Chapter Eleven
Later that night
Anne came awake with the sense that something was wrong. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but as the soft chime of the carriage-style clock at her bedside table proclaimed it half past eleven, she struggled into a sitting position and listened to the relative quiet with a frown.
What was it that had brought her out of a sound sleep?
Then a sound came again, and it was much like a stifled shout of either pain or horror, but it originated from Broderick’s bedchamber. Was he lost in a nightmare?
With a shiver, she moved back the bedclothes and swung her legs over the side of her bed.
Chill bumps raised on her skin, for the ambient temperature was quite cool.
The soles of her feet felt frozen on the wooden floor as she padded to the door and then exited her room.
Darkness and shadows played on the walls of the corridor while she slowly went toward her husband’s suite.
Pausing at his door, she listened as another shiver wracked her shoulders, for her nightdress was of a thin lawn and she’d neglected to slip on the matching wrapper.
As soon as a cry came again, she made up her mind.
After pressing the latch, she pushed the wooden panel open and entered his room.
Once she shut the door behind her, Anne made her way over the wooden floor to the four-poster bed where Broderick lay curled on his side with his back to her, alternately whimpering and talking in broken sentences while clearly lost in a nightmare.
“Broderick?” Her whisper sounded overly loud in the darkness.
“…I don’t want to do it…”
“Don’t want to do what?”
But he was still in the nightmare and not aware that she was in the room.
“…it’s the damned war. I have no choice.” His voice broke. “…kill or be killed…”
Oh, dear.
Knowing what it was like to need comfort but not have it, Anne climbed into the bed and then curled her body around his, plastering her front to his back with her arm wrapped around his chest. “Shh, Broderick. You are home and you are safe.” When he didn’t immediately calm, she tried again.
“No longer are you on the battlefields, or doing clandestine spy work for the Home Office. You are free and can do whatever you want with your life.”
Realization slammed into her. A tiny gasp escaped.
Dear God, had he and Alan both worked for the same people?
Did their superiors know they were in the same area but didn’t warn either of them?
Not that they could, possibly, if both were leading double lives and could have been in danger if their true identities were revealed.
Anger went through her chest all over again, except not at her husband, not any longer, but at the nodcocks in charge who’d played chess with real men’s lives as if they were naught but pawns.
With a start, Broderick woke. He froze in her hold. “Anne? What are you doing here?”
“I heard you cry out and thought you might need comforting or help out of the nightmare.” In the dark, where it was only the two of them, it was easy to believe there weren’t problems between them or a lack of trust. And besides, he slept in the nude, so the warmth of his body seeped into hers, and that naked form sent sharp awareness scurrying over her skin.
“Do you want to talk about what’s bothering you?
” As she spoke, Anne explored the various scars on his back, and there were many.
“I’m not sure. My mind is full of old ghosts circling about.”
“I understand that all too well.” She followed one of the scars over his skin with a fingertip. “How did you receive this wound?”
“Encouraged to talk with a hot poker the first time I was captured behind enemy lines.”
Dear heavens, how horrible. “And this one?” She caressed her fingertips over a scar shaped like a crescent moon.
“Stabbed by a saber during hand-to-hand combat.”
The next few minutes were full of questions and answers regarding his injuries, and he kept emotion from his voice, but she wondered if every one of those encounters still haunted him. When her fingers glided over a scar on his left side, his muscles went taut. “And this one?”
“I can’t…”
Was this one of the stories she’d been waiting for? “Is it from one of the ghosts you are trying to evade?”
“Yes.” The word sounded squeezed from a tight throat.
She waited, for if she gave him time, he might come ‘round and share.
When he did, the very first words of the tale chilled her blood.
“I met a woman five years or so ago. I was on a mission for the Crown. I’d been in France, immersing myself in the culture and the people of a small village while on the hunt for an English traitor.”
While he spoke, Anne constantly stroked her hand over his back and side then moved it up and down his chest.
“There was an immediate connection between us; she ran a boarding house where I had let a room.” For a long while, he remained quiet before he continued the story.
