Borrowed Dreams (Scottish Dream Trilogy) (25 page)

Millicent had given in to his
request of spending the night in his bed. As odd as it felt, she was his wife,
after all. And last night had been special for her, too. What harm could
possibly come of it if she were to crawl beneath the sheets after he was
asleep? She could keep a safe distance between them.

Looking at how close they were now,
Millicent realized that her assumptions had been wrong. She’d intentionally had
slept on the right side of the bed so that his good arm would not inadvertently
brush against her body. But he had rolled toward her and, as she watched, his
left arm reached out and came to rest across her back.

His regular breathing told her that
Lyon was sound asleep, and Millicent laid her head back down on the pillow.
She could not sleep, though. She had never spent the entire night in a man’s
bed. She lay there as the dawn’s light slowly brightened the chamber, studying
her husband’s face. 

He had a high, intelligent forehead
and a straight nose. The closed lids and long, dark lashes hid the eyes that
turned a dozen different shades of blue, depending on his mood. Millicent
wondered what the man looked like without his beard. There was no doubt in her
mind, though, that Lyon Pennington would be the handsomest man she’d ever seen.
Like some lowly mortal facing a god, Millicent knew she would probably just
want to run away and hide.

And that would only be right.  Then
he would not need to face the humiliation of introducing her as his wife.

Millicent knew very well the ways
of the social world Lyon inhabited. She had been an eager eighteen-year-old
when she was introduced into the marital meat market of the London
ton
,
but that eagerness had soon worn off. Suitors had barely looked at her. She had
been too plain. She had been too thin. She had been too quiet. She had been too
clever. She had been too everything but special. Gentlemen like Lyon
Pennington—those whose fortunes and accomplishments and looks and manners
placed them in airy realms far above the rest—did not even notice her. The ones
who did were penniless boors who saw only the size of her dowry as an
enticement.

The years of healthy living and a
suitable education and a good family name were not enough. Millicent’s
self-confidence quickly drained away. Soon relegated to that wall of aging
spinsters, she had suffered through five London Seasons of mortification. Then,
at the advanced age of twenty-three, she had watched her uncle step in. He
would have sold Millicent to the very devil just to get her off his hands. In
fact, that was exactly what he did.

Millicent closed her eyes to halt
the welling tears. She couldn’t live with herself if Lyon should wake up now
and see her like this. She was finished with self-pity. After Wentworth’s
death, she had found surprising strength by standing on her own two feet. This
was how she wanted the Earl of Aytoun to remember her when they parted ways.
Let him remember her strength, she thought.

She rolled slowly until her back
was to him. Before she could slip out of the bed, however, his arm curled
around her waist. Gently, he pulled her slowly back against his chest.
Millicent didn’t protest. She didn’t make a sound but simply waited. Looking
over her shoulder, she found him still asleep. 

He whispered something again in his
sleep and then—to her utter surprise—one of his legs moved, sliding over the
top of hers. Her shift had ridden up in the night, and she could feel his warm
skin touching her thigh. Millicent rolled toward him, not believing what had
just happened. Perhaps this was all a dream. But he continued to move until she
found herself lying flat on her back with half of her husband’s sleeping body
draped over her.

He had moved his leg
. She
did not dare to breathe. Stunned by the discovery, Millicent felt her mind reeling
with thoughts of how she was going to awaken him—how she was going to tell him.
The impact of his ability to move his leg—and what his reaction would be—had
her spirits soaring. Ohenewaa had been correct. She’d said that the decision to
heal lay with Lyon himself.

Her heart pounded with excitement,
and she turned her head on the pillow to awaken him. His face was only inches
away from hers. She could tell he was caught in the middle of a dream. His brow
was furrowed and he was whispering again, words that she could make no sense
of.

“Lyon,” she whispered softly
against his lips.

His body jerked once in his sleep,
and the arm that was curled around her stomach moved. Millicent felt his hand
drop to the edge of her shift. Lyon’s leg moved again, rubbing against the
sensitive skin of her bare thigh.

