Truth Within Dreams (3 page)

Gradually, Claudia recovered from her shock. She pulled her eyes away from Henry’s recumbent form, saw the bed, and gasped. In her stupor, she’d spilled the entire contents of the bottle onto the bed, the stain stark against the white sheets, and growing larger as the fibers wicked the liquid outward from the center of the puddle.

“It’s probably worse than it looks,” she whispered. No, wait. That wasn’t right. Drat Henry De Vere and his mind-muddling physique!

Briefly, she considered waking him. Maybe they could burn the sheets? Then what? When the sun rose, Claudia would still have an unwanted fiancé. No, she decided, better to just follow The Plan. Henry would understand; he would play along.

Claudia restoppered the bottle and shoved it under the bed, then gingerly lay down, keeping well away from the damp mess and the disturbingly alluring man across the bed.

She’d set into motion life-altering events. In the morning, she’d be a ruined woman. Sir Saint would cry off, and Claudia would be saved. Her parents would be furious, of course. Queasiness stole through her as she pictured a look of profound disappointment on her mother’s face. But she couldn’t allow this wedding to happen. Claudia had made her bed, and now she was lying in it.

She curled up on her side, pulled the counterpane around her ears, and willed everything from her mind but the relentless sounds of the storm.

Claudia Baxter was in his bed.

He’d dreamed of taking her in the stables, on the sitting room divan, in their childhood treehouse. Once, he’d even dreamed of making love to her while they floated in the river, their entwined bodies buoyed by the gentle current and serenaded by croaking frogs.

This dream was all the sweeter for its simplicity. He was in bed with Claudia beside him, as natural as the beat of his heart. Actually sleeping with her was a fantasy he’d never dared to allow himself before. Her soft hair spilled over the pillow and surrounded her heart-shaped face like a golden-brown halo. Her left arm was flung overhead and her right lay atop her stomach, her fingers curled in a loose fist. There was an adorable little pucker between her brows, as though she dreamed of scolding someone.

He was hard as an oak branch. Her soft warmth invited him over for a cuddle, while her kittenish exhalations made his mouth water for a taste of hers.

Henry scooted into her warm spot and bent his head to her full lips. They were warm and dry. He moistened them with darting laps of his tongue. Claudia’s head tilted back, and she sighed.

Oh, yes.
Here came Henry’s favorite part of his Claudia dreams.

He parted her lips and ran his tongue along the edge of her top teeth. At the same time, he worked his thigh between her legs, laced his fingers with hers, and captured her hands overhead. Satisfaction rumbled deep in his chest. Claudia was warm and pliant beneath him. She tasted sweet and smelled like summer meadows—faintly floral and fresh and so vibrantly
alive
.

Henry deepened the kiss. His tongue swept into her mouth, leisurely exploring. His loins ached with need. The muscles of his stomach twitched. His hips languidly rolled against her, warming up their thrusting motion. That part of the dream was great, too, but Henry tried to prolong the preliminaries.

“Kiss me back, sweet girl,” he dream-muttered. “Give me your tongue.”

“Why do you want my tongue?” Claudia asked in a husky voice.

Henry lifted his head. A pair of distinctive eyes—soft blue irises ringed with gray—blinked up at him in confusion. His dream-Claudia wasn’t usually so bewildered at this point in proceedings.

Wrinkling her nose, Claudia twisted her head to look at their tangled arms. “Will you please release me, Henry? My wrists are twinging.” She wrinkled her nose, sniffed. “Henry, I have to tell you something.”

His dream-Claudia usually didn’t have morning sniffles, either.

Oh, God
. She was awake. He was awake. Claudia Baxter was actually in his bed.

This wasn’t such a good dream anymore.

Henry yelped, loud and short. He scrambled back to the other side of the mattress and yanked the counterpane up to cover his …
Oh, my God.
Worse every second. He had actually been on top of Claudia. Naked. And trying to introduce her to his morning constitutional.

Claudia lay as he’d left her, arms overhead, fingers lightly tangled in her hair. Anxiety clouded her eyes. They darted toward the door—

Which opened. “Everything all right, Henry?”

Claude Baxter, Henry’s friend since childhood and the twin brother of the woman in his sheets, stepped into the room and froze. Only his eyes, grayer than Claudia’s, moved, darting between the occupants of the bed.

