Bridgerton Collection Volume 1 (Bridgertons)

by Julia Quinn

“Well, that, too,” she admitted. “It was quite enlightening.”

  “I’m sure it was,” he muttered. Then, with a very wicked smile, he nudged her chin until they were nose to nose. “Do you know what else I think?” he said huskily.

  Her eyes widened. “I’m sure I can’t imagine.”

  “I think,” he said, one of his hands creeping under her dress and slithering up her leg, “that if we don’t go upstairs this instant, I might be content to remain right here.”

  “Here?” she squeaked.

  His hand found the edge of her stockings. “Here,” he affirmed.

  “Now?”

  His fingers tickled her soft thatch of hair, then sank into the very core of her womanhood. She was soft and wet and felt like heaven. “Oh, most definitely now,” he said.

  “Here?”

  He nibbled on her lips. “Didn’t I already answer that question?”

  And if she had any further questions, she didn’t voice them for the next hour.

  Or maybe it was just that he was trying his damnedest to rob her of speech.

  And if a man could judge from the little squeals and mewls that slipped from her mouth, he was doing a ripping good job.

  Chapter 19

  Lady Mottram’s annual ball was a crush, as always, but society watchers could not fail to note that Lord and Lady Bridgerton did not make an appearance. Lady Mottram insists that they had promised to attend, and This Author can only speculate as to what kept the newlyweds at home . . .

  LADY WHISTLEDOWN’S SOCIETY PAPERS, 13 JUNE 1814

  Much later that night, Anthony was lying on his side in bed, cradling his wife, who had snuggled her back up to his front and was presently sleeping soundly.

  Which was fortunate, he realized, because it had started to rain.

  He tried to nudge the covers up over her exposed ear so that she would not hear the drops beating against the windows, but she was as fidgety in sleep as she was when awake, and he could not manage to pull the coverlet much above the level of her neck before she shook it off.

  He couldn’t yet tell whether the storm would grow electrical in nature, but the force of the rain had increased, and the wind had picked up until it howled through the night, rattling the tree branches against the side of the house.

  Kate was growing a little more restless at his side, and he made shhhh-ing sounds as he smoothed her hair with his hand. The storm hadn’t woken her up, but it had definitely intruded upon her slumber. She had begun to mumble in her sleep, tossing and turning until she was curled on her opposite side, facing him.

  “What happened to make you hate the rain so?” he whispered, tucking one dark lock of hair behind her ear. But he did not judge her for her terrors; he knew well the frustration of unfounded fears and premonitions. His certainty of his own impending death, for example, had haunted him since the moment he’d picked up his father’s limp hand and laid it gently on his unmoving chest.

  It wasn’t something he could explain, or even something he could understand. It was just something he knew.

  He’d never feared death, though, not really. The knowledge of it had been a part of him for so long that he merely accepted it, just as other men accepted the other truths that made up the cycle of life. Spring followed winter, and summer after that. For him, death was much the same way.

  Until now. He’d been trying to deny it, trying to shut the niggling notion from his mind, but death was beginning to show a frightening face.

  His marriage to Kate had sent his life down an alternate path, no matter how much he tried to convince himself that he could restrict their marriage to nothing but friendship and sex.

  He cared about her. He cared about her far too much. He craved her company when they were apart, and he dreamed about her at night, even as he held her in his arms.

  He wasn’t ready to call it love, but it terrified him all the same.

  And whatever it was that burned between them, he didn’t want it to end.

  Which was, of course, the cruelest irony of all.

  Anthony closed his eyes as he let out a weary and nervous exhale, wondering what the hell he was going to do about the complication that lay beside him in the bed. But even while his eyes were shut, he saw the flash of lightning that lit up the night, turning the black of the inside of his eyelids into a bloody red-orange.

  Opening his eyes, he saw that they’d left the drapes partway open when they’d retired to bed earlier in the evening. He’d have to shut those; they’d help to keep the lightning from illuminating the room.