Millicent felt her throat go dry.
Her voice was barely audible when she whispered his name again. He didn’t
awaken, but his hand slipped beneath her nightgown and moved upward with
maddening slowness, along her thigh, her hip, the curves and hollows of her
stomach, until he was cupping her breast.

A dozen times along that slow
journey, she nearly grasped his hand, stopped him. A dozen times, though, she
held back, unable to decide what she wanted more—to be touched by this man or
to be free of any man’s touch. 

Her heart was hammering fiercely at
the walls of her chest. A tight knot of fire had coiled itself somewhere in her
middle, and Millicent found herself arching her back ever so slightly, pressing
into his hand. The heat awakened by the simple touch, the sensitivity of her
body to his caress, thrilled her. She edged closer to him, and Lyon’s hand brushed lightly across the sensitive areola of her breast, making her nipple
harden in response. Suddenly she knew she didn’t want him to stop.

“Lyon.” Millicent turned her face
to him and brushed her lips against his. He stretched slightly, and his hand
came to life on her body. He ran his fingers down over her belly and then up
again to explore her breasts, feeling the fullness of one and then traveling to
the other. His gentle touch was enough to make her breathe in sharply. Her body
was quivering with excitement, and she felt herself growing moist. He seemed to
be awakening, but Millicent found herself praying desperately that he wouldn’t
push her away once he opened his eyes.

She kissed him again, this time
using her tongue to tease the seam of his lips. He emitted a groan in his
sleep, and her shivers gave way to shudders as she felt him gently pinch an
erect nipple.

When Lyon’s hand left her breast
and moved down her belly to the small triangle of hair at the junction of her
thighs, her head rolled back on the pillow. She stared at the gray of the
ceiling, and her lips parted slightly. Instinctively, her hips rose against his
hand, and her legs opened for him. A soft whimper escaped her as his fingers
slipped into the folds of her womanhood, lightly exploring, then finding and
stroking the sensitive nub of desire. 

Millicent’s vision blurred and her
breath shortened. Her body began to pulse to a rhythm that she had always
associated with fear and pain. But that was before. What she felt now was
desire and anticipation so intense she was afraid she might cry out. 

Lyon was stroking her harder. She
turned her head on the pillow and found his mouth searching hers. She kissed
him, but the moment his fingers thrust deep inside her, Millicent’s body
erupted with volcanic force. She gasped for breath and somehow managed to roll
beneath the weight of his leg to face him. Millicent clung tightly to him as
waves of passion continued to roll through her quaking body.

*****

Lyon came fully awake at the sound
of a woman’s quiet cry. Startled, he found himself inches from Millicent’s
face. Her eyes were shut, but even in the dawn’s light he saw the tears
squeezing through the corners of her eyelids and falling. He was shocked to
find his hand tucked intimately between her legs. He immediately withdrew it. 

“Bloody hell,” he muttered.
“Millicent…I don’t…I was…By the devil, did I hurt you? Dear God, I—” 

He stopped as she shook her head
and wiped the wetness from her face. She looked up at him.

“Do not blame yourself. You didn’t
hurt me. We were…I was caught up in…in something.”

He saw the glistening tears forming
again in her gray eyes. He had been dreaming. He was at Baronsford. No, it was London. A woman had come to his bed. His body was still painfully aroused. It was
Millicent.

His body. Lyon’s mind started to
clear. He was lying on his side. He pushed the covers back with one hand. 

“You rolled.” She hurriedly pulled
the nightgown down. “You rolled in your sleep.”

Lyon saw his leg and knee trapping
her lower body. It was impossible.

“How?” He tried to move the leg but
could not. Frustration quickly replaced his shock. “How did I do this?”

“You were asleep. You weren’t
thinking about it,” she replied gently, pulling herself to a sitting position
and trying awkwardly to move his legs off hers. “You just did it.”

“That is not possible,” he
persisted stubbornly, trying again to make it move by pushing his knee.
Nothing. “I cannot move the damn leg.” 