“I lived there for about two months before finally acting on those desires. Over the course of the next few months, I fell hard for her, fell in love, hoped to marry her.”
“Why didn’t you?” Though she hated to ask, Anne needed to hear the whole story.
“Because she was killed before I could ask for her hand.” Emotion graveled his voice.
“A contingent of French soldiers came into the village, demanded to be fed and have a place to sleep for the night. They were pricks even to their own people, but no one could refuse else there would be hell to pay.”
“I’ll wager you didn’t stand for that.”
“I didn’t, but for the love of Pauline, I held my tongue.”
“What happened?”
“A few of the French soldiers were tipped off that I was English and living in the area. I was brought forward and so was Pauline, for no other reason than she was with me. We were forced into the mud on the main street.” His voice broke again, and the sound went straight to her heart.
“Thrown to our knees. When I refused to tell them who I was or who I worked for, one of the men put a ball into her chest. Shot her like a dog.” The emotion in his tone turned into sobbing.
“Dear God. That is horrid.”
He nodded, turned his face into the pillow.
“When I still didn’t talk, I was stabbed with a bayonet, left to bleed in the dirt, for the rest of the village had fled.
” The sobs continued. “She was killed because she was in the middle of the war simply because she was French and only wanted to befriend everyone stuck there too. I held her on my lap as her blood drained away. Perhaps I died with her when she told me she loved me.”
Tears welled in Anne’s eyes from the story. It was heartbreaking, and he was clearly still haunted by it. “I’m so sorry, Broderick.” She tightened her hold on him. “No wonder you are the way you are and why you’ve hidden under the guise of being an unrepentant rogue.”
“It wasn’t an excuse to treat people the way I have… to treat you how I did.” The words were spoken in a whisper, muffled by the pillow.
“Perhaps not, but you have every right to be bitter and contrary and angry.” Not knowing what else to do, she pressed kisses to his back, his shoulders, his nape.
She caressed his skin because life was sometimes horrible, and everyone deserved to find understanding and perhaps a safe place to rest. God, she had certainly needed it years ago, but it was never provided.
“I’m sorry fate tried to take you a few times, but obviously you’re a fighter since you have survived.
Possibly due to your stubborn streak or the fact that you had no one to rely on from an early age.
” It made sense, for that was how she felt as well.
In that moment she perhaps found the common ground with him she’d been seeking.
“What is the point of surviving when everyone you’ve ever loved or counted on is gone or has forgotten about you?”
Again, she kissed his shoulder. “I’m here, Broderick, and I sure as hell will never forget you…
” For a few seconds, she rested her forehead against his back.
Daring much, Anne slipped her hand to his shaft.
It didn’t take much fondling for that appendage to arrive at a full salute. “And I’m not giving up on you either.”
After a moan, he asked, “What did I ever do good in my life that gave you to me?” His voice was so soft, she thought she might have imagined the words.
Before she could respond, he turned over then encouraged her onto her back.
Seconds later, his lips were on hers, and he kissed her so gently and tenderly that another wash of tears went into her eyes.
Once more he’d managed to surprise her. Was he even fully awake?
Yet the warmth of his body was both comforting and exciting, and all too intimate.
When his hand drifted down her side to the curve of her arse, she sucked in a soft breath.
“Broderick?” As she pushed gently at his chest, the faint hiss of snowflakes hitting the window glass sounded overly loud in the hush of the room.
“Are you certain…” Her words trailed off, for he’d nuzzled into the crook of her shoulder, and the sensations that zipped through her body were so delicious, she held her breath in the hopes he would continue.
Clearly, she hadn’t had enough carnal play with him since they’d married three days ago.
“Should we?” The reverberation of his tone had awareness of him multiplying.
“What are you doing?”
“Kissing you as an invitation to something else,” he replied in a low voice as if the answer was obvious.
“I thought you were lost in emotions.” The sensual glide of his lips along the side of her neck was quite pleasant, but if he wasn’t of sound mind…
“I was.” He dragged those lips down to follow the curve of her bodice. “But now I want to be lost in you, for you are oddly calming.”