  But when he shifted his weight and tried to nudge his way out from under the covers, Kate grabbed his arm, her fingers pressing frantically into his muscles.

  “Shhhh, now, it’s all right,” he whispered, “I’m only going to close the drapes.”

  But she did not let go, and the whimper that escaped her lips when a clap of thunder shook the night nearly broke his heart.

  A pale sliver of moonlight filtered through the window, just enough to illuminate the tense, drawn lines of her face. Anthony peered down to assure himself that she was still sleeping, then pried her hands from his arm and got up to close the drapes. He suspected that the flashes of lightning would still sneak into the room, though, so when he was done with the drapes, he lit a lone candle and set it on his nightstand. It didn’t give off enough light to wake her up—at least he hoped it wouldn’t—but at the same time it saved the room from utter blackness.

  And there was nothing quite so startling as a streak of lightning cutting through utter blackness.

  He crawled back into bed and regarded Kate. She was still sleeping, but not peacefully. She’d curled into a semi-fetal position and her breathing was labored. The lightning didn’t seem to bother her much, but every time the room shook with thunder she flinched.

  He took her hand and smoothed her hair, and for several minutes he simply lay with her, trying to soothe her as she slept. But the storm was increasing in intensity, with the thunder and lightning practically coming on top of each other. Kate was growing more restless by the second, and then, as a particularly loud clap of thunder exploded in the air, her eyes flew open, her face a mask of utter panic.

  “Kate?” Anthony whispered.

  She sat up, scrambling back until her spine was pressed against the solid headboard of the bed. She looked like a statue of terror, her body stiff and frozen into place. Her eyes were still open, barely blinking, and though she did not move her head, they flicked frantically back and forth, scanning the entire room, but not seeing anything.

  “Oh, Kate,” he whispered. This was far, far worse than what she’d been through that night in the library at Aubrey Hall. And he could feel the force of her pain slicing right through his heart.

  No one should feel terror like this. And especially not his wife.

  Moving slowly, so as not to startle her, he made his way to her side, then carefully laid an arm over her shoulders. She was shaking, but she did not push him away.

  “Are you even going to remember any of this in the morning?” he whispered.

  She made no response, but then, he hadn’t expected her to.

  “There, there,” he said gently, trying to remember the soothing nonsense words his mother used whenever one of her children was upset. “It’s all right now. You’ll be fine.”

  Her tremors seemed to slow a bit, but she was still very clearly disturbed, and when the next clap of thunder shook the room, her entire body flinched, and she buried her face in the crook of her neck.

  “No,” she moaned, “no, no.”

  “Kate?” Anthony blinked several times, then gazed at her intently. She sounded different, not awake but more lucid, if that was possible.

  “No, no.”

  And she sounded very . . .

  “No, no, don’t go.”

  . . . young.

  “Kate?” He held her tightly, unsure of what to do. Should he wake her? Her eyes might be open, but she was clearly asleep and
dreaming. Part of him longed to break her of her nightmare, but once she woke, she’d still be in the same place—in bed in the middle of a horrible electrical storm. Would she even feel any better?

  Or should he let her sleep? Perhaps if she rode out the nightmare he might actually gain some idea as to what had caused her terror.

  “Kate?” he whispered, as if she herself might actually give him a clue as to how to proceed.

  “No,” she moaned, growing more agitated by the second. “Nooooo.”

  Anthony pressed his lips to her temple, trying to soothe her with his presence.

  “No, please.. . .” She started to sob, her body racked with huge gasps of air as her tears drenched his shoulder. “No, oh, no . . . Mama!”

  Anthony stiffened. He knew that Kate always referred to her stepmother as Mary. Could she actually be speaking of her true mother, the woman who had given her life and then died so many years ago?

  But as he pondered that question, Kate’s entire body stiffened and she let out a shrill, high-pitched scream.

  The scream of a very young girl.

