Chapter Twenty-Six
Shouts woke Verity from her sleep with a hammering heart. They were coming from Jonnie’s bedroom. With her drapes closed she was in near total darkness and couldn’t hope to find her bedside candle to light in a hurry. Besides which, she might inadvertently set fire to the house if she tried.
She pushed back the covers and scrambled out of bed. Where was her peignoir? She couldn’t go in there in just her nightgown. But her peignoir eluded discovery.
Another anguished shout.
Abandoning her search for her peignoir, she ran to their adjoining door and pushed it open. There was slightly more light in here as Jonnie’s curtains had at some point been opened. For a moment she looked for him there, thinking to find him looking out of the window, but no one stood there.
She turned back to the bed. He’d thrown back his own covers, and, thankfully, proved to be wearing a nightshirt. But he was tossing back and forth, muttering now rather than shouting, but clearly very disturbed by something.
Another mysterious nightmare?
She approached the bed.
His eyes were wide open, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling as he tossed on the mattress.
Her first worried thought was that his fever had returned.
He was indeed flushed and hot, but she doubted it was fever.
He’d been fine at dinner and even eaten something other than Mrs. Lovell’s beef broth.
This heat was due to his disturbed sleep.
She caught his left hand. “Jonnie, Jonnie, you need to wake up.”
He snatched his hand back. “Leave her alone or I’ll kill you.” The words came out as an angry hiss.
She caught his hand again. “It’s me, Verity. Wake up Jonnie.”
His eyes swivelled towards her, but she had the feeling he wasn’t seeing her. “Make him stop,” he said, his voice pleading. “Don’t let him do it.”
She took his face in her hands, the stubble rough under her fingers. “Jonnie. Wake up. You’re dreaming again. Wake up.”
She could slap him again but this time, she feared, he was deeper in the dream than before and she’d read it could be dangerous to waken people suddenly and violently.
He was staring up at her, tears at the corners of his eyes. “Please. Make him stop. You can’t let him do it. You can’t.”
What to do?
On an impulse, and partly because she’d been wanting to do it for at least the last day, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his in a kiss.
Under her mouth she felt his lips part, but she was inexperienced at kissing and had no idea how to respond.
His body lost its rigidity as he relaxed. She straightened up.
He was looking up at her out of surprised eyes.
“Verity.” He was a little hoarse after all that shouting and had to clear his throat. “What are you doing here?”
Conscious of the gaping neck of her nightgown, she took a step back from the bed and pulled it closed.
“You were shouting again. Another nightmare, I think. I, er, I didn’t want to have to slap you again. I thought it might be bad for you.”
He put his good hand to his lips. “So you kissed me instead.”
“I did.” At least he couldn’t see the hot blush that seemed to have suffused her entire body in this darkness. “I must apologize.”
“Please don’t. I believe I liked it, and it was a good way to wake me.” He grinned, his teeth flashing white in the faint moonlight that was streaming in his open window. “In fact, I find I might like you to do it again.”
Now her body was flushing not with embarrassment but with a sensation Verity hadn’t known she could feel.
Her mouth had gone dry, she felt weak at the knees just as she had when she’d seen Jonnie’s inert body in the carriage, and a molten, alien feeling seemed to have centered itself somewhere below her navel.
She tore herself away and fetched the chair. “I’ll sit with you a while so you can go back to sleep.”
He grinned again. “I’m not a baby in the nursery, you know.”
Her heart must be pounding at two hundred beats a minute. “You have nightmares when you’re alone, it seems. I’ll sit with you and keep them at bay.”
Silence fell and she shivered. Despite the warmth of the day, nights in Luxborough House were cool and she was only in her nightgown.
His hand came out towards her, his fingers brushing her arm. “You’re cold. Get in. I’m in no condition to violate you, and we’re man and wife, after all. Have no fear. Get in and I’ll warm you.”
The temptation was enormous. She sat rigid in her chair, his fingers still on her arm like two hot brands.
He was right. There was nothing at all wrong in a wife being in bed with her husband, and he was also right in saying he couldn’t do anything about it in his condition.
And, after all, she’d done it once already.