“Don’t fight it, Lyon.” Millicent
managed to free herself. Covering him with the blanket, she finally succeeded
in rolling him onto his back. “Your strength is returning. You just need to
give it some time. Ohenewaa said that it might happen like this. That one day
you would just do it.”

“No,” Lyon snapped, though he knew
that no one else could have moved him into that position. Perhaps…

He said nothing about the other
times. It was true that he had recently moved his foot and his hand. But each occurrence had come without warning, and the frustration of not being able to do it
again seconds later was almost too much to bear.

“It was a freak accident.”

“It wasn’t,” she said patiently, straightening his right arm, pulling the covers over him and tucking them carefully
around his chest. “Give it time. Your body is healing.”

Millicent’s hair hung in a cascade
of curls around her face. Lyon’s thoughts shifted, and he wondered why he had
not told her how different she looked like this, and how much he liked it. She
slipped off the bed and went around it, tucking in the blankets.  

“Are you warm enough?” she asked.

“Yes.” Lyon’s attention was no
longer on himself. In the dim light of the room, he tried to focus on her face.
She had been crying, and the sadness still lingered around her eyes.     

“Can I get you something to drink?
Some water?”

“No,” he said, unhappy with himself
at having the audacity to become intimate with her…without being awake.

She touched his leg once, smoothing
the blanket, and took a step back. “Good night then.”

“Where are you going?”

She continued to back away. “To my
own bedchamber.”

“Why?”

“It is almost morning.” She had
reached the door and was already pulling at the latch.

“Millicent, wait,” he called
gruffly. 

“What is it?”

“What happened just now?”

“You rolled in your sleep. You
moved your leg. That is great progress.”

He was not fooled by her hollow
attempt at sounding happy. “What else happened? Tell me. What did I do to you?”

She shook her head, but no words
came out.

“I acted…I behaved…dishonorably
toward you, didn’t I?”

She again gave a quick shake of her
head, but her gaze was riveted to the floor. Lyon cursed himself. One thing he
was sure of: he had touched her without her consent.

“I must apologize for the way I
behaved—for whatever I did—for whatever you are forgiving me for so gracefully.
I promise you, Millicent, whatever it was, it shall never happen again.”

“Nothing happened. Please go back
to sleep.” She whispered the words before backing out of the room and softly
closing the door.

She was relieved to find the
hallway deserted. The household was still sleeping. Millicent’s vision was
blurred, but she managed to hold her tears in until she was safely inside her
own bedchamber. There was no holding back her emotions after that.

He had apologized. 

Wentworth had violated and battered
her body sexually and physically at every opportunity during their five long
years of marriage. He had called it his right as her husband to “educate” her
as he saw fit. He had hurt her, killed her unborn baby, almost killed her. He
had trampled on her body as if it were dry chaff in the barns.

But Lyon had apologized to her for
making that same body feel alive. He had been sorry for touching her without
asking her first. Even in his sleep, he had shown her the moon and stars as
Millicent never knew they had existed. And Lyon Pennington was her husband,
too. 

Millicent buried her wet face in
the pillow. She had no right to feel bad because in his unawareness he had made
her climb to unknown heights of ecstasy. She should be grateful for the
experience of learning that there could exist more than just pain and fear
between a man and a woman.

He was growing stronger. His limbs
were beginning to function. One day soon he would simply walk away. And when that happened, Millicent would need to go on with her own life. The thought terrified
her.

The tears came faster. A numbing
sadness was wrapping around her soul.

Who was she, Millicent thought, to
care so much for him?

******

A carriage stood at the corner of a
dark alley in St. Albans. A groom, with his hat drawn low on his face, waited
beside the horses, talking to the driver. The drawn shade hid the identity of
the two men meeting inside.

“Mr. Platt’s high praise for your
efforts convinced me that I should come and meet you in person.” Jasper Hyde
studied the young workman’s cocky expression. “Now, after hearing all about the
slave woman and her influence on Lady Aytoun, I am certainly glad that I made
the trip.”