“Claude,” Henry started. “This isn’t what it …” Language abandoned him. He had no idea what this was. Why was Claudia in his bed? Henry only had a few drinks with Claude after supper last night, not enough to bed a woman and forget about it.

Just then, a low snort emerged from Claude. His eyes narrowed on Henry and his head dropped, like a bull about to charge. Henry had no doubt that he was the red cape.

“I’m going to kill you,” Claude ground out between clenched … everything. His jaw was locked and his lips pulled back in a snarl. The cords on his neck stood out like … something very prominent. It was too early in the morning to deal in metaphor.

“You
bastard
,” Claude spat. “How could you?”

Claudia propped up on her elbows. Wisps of light brown hair tangled around her shoulders and biceps. Her lips, plumped by his kiss, pushed out in a pout. She wore a thin chemise, through which Henry could detect the lines of her breasts and the dusky shadows of her nipples. She looked precisely like she’d been tumbled. “Stop shouting, Claude! You’re giving me the headache.” She scratched the side of her nose and plopped back into the pillows.

“Claude, get out of that bed,” her brother demanded.

“Go awaaay,” Claudia moaned. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”

Henry dropped his face into his hands. “Not helping, Claudia.”

“What on earth is all the commo—
gah
!”

Lady Baxter, the plump mother hen of her gaggle, had been a second mama to Henry. Over the years, she’d welcomed him into her home countless times and treated him as one of her own little chicks. And now she stood in the doorway of his guest room, hands pressed to her cheeks.

Claude stomped across the room and yanked open the curtains, just in time to illuminate Sir John Baxter’s arrival on the scene. The baronet’s wheeze of dismay sucked all the air out of the room. “Henry De Vere!” the twins’ father bellowed. “What is the meaning of this infamy?”

Henry’s underarms went clammy. He shifted his posture, trying to find a position to restore a modicum of his dignity. He quickly deduced there was not one. “Sir, I don’t know what to say.” Henry raked a hand through his hair. “I didn’t … That is to say, Claudia and I, we did not …”

Beside him, Claudia lay there like a lump, staring at the ceiling. “Sit up,” he hissed. “Tell them nothing happened.”

With obvious reluctance, Claudia dragged herself to a sitting position, eyes downcast and bare shoulders hunched.
Say something
, he silently begged.

Lady Baxter gasped. “Claudia Baxter, cover yourself!”

The young woman’s cheeks turned pink. Despite his own shock and dismay, a pang of sympathy shot through Henry. Whatever had happened, Claudia didn’t deserve this humiliation.

He secured the covers between his arms and sides and lifted his hands, palms out. “Let’s calm ourselves, please, and discuss this in a rational fashion.” When the impending riot seemed to have quelled, Henry gestured to the woman beside him. “Miss Baxter, there seems to have been some misunderstanding. If you would be so good as to enlighten us, I’m sure we’ll all be glad to put this mystery behind us.”

From behind the curtain of her hair, Claudia sent him an apologetic look. Then she drew a breath, squared her shoulders, and slid from the bed. She bent over, giving Henry a glimpse of her lush backside. He covered a strangled sound with a cough. When he looked again, Claudia had wrapped up in a dressing gown.

“Now,” he said, “please tell us what happened. Which was nothing,” he added for the benefit of the other three Baxters in his room, his voice rising in righteous indignation. “Absolutely nothing …”

Fwump
went the counterpane as Claudia pulled it back with a flourish, revealing a startling patch of crimson, ominous and large.

“… happened.”

• • •

It hadn’t quite sunk in for them yet, but Claudia had won. While Mama and Papa and Claude and Henry all stared at the evidence on the sheet, their minds would be busy adding one and one and subtracting Sir Saint from the equation. She was safe now. She wouldn’t have to marry that gouty toad and spend nights in his bed. Even though she hadn’t yet had an opportunity to explain things to Henry, the freedom of release expressed itself in an irrepressible grin she shared with her nearest and dearest.
Isn’t it wonderful
, she wanted to crow.

Oh, the others were still absorbing the sight and what it confirmed—or, what they thought it confirmed, anyway—which was more than enough confirmation to send even the most ardent lover on a quest to rip down the banns. Once he caught wind of this, Sir Saint, who was nothing approaching an ardent lover, would waddle his rotund self away from Rudley Court and out of her life forever. Unexpectedly, her eyes filled with tears of relief as the crushing dread of her impending marriage fell away.

