Truth Within Dreams (6 page)

Of course, the promised moment Henry had spent years longing for, the day when he outgrew his somnambulism, came and went without notice. It was only in retrospect that Henry realized he’d finally outlasted his nocturnal nemesis. One day, it occurred to him that it had been a month since Harrison had prevented Henry from burning down the boarding house by trying to light a pipe in his sleep. He seemed to hold his breath every night thereafter, wondering, as he readied himself for bed, if his good fortune would hold. It did. Gradually, as weeks and months passed without further incident, Henry had relaxed. The nightmare was over.

Except, it wasn’t.

His sleepwalking had returned, and Henry would chain himself to his own bed every night if that’s what it took to prevent him from ever again doing anything such as happened last night. He’d created this damnable mess with Claudia; he’d bloody well fix it, too.

“Almost there,” he said, rallying himself with a fresh wave of determination.

Then he hauled up the unwieldy ladder, hooked his arm through, and balanced the rail on his shoulder. Cognizant of the earth’s appointment with dawn in about four hours, Henry set off at a lope. He managed to maintain that light running pace through the bleaching green behind the stables.

He was breathless once more when, at last, he rounded the southeastern corner of the house and came to a stop below Claudia’s second-story window.

The ladder rasped over the bricks as he moved it into place. It reached to a couple feet below the windowsill. Perfect.

After an easy ascent, Henry faced his own dim reflection in the pane. He cupped one hand against the glass and peered in. Claudia’s fire had burned down; the embers gave a feeble glow, not enough for him to make out much of the interior.

Henry tapped on the glass. No response. A breeze tickled the back of his neck and gave him the slightest bit of vertigo. He glanced at the ground twenty feet below, gulped, squeezed his eyes, and tapped again.

Nothing.

The next time, Henry knocked in earnest, as if he was standing at the door rather than precariously perched outside the window.

He detected motion in the bed. Claudia rolled over the edge of the mattress. Her hands tangled in the sheets, stopping her from collapsing to the floor. She staggered over and climbed onto the window seat, fumbled with the latch, and drew the window inward.

Strands of hair had come loose from her braid and tangled about her neck. Her eyes squinted; her nose scrunched like a bunny’s. “Henry?” she said, her voice husky with sleep. “Is that you?”

She stood on her knees, putting their faces level with one another. She blinked and rubbed her eyes with a fist.

“May I come in?” he asked.

She giggled. “Henry, what are you doing? You’re floating outside my window!”

“I’m not …” He took in the silly smile and the dazed, glassy sheen of her eyes. She was barely awake. “Will you please move aside so I can come in?”

Just then, Claudia lurched forward and flung her arms around Henry’s neck. For a terrifying instant, he felt the weightless, dizzying sensation of backward motion as the ladder teetered away from the house.

“I’m so glad you’re here!” she exclaimed.

Henry grasped the windowsill so tightly, pain throbbed through his knuckles. “Claudia,” he grunted, “back away. Slowly.”

She shot him a confused frown, but did as he asked, scrambling down from the window seat and holding her hands against her chest.

He allowed himself a minute to take several calming breaths and hazard a guess as to how many gray hairs he’d just sprouted. Then he bent his knees and neatly vaulted over the sill. His long legs cleared the seat; his feet came to rest on the other side.

The young woman gaped. “Gracious, wherever did you learn to float like that?”

He scowled. What was wrong with her? Even at her silliest, Claudia wasn’t this goosebrained. “I climbed a ladder, like any ordinary man sneaking into the rooms of a young lady in the middle of the night would do.”

She giggled again and sauntered toward him, her hips loosely swaying inside her white night rail. She walked two fingers up his chest and throat. Henry gulped. The digits rounded his chin and forded his lips. Her touch was soft, like the pattering of a kitten. A heavy coil of wanting unfurled in his midsection and rolled through his groin and down the backs of his legs.

“You. Are. So. Funny,” she said, accentuating each word with a tap on the end of his nose. Her lips looked unbearably inviting.

Somehow, his hands found their way to her waist. He stroked up and down, from the base of her ribcage to the tops of her hips. With supreme effort, he reminded himself why he was here and stepped toward the fireplace. “We must speak,” he said. “I knew they wouldn’t let me see you. That’s why I came in this way,” he added with a rueful smile.

