Scoundrel in My Dreams

by Celeste Bradley

  This was a new Jack, harsh and deadly serious, with danger emanating from him even in sleep. He was like a lethal weapon, hammered hard by war.

  Beautiful.

  Men weren’t supposed to be beautiful, but there was no better word for the way he looked, bare and muscled and unembarrassed in his magnificence. He was splendid and virile and entirely male, while she—

  Her hand reached, but she drew it back, ashamed. Her romantic fancies seemed even more foolish against this physical confirmation of his ordeal. This man could not possibly take an interest in an inexperienced creature such as herself. Her adventures had all happened on the pages of books. Her own tribulations consisted of enduring her shallow, social-climbing parents and her vindictive sister.

  She was being absurd, like a child wishing to own a pet tiger.

  She shouldn’t be here. She should turn right around and run back to her room and keep her silly girlish fancies to her silly self.

  She bit her lip. This was no place for her, here with this beautiful, unclothed man. His barely covered form sprawled before her, so male, so potent. Fascination and fear twined through her belly, vying for supremacy. Touch . . . or flee?

  Without her truly choosing, her feet decided upon fear. With only a few running steps, she had one hand on the door latch. As humiliating as it was to realize it, she knew her proper place was back in her silly girlish bedchamber, in her silly girlish bed.

  With tears of helpless fury at her own weakness, she pressed down on the latch—

  A deep moan came from behind her. Words, muttered and intelligible, but clearly full of anguish.

  She turned.

  The man in the moonlight had changed. All sign of peaceful repose was gone. Instead, she saw him tense and twitch, the muscles in his chest and belly going tight with strain. A meaningless cry of protest came to his lips, his voice full of pain and loss.

  She drew closer to the bed, unaware of her moving feet, only responding to the pain she heard, the horror she saw etched in his tensing, twitching form.

  She licked her dry lips. “Jack?” Her whisper went unheard beneath the gasping sounds of his nightmare. Now sweat began to gleam on his skin, silver in the moonlight. His hands fisted in the sheets. She heard threads pop as they tore.

  Should she fetch someone? But who? She dared not alert her parents to her presence in a man’s bedchamber. One of the staff? What could they do that she could not?

  Wake him. “Jack!”

  He was too lost in his dreadful dream to hear her.

  Shake him.

  She had to. She couldn’t bear to see him wracked with such agony. He would know she’d entered his room . . . but she would tell him she’d been woken by his cries.

  And hope he didn’t realize that her room lay in a different wing.

  One trembling hand reached out to him. Naked man, bare skin, where . . . ? Hesitantly, her hand came to rest on his shoulder. She tried not to think about the heat of him in her palm, about the intimacy of skin to skin. She gave his shoulder a quick, brisk shake. “Jack! Wake up!”

  A thrashing hand brushed hers away. Chewing on her lip, she moved closer, lifting her wrapper and gown and bracing one knee on the mattress. She leaned down and shook his shoulder again, hard. “Jack!”

  He arched his back and cried out. She overbalanced and fell forward, landing across his broad, naked chest. Even that impact did nothing to penetrate his nightmare, though the heat of him went straight through her body.

  “Blakely—” he gasped.

  She ached for him. He called for his cousin, the one who died in battle. His best friend. No longer thinking of her own embarrassment, she pressed his trembling body down with her own and smoothed his face with her hands. “Shh. Jack, it’s all over. You’re back now. Shh. You’re safe and sound.”

  The awful thrashing eased a little. Encouraged, she continued to soothe away the rictus of pain and horror from his beautiful face. The moonlight dimmed away. The clouds were thickening. The darkness made her braver still. She dropped quick kisses to his cheeks. “Shh. Come back to me, Jack. Come back to England.”

  With every passing moment, his tension began to ease. The hot gasping of his breath began to lessen. Against her breasts she could feel his pounding heart begin to slow. She clung to him, stroking her hands through his damp hair, calling to him, whispering his name, kissing his cheeks, his forehead, his tensed and grimacing lips.

