Кейси Майклс – Lords of Scandal: The Beleaguered Lord Bourne / The Enterprising Lord Edward (страница 14)
“You are not going to fight me on this?” Jennie asked incredulously, finding it hard to accept this easy victory.
“I be fond of my own skin, I be,” the earl quipped in imitation of Tiny’s peculiar phrasing, “and I be leery of your setting your great giant after me if I refuse.”
Kit’s magnanimity, as well as the lingering softness she felt for him after their embrace, combined to put a smile back on Jennie’s face. “Should I spare you more surprises and tell you about the rest of the staff?”
The Earl of Bourne, that so beset and beleaguered man, merely shook his head in denial. “In consideration of my sanity, pet, I believe you should refrain from such an inventory and leave me to discover them one at a time. Although I cannot imagine that anything can surprise me anymore.” Turning to quit the room, he added one last thought. “Other females content themselves collecting bric-a-brac, y’know. But I guess that would be too tame a hobby for you, wouldn’t it, kitten?”
He left then, taking her furious blush as his answer, and went in search of his valet and a hot tub, leaving Jennie alone in the drawing room to relieve his kiss and her daring response to it.
“Tonight, my infant,” he whispered under his breath as he climbed the wide stairs. “Tonight we will resume what Charity, that ‘poor, dear thing’ you have taken under your wing, interrupted. It is more than time I began acting the husband.”
THE HEADACHE that had been the excuse Jennie offered in order to get out of dining with her husband that evening became a reality a few hours later. Pacing alone in her bedchamber (having effectively banished Bundy and Goldie with her tearful pleas to be left alone in her misery), Jennie’s abused head rang with her companions’ parting words that echoed over and over in her ears: “You’ll have to face up to your actions sooner or later, missy.”
Jennie tossed her head arrogantly as she tried to dismiss Bundy’s words. “No, I don’t,” she denied aloud. “I can go home to Papa and never set foot in London again.” Her triumphant grin faded abruptly as she realized her title-conscious father would send her back to London so fast her feet wouldn’t touch the ground.
“I can take refuge in a convent,” she announced to the empty room, then made a face as she realized the absurdity of such a move. “Well, what else can I do?” she asked her reflection in the full-length mirror. “I can’t very well disguise myself as a man and ship out on some vessel bound for India. I get seasick on the pond at home.” She leaned her forehead against the cool glass. “Maybe I’ll just hide away in here until I go into a decline and Kit loses interest.” She raised her head slightly to look into her own eyes. “Oh, fudge!” she exclaimed pettishly and turned away from her reflection.
Tossing her dressing gown across a chair, she crawled into bed, pulled the covers over her head, and tried to find peace in a good night’s sleep.
Three hours later, still tossing and turning in her rumpled bed, Jennie heard Kit’s footsteps climb the stairs and halt outside her door. She held her breath for an eternity of time before his footsteps moved on down the hallway to his own door, then tried to ignore the sound of Kit’s voice as Leon helped the earl in his preparations before retiring. It wasn’t until the valet could be heard closing the door behind him on his way out that Jennie felt she could relax at last, and it wasn’t long until sleep overcame her.
It wasn’t her name that was being called, Jennie realized. It just sounded like it to her sleep-fuzzed mind. Her bare toes hit the floor as she involuntarily responded to the anguish in Kit’s voice—for she could tell it was her husband who was calling out, probably in the throes of a nightmare—and, being Jennie, she had no other thought but to go to him and comfort him, her dressing gown left behind forgotten on the chair.
Swinging open the connecting door between their chambers, the door that had remained firmly closed all the time they had resided in Berkeley Square, she stumbled through the dim light cast by the full moon out that night and made her way to the side of the large bed. Fumbling with the familiar implements, she at last lit the candle next to Kit’s bed, and her husband’s face came into view—a face ravaged with some pain that twisted his features and drove his clenched fists into the mattress on either side of his body.
She reached out her hands and shook his shoulders. “Kit. Kit!” she whispered loudly. “Kit, wake up. You’re having a nightmare.” But Kit was too far away to hear her, his mind locked in some hellish place her voice could not reach. Again, Jennie didn’t think; again, she acted. She crawled into the bed and put her arms around his thrashing body, pressing her cheek next to his, and began to croon softly, as one would to a distraught child.
“Denny!” Kit breathed, seeming to quiet a bit. “I knew I could find you. The cannon—where did they all come from? Ambush, Denny, caught napping.” Kit’s hands reached up and clamped themselves around Jennie’s slim form. “So much blood, Denny. Ah, my side. It hurts like hell. Where’s Denny? He was next to me when the ball hit. Denny?” Kit’s muscles tightened, and Jennie nearly cried out in pain as his grip punished her soft flesh.
She watched anxiously as his eyes blinked once, twice, and then seemed to focus on her face. His hands, crushing her upper arms in their superior strength, relaxed slightly. “It was just a dream, Kit. A nightmare.”
Kit’s chest was heaving as he struggled to regain control over himself. “Dreaming,” he rasped, taking a deep, shuddering breath and letting it out slowly. “Only a dream, only a dream,” he parroted, giving his head a slight shake. He reached down somewhere deep inside himself and summoned up a small smile. “And you came to wake me up and chase the bogeymen away. Thank you, kitten.”
Leon and Renfrew, standing in the hallway in their nightclothes, exchanged glances and turned away, each returning to his own bed, to think his own thoughts. The valet’s hand had been on the doorknob when Renfrew restrained him, shaking his head silently and cocking his head toward the door and mouthing, “Listen.” They heard Jennie’s voice struggling to be heard over Kit’s cries, and both men waited, Leon barely resisting the urge to comfort his friend and master, and Renfrew silently praying that the near strangers on the other side of the heavy wooden door might learn more about each other before this night was over.
Never knowing the two servants had been outside the door, Jennie and Kit, their emotions heightened by the events of the past few minutes were suddenly tinglingly aware that they were alone in the near dark, lying side by side on a bed, their arms wrapped around each other. When Jennie, in her nervousness, squirmed slightly, the movement brought their bodies even closer together, a fact Kit was not backward in realizing.
“Thank you, kitten,” he breathed into her hair. “I must have given you quite a fright.”
“Hrummmph, umm-wumpum.” Jennie’s mouth, pressed firmly against his bare neck, garbled her words, and Kit responded by chuckling deep in his throat. “What was that?” he asked, moving his head away only marginally in order to look into her face.
“I said, ‘You’re welcome,’” Jennie repeated, flushing hotly under his intense gaze. Pushing against his shoulders with her hands she tried to rise, mumbling rather incoherently about returning to her own chamber.
“But what if I should have another nightmare?” Kit questioned, using his own hands to push her back down against him. Then, all traces of humor leaving his voice, he asked her softly, “What was I dreaming about, kitten? I never remember much, although I’m fairly certain it’s the same dream over and over again. Leon wakes me, my throat raw with screaming, my body drenched in sweat, but I can’t remember anything but this—this feeling of terror.”
He looked so lost, so vulnerable. Jennie could no more leave him than she could turn away a starving child. Allowing herself to be gathered against his chest, she whispered, “You called for someone named Denny. At first, when you woke me, I thought you were calling my name.” As soon as she began speaking Kit had grown rigid under her, and she knew he was upset. “Who is…was…Denny? Was he a friend?”
“Lord Denton Lowell. The closest friend, the only friend any one man could ever need or want,” Kit told her in a low voice. “He, er, he died on the Peninsula.”