20. CHAPTER 20
T he halls were dark and still. The castle at this hour was a vast, echoing, unwelcoming structure. She had grown accustomed to its comfortable grandeur in daylight, when the sun warmed the stone and servants filled the halls. At four in the morning, Penrose showed its medieval roots.
She moved fast, lamp low. Down the main staircase, past the gallery of gilt-framed ancestors, through the servants' corridor and into the kitchens. Her slippers were silent on the flagstones. Only her heartbeat marked the rhythm of her steps.
The kitchen was empty. Moonlight caught the edges of copper pots, the scrubbed surface of the great table, the cold mouth of the range. And there, across the room — the door.
She opened it expecting the squeal of rusty hinges, but it moved without effort or noise. For some reason, that unnerved her more.
She peered into the tunnel. Dark and silent like a tomb. She nearly lost her courage. Almost turned back and ran to her bedroom.
But she was so tired of hiding. Seven years of starting at shadows. She had come this far. She would not turn coward now.
She drew in a breath and plunged forward.
The tunnel was clean. No rats or spiderwebs. It looked as Dalton had described — a hallway leading to storage rooms and cellars, maintained like the rest of the castle. Not an abandoned secret passage used for nefarious purposes .
Her heartbeat settled. She kept going until she reached a bifurcation, and the hallway branching off to the right looked like the one in her dreams. Here the plastered walls gave way to raw stone.
She peered into the passage, but could see only a few feet ahead.
Running through a stone hallway. Being followed. Hunted.
And then she heard it — footsteps behind her. Steady and unhurried, but drawing closer.
Nightmare and reality coalesced.
Blind with panic, she took off running. The flame wavered in the rushing air, and then extinguished, sinking her into blackness.
Instead of stopping, the darkness drove her faster.
She reached out a hand to use the wall as a guide and kept running.
To where, she did not know. Her only aim was to outrun whoever was behind her.
The wall twisted to the left. She grabbed the edge and turned.
Breath sawed in and out of her lungs. Were the footsteps closer?
She tried to listen but could not hear anything over the drumming of her own heart.
Two more steps — and the floor disappeared from under her.
The lamp flew from her hand as she pitched forward and fell onto the hard stone floor with a resounding crash of breaking glass.
The fall knocked what breath she had left out of her. She sat up and assessed. She had not fallen far. A couple of steps at most, not an entire staircase. She could have broken her neck if that had been the case.
The footsteps were very close now. A light bloomed around the corner. She needed to keep going. Fighting with her tangled nightgown and robe, she scrambled to rise. But before she could get her knees under her, strong arms closed around her waist and lifted her off the floor.
Dalton.
She knew his touch at once. And yet, instead of relief, his presence here hewed too close to her nightmares to bring any comfort. Why was he here now? Was he not supposed to be in London until tomorrow? She twisted and pushed at his chest.
He let go and raised his hands in a placating gesture.
"It's me, Vivi. I was only trying to help you off the floor. "
"I'm fine. Don't need help." She heard how absurd that was, even as she said it.
But he did not point it out. He was being his usual careful self while she acted like a lunatic. A lunatic. Oh God. Would he think she was not well in the head? What would he make of her running through darkened tunnels in the middle of the night?
"Are you hurt?" He extended his hand, careful, as if she were a skittish horse. "Your palms are scraped. You must have fallen down the steps. What were you doing down here in the dark?"
"It wasn't dark before. I brought a lamp.
" She waved at the shards of glass scattered in the puddle of oil.
He had placed his lamp in a niche carved into the stone.
"I was exploring the castle. I wanted to see the cellars, the only part I hadn't visited.
But then I heard footsteps, and I got spooked and ran.
That's when the flame went out. It's silly, I know," she added, knowing the story would not hold under scrutiny.
He frowned. Not fooled. But thankfully did not press. "You shouldn't have come down here alone, much less run in the dark. You could have been hurt."
He extended his hand again, and she backed away. Her foot slipped on the oil.