  In an instant, she turned about, and then she leaped into his arms, grabbing at him, clutching his shoulders with a terrifying desperation. “No, Mama,” she wailed, her entire body heaving from the exertion of her cries. “No, you can’t go! Oh, Mama Mama Mama Mama Mama Mama . . .”

  If Anthony hadn’t had his back to the headboard, she would have knocked him over, the force of her fervor was that strong.

  “Kate?” he blurted out, surprised by the slight note of panic in his voice. “Kate? It’s all right. You’re all right. You’re fine. Nobody is going anywhere. Do you hear me? No one.”

  But her words had melted away, and all that was left was the low sound of a weeping that came from deep in her soul. Anthony held her, and then when she’d calmed a bit, he eased her down until she was lying on her side again, and then he held her some more, until she drifted back into sleep.

  Which, he noticed ironically, was right about the time the last of the thunder and lightning split the room.

  When Kate woke the following morning, she was surprised to see her husband sitting up in bed, staring down at her with the oddest look . . . a combination of concern, and curiosity, and maybe even the barest hint of pity. He didn’t say anything when her eyes opened, even though she could see that he was watching her face intently. She waited, to see what he would do, and then finally she just said, somewhat hesitantly, “You look tired.”

  “I didn’t sleep well,” he admitted.

  “You didn’t?”

  He shook his head. “It rained.”

  “It did?”

  He nodded. “And thundered.”

  She swallowed nervously. “And lightninged as well, I suppose.”

  “It did,” he said, nodding again. “It was quite a storm.”

  There was something very profound in the way he was speaking in short, concise sentences, something that raised the hair on the back of her neck. “H-how fortunate that I missed it, then,” she said. “You know I don’t do well with strong storms.”

  “I know,” he said simply.

  But there was a wealth of meaning behind those two short words, and Kate felt her heartbeat speed up slightly. “Anthony,” she asked, not certain she wanted to know the answer, “what happened last night?”

  “You had a nightmare.”

  She closed her eyes for a second. “I didn’t think I had those any longer.”

  “I didn’t realize you’d ever suffered from nightmares.”

  Kate let out a long exhale and sat up, pulling the covers along with her and tucking them under arms. “When I was small. Whenever it stormed, I’m told. I don’t know for a fact; I never remembered anything. I thought I’d—” She had to stop for a moment; her throat felt like it was closing up, and her words seemed to choke her.

  He reached out and took her hand. It was a simple gesture, but somehow it touched her heart far more than any words would have done. “Kate?” he asked quietly. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded. “I thought I’d stopped, that’s all.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment, and the room was so quiet that Kate was sure she could hear both of their heartbeats. Finally, she heard the slight rush of indrawn breath across Anthony’s lips, and he asked, “Did you know that you speak in your sleep?”

  She hadn’t been facing him, but at that comment, her head jerked quite suddenly to the right, her eyes colliding with his. “I do?”

  “You did last night.”

  Her fingers clutched the coverlet. “What did I say?”

  He hesitated, but when his words emerged, they were steady and even. “You called out to your mother.”

  “Mary?” she whispered.

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’ve never heard you call Mary anything but Mary; last night you were crying for ‘Mama.’ You sounded . . .” He paused and took a slightly ragged breath. “You sounded quite young.”

  Kate licked her lips, then chewed on the bottom one. “I don’t know what to tell you,” she finally said, afraid to press into the deepest recesses of her memory. “I have no idea why I’d be calling out to my mother.”

  “I think,” he said gently, “that you should ask Mary.”

  Kate gave her head a quick and immediate shake. “I didn’t even know Mary when my mother died. Neither did my father. She couldn’t know why I was calling out to her.”

  “Your father might have told her something,” he said, lifting her hand to his lips and giving it a reassuring kiss.

  Kate let her eyes drop to her lap. She wanted to understand why she was so afraid of the storms, but prying into one’s deepest fears was almost as terrifying as the fear itself. What if she discovered something she didn’t want to know? What if—

  “I’ll go with you,” Anthony said, breaking into her thoughts.