Claudia’s brow wrinkled. Her head swiveled from side to side. “Did you see a little boy when you came in?”

“No.” His gaze cut around the dusky chamber. “Should I have?”

“He was here a moment ago.” Claudia climbed back on the window seat and looked at the sinking moon before turning her eyes earthward. Then she took several faltering steps to the bed and began flinging pillows this way and that.

Briefly, he had a flash of his own sleepwalking misadventures. Is that what was happening here? When he reached her, she’d discarded all the pillows and was starting on the covers.

He reached around her and grasped her wrists. His body curled protectively over her back. She fit just right against him. The cleft between the sweet curves of her buttocks cradled him softly. He bit back a groan.

“Claudia, stop,” he spoke into her ear. Her clean, fresh smell wafted from her skin to drug his senses like a potent liqueur. “Who are you looking for? There’s no boy here.”

“Oh, he was!” She turned in his arms, pivoting on a knee. Her hands skimmed up his front and hooked around his neck. “His name is Elbow, and he’s made of marmalade. He sat beside me and talked for hours and hours.” Her words came faster, almost frenzied. As she spoke, she nuzzled her face into his neck. “I wanted to give him a sweet for keeping me such good company.”

She butted her head beneath his chin and rubbed, like a cat demanding to be petted. And God help him, he petted her. He lifted her night rail and slid his palms along the outside of her silky thighs. There wasn’t a blessed stitch beneath her gown, nothing to keep him from touching his fill of her warm, satin skin.

“Kiss me, Henry, please,” she murmured.

He hesitated, even as his blood pounded in his ears and called him three kinds of fool for wasting time. “Claudia,” he said, his fingers kneading their way up her spine, “did you take some medicine tonight?”

“Mr. Whombleby gave me laudanum. I didn’t want to drink it, but it seemed important to Mama that I rest. And I couldn’t let them know about the blood.”

An icy fist slammed into his sternum. All the air rushed from his lungs and his vision narrowed to pinpricks. Henry yanked his hands away. How could he touch her? How could he allow himself to dream of anything intimate with Claudia, after what he’d done? She’d been so injured, the surgeon had to give her drugs to ease her pain and help her sleep. Once again, he saw the bloody sheets. He imagined torn, tender flesh, tissues ripped asunder by his own depraved lust.

Claudia, still half-drugged, let out a piteous whimper when he stepped away. “Don’t! Oh, don’t, Henry. Please come back. I’m sorry. I’m so …” Her voice caught around a strangled sob. “I’m so sorry, Henry.” Her voice gasped out on a quick exhalation between wrenching cries. “The blood. I’m so sorry.”

He couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t stand himself. “Don’t apologize!” He grabbed her shoulders and shook her once. “Don’t you dare try to take this away from me. It’s my fault, Claudia. Mine alone. I’m the one who’s sorry. I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I’m going to try to get it. Whatever it takes. I just—” He swallowed around an unfamiliar burn in his throat. “I need to know you don’t hate me.”

She sniffled. “How could I hate you?” She lifted the hem of her night rail and used it to pat her eyes and wipe her nose. Poor, sleepy lamb, he thought.

“Back to bed with you.” He guided her down and tucked the covers around her.

It didn’t make sense to try to carry on a conversation with her in this state, but he couldn’t resist asking: “Claudia, would you really rather marry Sir Saint than me?”

She shook her head violently, the sound swallowed by the down pillow. “No! I don’t want to marry him. I despise the thought of it. I would be terribly unhappy. I’m so scared they’ll make me, Henry.”

Relief swamped him, releasing a knot between his shoulder blades. Had she preferred the odious Sir Saint to himself, he might have to rethink whether life was worth living.

“Shhhh,” he soothed, running the back of his finger along the curve of her jaw. “If you don’t want to marry him, then you won’t, sweeting, I swear. If I can do nothing else to make things up to you, I’ll stop you from having to marry him.”

Claudia’s watery eyes blinked drowsily, the lids growing heavy as she squirmed deeper into the mattress.

He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Sleep now, Claudia.” His nose skimmed the bridge of hers; then he placed another kiss on the tip. “Sleep, sweetheart.” Another brush of his nose, this time just a sweep down the valley of her lip to her Cupid’s bow. One small kiss on her lips. Just this one. “Rest, sweet girl.” Maybe just one more.