  Then, as if by accident, their lips began to cling. She didn’t even realize it at first. It felt so natural by now to lie with her body sprawled across his, her hands in his hair, her mouth on his. When his hands came up to wrap about her face and the kiss gained in strength and commitment, she had spent a little too long pressed to his long, hard naked body, a little too long smoothing his damp, muscled neck and shoulders with her hands, a little too long breathing in his scent, sharing his breath, touching and kissing and pressing. . . .

  When he rolled over onto her and deepened the kiss, it didn’t occur to her fogged senses that there was a single thing wrong with that.

  Lord John Redgrave, newly minted heir to the Marquis of Strickland, woke alone but more rested than he had been in weeks.

  For the first time in a very long time, he’d slept without nightmares. The woman he was to marry had come to comfort him in the night and her sweetly hesitant touch had taken them all away.

  As powerful as a goddess, she had even driven off the battleground memories masquerading as graphic dreams. No ghosts of blame and regret could linger in the shadows, not in the shimmering light of her giving body and hot, eager kisses.

  For the first time since the war had stolen his untainted soul and given him back nothing but black guilt and sorrow, Jack had enjoyed the carefree sleep of a man with a clear mind.

  As Jack rolled his head on the pillow he was caught by the scent of her. There was the softly floral smell of her hair, which reminded him of the way it had felt spilling over his bare chest. There was the clean, sweet smell of her skin, just a hint of woman with a top note of scented soap.

  And there was the scent of her sex, on the sheets and on him as well. His fingers tightened on the covers and he breathed deeply of the night before. Her body had been a celebration of soft mounds and sweet wet places, of open arms and welcoming thighs. Heat flashed through him, reigniting the ember he’d thought had gone cold forever.

  Heat . . . and simple warmth as well.

  He kept his eyes closed for a moment longer, savoring the memories—the taste of her soft, inexperienced mouth, the way her trembling hands had caressed him as her dark hair spilled across his chest like warm silk, how she’d clung to him when he’d carefully entered her at last. . . .

  Sitting up, he flipped back his bed linens to reveal the telltale smear of her virginity on the sheets. “Hmm.” Mingled embarrassment and pride of possession twined through him.

  My woman. Mine.

  He smoothed the covers back again. He probably ought to speak to her father before some overeager maid tattled on them both.

  When he had returned to England some weeks ago as a shadow of himself, dreading taking his dead cousin’s place as heir, Jack had tried without success to take up the strings of that life. Now, it seemed almost possible, if he could so with her at his side.

  With her hand in his, perhaps he could at last face his uncle, the marquis, the man who had been father and more to him, and not feel the ghost of Blakely behind him, watching Jack take the place that had been rightfully his.

  Perhaps, with a loving and generous bride at Jack’s side, the war would someday slip into the past where it belonged and he could see a future untainted with gunpowder and death.

  With something almost like a smile teasing at the corners of Jack’s mouth, he washed and dressed quickly. Matters had most definitely taken a turn for the better.

  Matters couldn’t be worse.

  “I don’t understand, sir.” Jack tried to keep his anguish hidden, but his voice growled ev
er so slightly on the “sir,” causing the jowly Mr. Clarke to shoot him a wary glance. “She cannot possibly wed the Earl of Compton. She’s engaged to me!”

  Mr. Clarke harrumphed indignantly but avoided Jack’s desperate gaze. “That was a sentimental promise given by a young girl to a soldier going off to war.” He wrapped his fingers around his own lapels and rocked back on his heels, lifting his chin pompously. “There was no official marriage contract.”

  “A sentimental promise,” Jack was trying very hard to remain calm, “is a promise nonetheless. For you to insist that she wed some hoary old goat simply for your own financial gain—”

  “But Jack, I wish to marry Compton.” Amaryllis’s voice, light but decisive, preceded her into her father’s study.