Claude seemed to recover from the shock first. “Forgive me for posing an indelicate question, Mother, but is that a normal … quantity?”

Lady Baxter’s hands were fisted below her eyes, as though she could scarcely bring herself to look at the sheets. At Claude’s question, she shook her head. “That’s more blood than I saw all eight times I was brought to childbed, including for you twins.” Her face crumpled and she rounded on Henry. “What did you
do
to her?”

Claudia glanced at the bed. Now that she saw her work in the light of day, there did seem to be a shocking quantity of blood. The bottle was so small, though; it had contained scarcely enough liquid to fill a teacup. Was that really too much? She didn’t know—she was a virgin, for mercy’s sake!

Henry was as stunned as everyone else, of course. “I would never do anything to Miss Baxter to result in this …”

His face took on a green cast. Oh, no! He couldn’t get sick. That would distract everyone from arriving at the moral of the story, which was
Claudia cannot marry Sir Saint, she is ruined. Ruined for matrimony. Ruined forever.

“It looks like a slaughterhouse,” Sir John contributed. His face had gone nearly as dark as the impressive stain. His wife was buried against his shoulder, looking away from the scene of their daughter’s transgression. Her keening wail rose in the air.

“You’re going to die,” Claude said, his words icily clipped.

“No, I’m not,” Claudia said. “Did you not know virgins spill some blood on their—”

The inhuman roar that burst from her twin’s throat was a tad unsettling.

“Not helping, Claudia,” Henry said for the second time.

Her arms crossed at her waist, Claudia shot Henry an annoyed glance. The greenish cast to his face had given way to a waxy pallor. “Hush and let me handle this,” she instructed him.

“Name your second,” Claude growled. He hadn’t finished dressing before bursting into Henry’s room, Claudia noted. The open neck of his shirt showed skin flushed with fury. “Name your weapon. Write your will and sign it in blood, because you die tomorrow morning, De Vere.”

Claudia’s mouth dropped as Claude’s words struck home. “You meant
Henry
was going to die, not me?”

“Of course not you, peabrain,” her brother snapped. “Your honor has been impugned, or haven’t you noticed?”

“Well, you aren’t fighting a duel,” she proclaimed. A duel! How positively fustian. All she wanted was to not have the wedding of her nightmares. “Papa, tell Claude he isn’t going to shoot Henry.”

Sir John looked like he’d happily chuck the lot of them into the abyss. His mouth opened, but her brother butted in yet again, the mannerless lout.

“I demand satisfaction!”

Claudia’s fists dug into her hips. “And
I
demand you stop this nonsense
at once
!” If there was a human being she felt completely at ease screeching at, it was her twin. And screech she did. How dare he threaten Henry? “Mr. De Vere has been your best friend for twenty years, and at the first provocation, you’re ready to do murder?” She was enjoying her impromptu role of Defender of the Wrongly Accused. Her eyes, she was sure, blazed with the light of Justice. “I’m ashamed to call you my brother, and weep that we ever shared a womb. I should rather be cast into the wilderness, penniless and alone, than admit connection to a bloodthirsty turncoat such as your foul self.”

Claude hadn’t heard a word of her monologue, which was fair enough, she supposed, given she’d not paid attention to the harangue he’d simultaneously delivered. The volume of their argument filled the room—and probably the entire house.

A tug at her waist brought Claudia back down onto the edge of the bed. “That’s enough now.” Henry’s rich voice was velvet against her ear, while Claude’s continued rant was the roughest burlap. Briefly, she met Henry’s eyes. His olive-green gaze spoke of steady resolve. Claudia felt a melting sensation in her chest.

“Claude,” Henry said, raising his voice.

Her brother’s lips pinched together. His chin continued to work back and forth, as though his angry words were fighting to break past the barrier of his teeth.

Henry rearranged the covers tucked around his torso. He looked at the bloody bed and then back to Claude. “If you insist, of course I’ll meet you. I’d rather not duel my friend, but I understand. However, I want you—all of you”—he glanced at Sir John and Lady Baxter—“to know that Claudia and I will be married at once.”

The bed seemed to tilt beneath Claudia’s rump. Marry Henry? That wasn’t how she’d envisioned him going along with the pretense of her ruin. This had all gone wrong. “No,” she blurted. “Henry, I can’t marry you. You don’t understand—”