Lords of Scandal: The Beleaguered Lord Bourne / The Enterprising Lord Edward. Кейси Майклс
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. “Denny!” Kit rasped, the pain in his voice bringing tears to her eyes. “Jesus, Lord, Denny, where are you? For the love of God, where’s the rest of you?”
“Kit!” Jennie called loudly into his ear, giving his cheek a firm slap as she outwardly strained for control, ignoring her own fear at the sight of his wide, sightlessly staring eyes. “Wake up, my poor darling,” she implored on a dry sob. “Please, Kit, wake up!”
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.”
Jennie remembered Kit’s ramblings about Denny, and a tear formed in the corner of her left eye and splashed onto her husband’s silk-clad chest. “You said something about your side. You were injured in battle, weren’t you?”
The earl’s right hand unconsciously rubbed up and down Jennie’s bare arm as he returned into his memories. “We were caught unawares. We were to leave for home in less than a week and thought we had seen the last of battle. I don’t know where the enemy came from; we had thought we were in a safe place behind the lines. I took a piece of exploding shell in my side, and Denny…and Denny…”
Jennie touched her fingers to his lips. “Shhh. Don’t talk about it. Don’t think about it.”
Kit covered her hand with his own and placed a slow kiss on her palm before laying her hand on his chest. “I have to talk about it. I never have—not to anyone. Maybe if I tell someone, these damned dreams will stop and you and Leon can get some sleep,” he quipped, vainly trying to inject some humor into the tense atmosphere.
“I must have been knocked unconscious for a while,” he pursued doggedly after a short pause when he seemed to retreat inside himself, talking as if he were reciting a lesson by rote. “When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was the pain in my side. And then the blood—there was blood all over me. Everywhere men and horses were screaming, and smoke stung my eyes. I looked around for Denny, but I couldn’t find him. I crawled on my hands and knees in the dirt, looking for him, calling for him…”
“Oh, Kit, please stop—”
“No!” he nearly shouted, staring at the ceiling. “I have to say it. I dragged myself over to where Denny’s mount lay, a bloody hole in his belly, and that’s when I saw him. When…when they found me I was still trying to put Denny back together.” He turned toward Jennie, his eyes burning fiercely as he tried to explain. “I tried, kitten, I really tried. But…but the pieces…the pieces didn’t fit.”
Jennie could stand no more. “Stop it! Please, Kit, stop it!” she pleaded, sobbing as she hid her face in his neck while one bunched fist beat ineffectually against his chest. Kit grabbed at her hand and tried to calm her, suddenly cast into the role of comforter, but his words had taken the innocent child named Jennie and rudely catapulted her into the real world, where sometimes the handsome knights did not prevail.
He rose up, pushing Jennie onto her back and catching her flailing arms above her head. “Jennie…kitten…hush, sweetheart. I’m sorry,” he crooned as her hurt whimpers slowly subsided.
Did he know that her tears were for him? For him, and for Denny, and for all the soldiers who were still dying in that awful, awful war? “No, Kit,” she whispered huskily, “don’t be sorry. I didn’t mean to cry. It’s just that it’s all so awful…so cruel—”
He looked down into her tear-bright eyes and confused, defeated expression, and his heart swelled with fierce, unfamiliar feelings for this caring, compassionate girl who cried for him. “Jennie…kitten…I…oh, God,” he groaned passionately as his mouth came down over hers.
CHAPTER SIX
NOTHING COULD BE this comfortable, this delightfully warm and soft. Jennie couldn’t suppress a small sigh as she snuggled more deeply into the cocoon of creature comfort provided by Kit’s embrace—although her sleep-befogged mind had yet to identify it as such. She was too intent on indulging herself in a few more moments of blissful sensuality, allowing the demands of her pleasure-seeking body to keep her mind uninformed as to its actual source. But nothing, not even such innocent bliss, can last forever, and at long last, Jennie began to surface from her slumber.
Stretching out one small hand, she encountered a smooth expanse of warm flesh that she instantly recognized as Kit’s bare left shoulder. His entire body stiffened and her huge green eyes opened wide as the events of the previous night came rushing into her consciousness willy-nilly. “Oh, Lord!” she whispered almost under her breath. “What have I done?”
Slowly, praying all the while, she tilted her head back until she could see her husband’s face. Her prayers were answered—he was still sound asleep. If her luck only held