"Careful." He frowned, then moved toward her. "Let's go. I'll send a servant later to clean this up."
"You go ahead. I'll follow."
A line appeared between his brows. His dark eyes studied her.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"N-nothing. I'm shaken from the fall. That's all."
He shook his head. "That story doesn't make sense. If something troubles you, I need to know. How can I help if I don't know what's wrong?"
"Maybe you can't help me."
"I can try. Please let me try."
She looked at him. His face was set in the same forbidding lines that had frightened her when he burst into her life in Guernsey.
But she knew him better now. Knew he was patient and accommodating.
Tender, even. He could not be the monster of her nightmares.
Those had to have a different explanation.
Just as with her previous dreams, where she mixed people and locations.
But perhaps he was the one who held the key to this one. If she dared to tell him.
Monsters lost their power once dragged into the light. She drew a breath and plunged in.
"I've been having nightmares," she said.
He tilted his head. "Have you always had them, or is this more recent?"
Trust him to know what to ask. In their short reacquaintance, she had learned that her husband had a sharp mind.
"I've had them throughout the years. But they've become more frequent of late."
"Since I barged into your life." Not a question.
"More like since I came to this castle."
He frowned. "Is there something here that disturbs you?"
"It's just that being here… I don't know if these are memories or fabrications. Dreams are just a jumbled mess of different people and events that don't make sense. I can't tell them apart. But these images… they are disturbing. And recurrent."
"Tell me about those images." Kind but firm. He was not going to let this go.
She hesitated. How to tell this powerful, forbidding man who held her freedom in his hands that she was having nightmares of him as her torturer? But if he were the monster, would he not have forced her by now? He had made concessions he did not have to make. That had to mean something.
"The nightmares are about you."
Only his right eye flickered. She might have missed it if she had not been watching. But she was.
"What about me?" When she still dithered, he added, "I think I can explain them. But I need to know what you've seen."
"Promise me you won't be angry. I can't help what I dream. "
"Of course not, Vivi." As if he could not help himself, he took a step closer and held out his hand.
She looked at it. When she took it, he drew her to him until they stood toe to toe.
"I promise you are safe with me. Always.
Whatever your dreams hold, I would rather hurt myself than cause you a moment of distress. "
How could she resist him when he said things like that? She believed him. She took a breath and told him everything.
"I dream of being chased through stone corridors like these.
Then I'm in a dungeon, and there are shackles.
And…" She stopped, her cheeks warming. "I'm naked.
Someone ties me up and does unspeakable things to me.
For the longest time, the identity of my captor was a mystery. But today I saw his face… it's yours."
It came out in a rush, head bowed. Only at the end did she dare to peek at him.
H is heart kicked hard.
Of all the things she could have remembered, that it had been this…
This was what he had feared when he descended to the kitchen and saw the tunnel door standing open. He lifted her chin with one finger.
"Those are not dreams, but memories. You are remembering."
She pulled away.
"You mean those things happened? You did that to me?"
He had expected the horror. She was seeing only fragments without context; no wonder the images felt terrifying.
"Yes. But it's not what it seems. I wasn't harming you."
She looked at him as if he had gone mad.
"You had me tied in a dungeon. You had a whip in your hand. A whip you used on me. In the dream, your face is cruel. Like you are enjoying it. "
"I am enjoying it. But so are you. It's for both of us."
"How can I enjoy being tortured?"
"Stop using that word. Please." He ran a hand through his hair. "What you are dreaming about… I understand it must seem frightening out of context, without explanation. But it's not punishment. Or maybe a little, but it was part of a game." He exhaled. "A sexual game, Vivi."
Disbelief was plain on her face.
"Before the shipwreck," he continued, and each word required its own effort, "we had an intimate life that was… unconventional."
"Unconventional how?"
"The restraints, the ropes, the whips. They were part of how we were together. How we…" He stopped. Started again. Every version was wrong. Clinical, or crude, or not enough. "Sometimes couples play these games," he added, knowing it was inadequate. "It can be thrilling."