  And somehow that made everything all right.

  Kate looked to him and nodded, tears in her eyes.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you so much.”

  Later that day, the two of them walked up the steps to Mary’s small townhouse. The butler showed them into the drawing room, and Kate sat on the familiar blue sofa while Anthony walked over to the window, leaning on the sill as he peered out.

  “See something interesting?” she asked.

  He shook his head, smiling sheepishly as he turned to face her. “I just like looking out windows, that’s all.”

  Kate thought there was something awfully sweet about that, although she couldn’t really put her finger on what. Every day seemed to reveal some new little quirk to his character, some uniquely endearing habit that bound them ever closer. She liked knowing strange little things about him, like how he always doubled up his pillow before going to sleep, or that he detested orange marmalade but adored the lemon.

  “You look rather introspective.”

  Kate jerked to attention. Anthony was staring at her quizzically. “You drifted off,” he said with an amused expression, “and you had the dreamiest smile on your face.”

  She shook her head, blushed, and mumbled, “It was nothing.”

  His answering snort was dubious, and as he walked over to the sofa, he said, “I’d give a hundred pounds for those thoughts.”

  Kate was saved from having to comment by Mary’s entrance. “Kate!” Mary exclaimed. “What a lovely surprise. And Lord Bridgerton, how nice to see you both.”

  “You really should call me Anthony,” he said somewhat gruffly.

  Mary smiled as he took her hand in greeting. “I shall endeavor to remember to do so,” she said. She sat across from Kate, then waited for Anthony to take his place on the sofa before saying, “Edwina is out, I’m afraid. Her Mr. Bagwell came rather unexpectedly down to town. They’ve gone for a walk in the park.”

  “We should lend them Newton,” Anthony said affably. “A more capable chaperone I cannot imagine.”

  “We actually cam
e to see you, Mary,” Kate said.

  Kate’s voice held an uncommon note of seriousness, and Mary responded instantly. “What is it?” she asked, her eyes flicking back and forth from Kate to Anthony. “Is everything all right?”

  Kate nodded, swallowing as she searched for the right words. Funny how she’d been rehearsing what to ask all morning, and now she was speechless. But then she felt Anthony’s hand on hers, the weight and the warmth of it strangely comforting, and she looked up and said to Mary, “I’d like to ask you about my mother.”

  Mary looked a little startled, but she said, “Of course. But you know that I did not know her personally. I only know what your father told me of her.”

  Kate nodded. “I know. And you might not have the answers to any of my questions, but I don’t know who else to ask.”

  Mary shifted in her seat, her hands clasped primly in her lap. But Kate noticed that her knuckles had gone white.

  “Very well,” Mary said. “What is it you wish to learn? You know that I will tell you anything I know.”

  Kate nodded again and swallowed, her mouth having gone dry. “How did she die, Mary?”

  Mary blinked, then sagged slightly, perhaps with relief. “But you know that already. It was influenza. Or some sort of lung fever. The doctors were never certain.”

  “I know, but . . .” Kate looked to Anthony, who gave her a reassuring nod. She took a deep breath and plunged on. “I’m still afraid of storms, Mary. I want to know why. I don’t want to be afraid any longer.”

  Mary’s lips parted, but she was silent for many seconds as she stared at her stepdaughter. Her skin slowly paled, taking on an odd, translucent hue, and her eyes grew haunted. “I didn’t realize,” she whispered. “I didn’t know you still—”

  “I hid it well,” Kate said softly.

  Mary reached up and touched her temple, her hands shaking. “If I’d known, I’d have . . .” Her fingers moved to her forehead, smoothing over worry lines as she fought for words. “Well, I don’t know what I’d have done. Told you, I suppose.”

  Kate’s heart stopped. “Told me what?”

  Mary let out a long breath, both of her hands at her face now, pressing against the upper edge of her eye sockets. She looked as if she had a terrible headache, the weight of the world pounding against her skull, from the inside out.