Then the heat between them quickened. Her fingers raced to his neck, cupped the back of his head, held him against her mouth. Her whimper of encouragement rattled in his throat and drove from his mind every thought that wasn’t related to this. To her. To his woman.

Claudia tugged his hair. Then again, harder. He welcomed the flash of pain. It felt like atonement.

He kissed her cheek, traversed her cheekbone with the tip of his tongue. His lips and teeth lightly worked around the whorl of her ear. Claudia shuddered beneath him. The bed enticed him with its promise of comfort. Claudia tempted him with her soft welcome. He let his torso fall, pressing her deeper into the bed, so he sheltered her body with his own.

But then, behind his eyes, flashes. Tearing flesh. Pain. A spilling of blood.

Slowly, so as not to startle her, Henry pulled away. His body howled in protest. Never had he been so aroused by a few kisses. Self-loathing mixed with desire in a dreadful alchemy. Here he was, taking advantage of Claudia yet again, this time in full possession of his faculties. What was wrong with him?

And Claudia, poor girl, smiled up at him as though he’d hung the moon. “I knew you’d take care of me. I knew if only I could get to you, everything would be all right.” Heavy lids slid home and did not rise again.

Though the laudanum had addled her mind, the sweet sentiment still shone through. His throat tightened at the undeserved show of trust. “I swear, Claudia, I will
always
take care of you.”

Daylight found Henry once again traveling to Rudley Court, this time on horseback by way of the roads rather than dragging landscaping equipment through the woods on foot. His head throbbed in time with his mount’s trotting footfalls, as badly as if he’d just crawled out of a barrel of whiskey. It wasn’t a hangover that afflicted him, but a lack of sleep and the guilt that had eaten away at him since awaking to a nightmare yesterday morning.

The good thing about sleep deprivation, Henry decided as he passed the reins to a groom, was that it lent him a certain measure of detachment. He witnessed everything around him through a fuzzy haze. He also didn’t have to work to achieve his grim expression. He very well might fall flat on his face from exhaustion, which was no laughing matter.

When Ferguson answered the door, he glowered at Henry before letting out a sigh of long-suffering. “I’ve been instructed not to admit you, Mr. De Vere. I’m sorry.”

“Never would I ask you to countermand instructions, Ferguson. Perhaps we could try this again? When I knock this time, send someone else along, and then it won’t be you admitting me.”

“I could not do that, sir,” the butler said. He shifted on his feet and looked uncomfortable in his attire, a first for the implacable servant. Henry suspected he was very close to winning the butler over to his side. After all, Ferguson had always been something of a gruff uncle to the Baxter children—and himself, by extension.

Changing tack, Henry arranged his face in a pleading expression. “Ferguson, by now, you know what happened.” The servants always knew. “I’m trying to do right by Miss Claudia, and so I must speak with Sir John. Surely, you want to see all of this sorted out?”

The old retainer’s tongue poked a lump in one cheek, which moved about ponderously while the older man stared up the drive. “Mr. De Vere,” he finally said, straightening, “I will not allow you to enter Rudley Court, nor can I spare another moment for you. The silver must be polished. In the back pantry. I very sincerely hope not to be disturbed by you again this morning.”

With a sharp nod, Ferguson slammed the door in Henry’s face. The lock did not turn.

Henry smiled.
Clever old devil
.

After allowing enough time for the butler to vacate the area, Henry let himself in. He found Sir John in the study, seated at his desk. Also present was Sir Saint Tuggle. Today, the old fop wore a pink wig to compliment his mauve costume. Falls of lace, yellowed with age, spilled from his wrists and throat. The fabric at his neck blended with his jowls, which were the color of congealed porridge. Mint green stockings and red, heeled shoes completed the ensemble. It was finery meant to awe and intimidate—twenty years ago, at any rate.

Color bloomed across Sir John’s cheeks at Henry’s abrupt entrance. “What are you doing here? You’re not welcome, De Vere, not any more. Remove yourself at once!”

Henry extended his arm in a placating gesture. “Please, Sir John, you don’t want to alarm Lady Baxter or Claudia with your shouting. You’ve every right to your anger, sir, but I would ask you to put your temper aside, so we might rationally discuss the situation.”