And she now found she wanted to do it with her whole being. So why not?
She rose from the chair and climbed onto the bed.
“Pull up the covers,” he whispered, his voice suddenly low and very close to her ear. “Or we’ll both be catching a chill. And lie down here, next to me.”
She pulled up the covers with trembling hands and lay down beside him, but with a good foot between them. She was still cold, though.
He lifted his left arm, wincing a bit as he did so. “Come here. I promise to do nothing you won’t like. Nothing at all but hold you and keep you warm.”
She propped herself up on her elbow and looked at his dim form in the gloom.
If he had his left arm around her shoulders, he could do nothing with his splinted right one.
She would be safe. She moved over and, with wary care, lay down beside him.
His arm came around her shoulders, his hand on her left arm, fingers relaxed.
Heat shivered through her body.
How warm he was, all along one side of her, from her head down to her toes. And what a strange sensation it was to lie beside a man, to feel his alien body beside hers, to smell the faint muskiness of him and the scent of his cologne. She liked it.
He turned his head and she felt his lips brush her hair. “Good night, Verity.”
She lay awake a long time listening to his breathing deepen until she too slipped into sleep.
Jonathan woke in the morning to find Verity snuggled next to him and still sleeping.
The pleasure of her body so close to his had the normal morning effect on him and, for the first time in his life, he was embarrassed by it.
He didn’t want her waking up and finding him like this and being frightened off.
Sometime in the last forty-eight hours he’d decided that he’d been quite wrong in thinking her lacking in innocence and, now that he’d acknowledged this, he didn’t want to upset her by his own natural bodily reaction to being so close to such a lovely creature as she was.
He watched her for a few minutes. Her hair, that had been confined in a long braid, was now much in need of a brush, with little bits having come out of the braid overnight.
Her lashes, dark instead of the expected auburn of her hair, fanned out across her pale cheeks where one or two faint freckles just showed.
And her lips were slightly parted as she slept, only serving to render her prettier than ever.
He frowned at his own shallow thoughts. Of course he liked the fact that she was pretty, but it was more than that. He liked her determination, her independence, her loyalty to her father, her strong will. And now she was in his bed and he could do nothing about it. How ironic.
Damn those footpads to hell and back. What he really wanted to do was roll over and take her in his arms and awaken in her a passion to match his.
An impossibility in his present condition.
Not with his broken ribs and arm, at any rate.
With just the bullet wound, he would have been more than tempted.
But as it was, just breathing normally was hard enough.
And besides which, she didn’t feel the same way about him, and with all his many conquests, he’d never forced himself on anyone who wasn’t willing.
He’d better get out of bed before she woke up and noticed his state of arousal.
Very gently he eased his arm out from under her neck and with a great deal of difficulty tried to slide out of bed without making any noise. An impossible task. Firstly it hurt, and secondly the bed creaked. He fought to suppress a groan of pain.
Verity stirred.
He glanced down at his nightshirt. It possessed a definite tent pole effect. He turned away from the bed and put a quick hand down there and tried to suppress it. Another failure.
Verity yawned and stretched. “Jonnie?”
Damn it. “Yes?” He kept his back to her, willing his arousal to stop being so aroused, which seemed to be having the opposite effect.
“Where are you going? You should be staying in bed and resting.”
At least she didn’t seem to be horrified to be waking up in his bed.
He spotted the door to the water closet. “Just going to relieve myself.” And dashed in there and closed the door. Not that it was much of a dash, more of a hobble with the way his ribs were feeling and how each step jarred them. But at least he and his damned arousal were out of sight.
And now, as if to tease him, everything subsided. Thank goodness.
He waited a couple of minutes then opened the door again.
The bed was empty. She’d gone.
He looked at the door into her room. Could he?
He pulled on his banyan, as though that might afford him protection from further bodily mishaps, and tapped on the door.
“Yes?”
“Can I come in?”
Silence, then, “Yes.”
He pushed open the door to the room his mother had once had. Verity was sitting in the window, the drapes drawn back and her peignoir wrapped around her, as if she’d been admiring the view.
He crossed the room to the window and sat down beside her. “You didn’t need to run off, you know.”