  Jack turned even as his heart began to pound eagerly. Then her words penetrated his fervent haze. He stared at her, stunned. She stood framed in the doorway, a cool and perfect version of the sweetly passionate girl he’d made love to the night before. Now her cloud of nearly black hair was swept artfully into a knot, with only small, tempting tendrils free to caress her cheekbones. Those restless, roving hands that had driven him wild only a few hours ago were clasped calmly before her. If he’d roughened her neck with his beard stubble while he’d lost himself in her, there was no flush of pink remaining upon that flawless ivory skin.

  “Darling—” He stepped forward, unable to stop himself, yet when her gaze met his he saw nothing in her eyes for him. She tilted her head and gazed at him as if nothing untoward had occurred at all. His steps faltered, then stopped.

  Amaryllis crossed the room to stand with her father. The two of them faced him coolly, as if he were an inconvenient caller or, worse, a tradesman outstaying his welcome.

  Everything he’d felt the night before came boiling up within him, threatening to spill from his lips—except that somewhere on those fields of fire and blood and death he’d forgotten how to use the glib tongue he’d been born with.

  When he’d come home from the war midsummer, his friends had encouraged him to attend this house party. They’d hoped, as he had, that seeing the girl he’d loved would remind him of the man he’d been before he’d left for war. As the family had abandoned London for a house party in Sussex, he’d followed her here. Once arrived, however, he found it impossible to join in, found it difficult to remember why the old amusements had been amusing. He felt as if he were in a glass bubble, trying to reach out, unable to touch anyone. His very presence merely seemed to make people uncomfortable.

  He’d felt this very coolness from her every day since he’d arrived at this house party. He’d begun to wonder if she was purposely avoiding him or if she was simply distracted by her new role as hostess while her mother lay ill. He’d tried to speak to her, tried to remember the easy teasing banter they’d once shared, but his brain felt like a stranger’s brain and his tongue a stranger’s tongue. If he wanted to say something, he couldn’t remember what, and if he could remember, he didn’t know how to make it fall from his lips in a normal manner. He felt like a foreigner in his own world, new and raw and underinformed.

  And at the moment, entirely confused. When she’d come to him last night, offering comfort, it had been the first moment of true connection he’d felt. He’d taken the comfort she’d offered, taken it greedily and thankfully, for were they not already engaged?

  It seemed the answer was no, they were not.

  Amaryllis averted her eyes from his wondering gaze and lifted her chin. “The Earl of Compton is an admirable catch,” she said in a distant tone. “I think we shall do very well together.”

  “You said . . . I came back. . . . You promised—” Blast it, his mouth was not connected to his brain! He took a deep breath, but she was already answering his blathering.

  “I’m terribly sorry if you received a wrong impression from my friendship,” she said carefully. “I intended no such confusion.” The words sounded a bit rehearsed.

  Perhaps he ought to rehearse himself, for he could find nothing to say except for the one thing a gentleman never ought to say.

  “I compromised you!”

  Her eyes widened and her mouth opened, but Jack never had the chance to hear what she had to say in response, for Mr. Clarke had had enough. He stepped between them, looking very much like a deeply offended bulldog.

  “Now see here, my lord, if you’re going to spout lies, I’m going to have to ask you to leave!”

  It’s not a lie. He pleaded to her with his eyes, helplessly inarticulate. Tell him!

  She said nothing. He felt the breath leave his lungs as the truth finally struck. She had her eye on a bigger prize now. A prize who, though old, was rich and titled, something Jack would not be until his uncle breathed his last—which could take many years.

  Yet he could not let it go, could not walk away. That night, that single night of humanity when he’d thought his soul lost forever—how could he let that go without a fight? However, when he protested, the dams of sanity cracked ever so slightly.

  “You cannot do this!” he shouted at them both. “I will not stand aside!” He turned his fury on her, making her take a step backward in alarm. “How can you—after what we’ve shared?”