"For the person in command, perhaps. But how can the victim enjoy it?"
"You were not a victim. You were the submissive partner. There's a difference. And you enjoyed it as much as I did."
She waited.
"One partner surrenders control to the other," he explained. "Willingly. The surrender is not coercion; it is a gift. A form of trust." He had searched for the next word a hundred times and never found one that fit. "It becomes the deepest intimacy two people can share."
"You tied me up," she said. Flat. Not a question.
"Yes. With your consent. Always. Without exception."
"And the pursuit in the corridors? The hunt, the capture…"
The heat rose in his face. How to explain this to her when she had woken scared from these images for years?
She had believed these dreams were evidence of something terrible done to her.
He was about to tell her those nightmares were born from pleasure, but the distance between her experience and his explanation felt uncrossable.
He still tried .
"The anticipation was part of it. You would go ahead. I would follow. The pursuit, the not knowing when I would catch you — it heightened everything." He met her eyes. "You designed that particular game yourself."
Her eyes narrowed, but at least she was giving it consideration. Rearranging her beliefs.
"You're telling me," she said, "that my nightmares are not nightmares."
"What your mind has been showing you is not a record of suffering and abuse." He paused. "They are good memories. Memories of pleasure so vivid they have stayed in your mind when everything else vanished."
"Memories," she repeated.
"Yes. Of something we built together that was — " His voice caught. "It was the most honest part of our marriage. The place where neither of us had walls."
She stared at him with naked skepticism, and he could have laughed at the impossibility of explaining this. Of making her believe he had never hurt her.
"It's difficult to explain," he said.
"Then show me."
He stared. She could not mean —
She did. By God, she did. Her gaze was direct, her chin lifted in that way she did when she was afraid but determined.
Of all the things he thought she might say next, this was nowhere on the list. They had shared one kiss since her return. He was trying to woo her with tenderness. Their first time together since her return could not be a lesson in dominance and submission.
"I don't think that's wise. For someone without experience, it could be… overwhelming."
She raised an eyebrow. The gesture was so hers that he forgot, for a second, to breathe.
"You're saying you can't make me enjoy it? That it would scare me?"
"I'm saying that for you to enjoy it, there needs to be trust between us. Once, we had that. Now… how can you trust me, Vivienne? You don't remember me. Until a few minutes ago you thought I had mistreated you. "
"I want to trust you. Sometimes I do. But these nightmares frighten me. I think if you showed me what they mean, I could put them to rest. I could trust you more."
He closed his eyes. What she was asking…
he would be a liar to say his blood did not heat at the thought.
His cock thickened. But it was an enormous undertaking.
To show her pleasure without shocking her.
To command her without shattering her boundaries.
And to do it while he himself was barely holding together.
"Do you know what happens between a man and a woman?" It burst from him.
"I have a general idea, but nothing specific."
He let out a breath, feeling the weight of something that had been pressing on his chest for weeks lift. That meant she had not been intimate with Harrison.
His manner shifted. He straightened. Held out his hand.
"Come with me, then."
She looked from his hand to his eyes.
"I will take you to our playroom — not a dungeon — and give you a glimpse. Just a glimpse. You can stop it whenever you choose. I won't do anything you don't want, and if I do, one word makes it all stop. The word is Red ."
A few heartbeats passed before she placed her hand in his.
"Why can't I just say no or stop?"
He pulled her flush against him and put his mouth to her ear.
"Because resisting me is part of the game.
I will give you orders. Tie you. Restrain you.
Some of it might frighten you and excite you at once.
You might say no, might even fight me, when what you want is to be overpowered.
So we need another word. For when you mean it. "
"I see." She was breathing faster.
"Say Red and I stop. Immediately. Can you remember that?"
"Yes."
"What's the safe word?"
"Red. "
"Good. One more thing. Playing the submissive can feel liberating. You don't have to think, only feel. But you keep the ultimate power. You can stop me with a word."