunty demeanor had cracked. How can I hold my head up if I’m not out there, going through what the rest of them are going through? You aren’t making an exception for yourself, are you, Nigel? And you’re the heir to a dukedom.

He understood. He did not want special treatment. Neither did Anthony.

But somehow he had to keep his promise to his sister—

What are ye thinking about, sir?

Davis’s question jerked him back from his memory, from his mental picture of Julia coming down the grand staircase at Brideswell. Funny—he’d seen her do it thousands of times and never really noticed. Now he strained to remember every detail of Brideswell. It filled him with a longing that was close to physical pain. To the sergeant, he said, I was thinking of home.

Davis came not from the Brideswell estate, but from a neighbouring village. I can’t imagine what it’s like back there, Davis said. "Seems like something not real. Something that never existed. Like it was a dream, and now we’ve woken up and found we