  He was to have no answer to that. Amaryllis simply stood there, color high in her cheeks, blue eyes flashing with contempt, as two sturdy footmen took him by the arms. He fought them, unable to stop himself, all the fury and rage of the battlefield taking over his mind. In his blurred and shattered memory later, the only things he clearly remembered were the way the gravel scraped his palms as he sprawled on the drive in front of the house, the way every window and doorway of the house was filled with the shocked, voracious eyes of the guests and staff, and a single final glimpse of those wide, horrified blue eyes, crying as if she finally realized what she’d done.

  When he returned to London, the battle haze continued. He drank and brawled, brawled and drank, until the night two months later when he ended up sitting on the edge of a rooftop, his boots dangling over empty space and an empty whiskey bottle in his grip, contemplating heights and weights and drop velocities and how long it would take to reach eternity.

  Even when his friends managed to talk a bit of sense into him, it was only enough to send him off to sail the seas, trying to forget the woman who had shown him his single hope for salvation, only to snatch it away again.

  One

  England, nearly four years later . . .

  Jack walked slowly off the gangplank of the Honor’s Thunder, a simple valise hanging from one hand. The sailors glanced up to watch him pass, a few nodding respectfully, but none exchanged a single word with him. There was no reason for them to. He was not really the captain. A salty fellow with many more years at sea had that esteemed title. Nor was Jack truly the owner, although he would be someday. He was simply “milord,” and only spoken to when necessary.

  When he stepped at last upon the soil of England, where he had not walked for more than two years—or had it been three?—the ground seemed to lurch beneath his feet.

  I have sea legs.

  It would take a few days to regain his land legs, he recalled dully. Land legs. England legs.

  Would that those legs could turn around and stride back onto the ship. He had not returned in a long time because he did not wish to. Even now, it was only a cryptic fragment of a letter from his old friend Aidan de Quincy, the Earl of Blankenship, that prompted Jack to leave the ship at all.

  The letter had awaited Jack right here in the East India Docks of London, pinned up in the dockmaster’s office in appalling condition. The man had handed it to Jack with an apologetic shrug. It was crumpled and so stained with seawater that the ink had run illegibly through most of the paper. If Jack had not recognized the signet pressed into the wax seal, he’d scarcely have been able to tell from whence it came. The letter looked as though it had followed him halfway around the world, only to await him at home.

  When he’d unfolded the stiffened paper, o
nly a few startling words had remained.

  “Return at once” and “your [something unreadable] awaits you here” and last but most alarmingly “you cannot flee from her forever.”

  Her.

  Aidan could not mean her. Not the woman who still kept Jack awake long into the night, standing alone on the deck of the ship while the stars hung almost close enough to touch. Not the woman whose soft sighs and sweet whispers still filled his ears, keeping him from hearing any inviting hints from other women.

  It was impossible that Aidan meant her. Jack had never told anyone what had happened at the Clarkes’ house party nearly four years ago and he was quite certain that the Clarke family themselves would never speak a word of it.

  Yet even the slightest possibility had pulled Jack away from his numbing routine, had compelled him to step foot upon the chill, unwelcoming shores of England.

  Damned bloody coldhearted England.

  As Jack walked down the docks through the wisps of dawn fog, managing to counter his sea legs and maintain his dignity in this at least, he refused to see her in the mist. Those whorls of shimmering fog did not remind him of the sweet curves of her body in the moonlight. The color of the brightening sky did not bring to mind the cloudless blue of her eyes.

  As he walked on and the hour grew later, the morning breeze did not make him recall the nearly black silk of her hair brushing over his skin as she trailed kisses down his body.

  No, he would not think of her.

  After all, he had not thought of her in years.

  The door to Brown’s was untended, standing open in the morning sunlight to reveal a dark rectangle of shadowy interior. Jack blinked slowly at it, more weary than he could recall being in a very long time. Numb and weary and damned bloody cold, yet here he stood, home again.

  Brown’s Club for Distinguished Gentlemen was the closest thing he had to a home. Some ancestor had been a founding member, and although the membership tended toward the silver haired and stick wielding, Jack had sponsored his friends so they could all enjoy the quiet surroundings and excellent service of Brown’s.