Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Andrew had never been much for ballrooms and dancing.
Yes, he’d done a little—enough that he could guide Jessamine when she faltered—but they had never been the place he felt most comfortable. He was a man with one foot in polite company, and one foot out.
If he lost himself to the sound of the crowd, his mind replaced it with other sounds.
The hush of soldiers talking as they hid in trees and readied themselves to ambush French soldiers.
The burst of bullets, the screams of pain, and the desperate gasps his men made as they dragged their wounded back to safety.
He rarely gave in to the force of these memories, but they were always there.
Until Jessamine, at least part of him had despised London and its Society.
What did nobility know of true loss? They pretended at hating the French, all while having copied their fashions.
The Napoleonic War was distant enough for it to be gossip and not reality.
For them. Andrew had seen every muddy, bleeding particle of its reality.
Jessamine, beside him, had seen enough pain and sorrow and loss in her lifetime that he absolved her of the sins of her class. And the way she had thrown herself into caring for William showed that she cared for more things than mere appearances.
She cared about William. And she even cared about him.
The lingering sounds of battle faded. Warmth replaced it. He kept his eyes on her; if he looked away, he might lose the peace she cultivated within him.
She was looking past him, a glass of wine in her hand and her earrings swinging slightly as she scanned the room.
He couldn’t take his gaze away from the elegant lines of her neck.
None of the things he wanted would be appropriate here, or even appropriate back at home, where he had sworn to himself not to touch her for now.
More complication was not what they needed.
But it was very much what he wanted.
Her eyes widened, and she stiffened, one hand coming to his elbow to grip.
Some part of him felt vindicated at such clear evidence that she came to him for comfort, but the rest responded as he would to danger.
He stepped in front of her, his entire body tightening, and he looked up to find Baron Lorthey striding toward them.
He sucked in a breath. Every time he encountered Baron Lorthey---thankfully, an infrequent occurrence---he could not help thinking of Harry.
Harry Leighton, who had been fighting alongside the rest of them when he had taken five bullets to the chest and stomach.
There had been so much blood. Andrew’s stomach dropped to think of it, the blood.
How helpless he had been to keep that life inside Harry’s body, and how it had felt to see the eyes of his friend go dark and to know there was no venturing into that place to save him.
He exhaled sharply, and turned every iota of that emotion back on Baron Lorthey.
The man stopped in his tracks. Andrew saw his nostrils flare as he inhaled.
And then, slowly, the baron turned on his heels and strode away again.
Jessamine’s grip on his elbow. “How did you do that?”
“A little something I learned at war,” he said, and shook his head.
Even the mention of the war was too much. Jessamine knew a little of his wounds, especially those pertaining to Rebecca, but she didn’t—couldn’t—know everything. Especially the war. If he could keep her from that knowledge, he would.
Not everything had been training in small English towns, dancing and drinking and playing cards with the locals. Some of it had been terrible.
She frowned up at him, bringing her hand to cup his cheek. “Are you all right?”
“Fine.” He took her hand and, without thinking, kissed her fingers.
They curled a little in his grasp, and he realized what he had done. The intimacy of the act. This was not a mere greeting, but a demonstration of affection.
A public demonstration of affection.
And so he did the only thing he could under those circumstances. “Dance with me again.”
She didn’t take her eyes off his as she said, “Yes.”
They did not spend an overly long time at the ball. Andrew might have; Jessamine wasn’t sure, but as the hour grew later, so did her anxiety about William.
At first, it had been easy to shut all those feelings away, but it hadn’t been easy for a while. Now, she rubbed her eyes and gripped her skirts as she hurried through the house to William’s nursery. Andrew followed on her heels with a little more decorum.
Just as she reached the door, she slowed and rapped her knuckles very softly against the wood. A few seconds later, Lucy opened the door.
“Welcome back, Your Graces,” she whispered, putting a finger to her lips and closing the door behind her. “Master William is asleep.”
“Has he been all right?” she whispered.
“Calm as anything. I’ve had no troubles.”
Although that had been the reality for the past several nights, Jessamine still pressed a hand to her pounding heart.
If she spent too long away from him, she thought of Percy, and the fruitless, terrible thought that if she had just been able to hold onto him, he might have clung to life.
But she had relinquished him, and he had died.
She had held him, and he had died.
“I must see him,” she said. Andrew grazed her back with his fingers. “I will go to bed,” he said. “I trust William is doing well. I don’t want to risk waking him.”
Jessamine shook her head. If she woke him, she would soothe him back to sleep—what was exhaustion, anyway?—but she needed to see he was well.
And so, she opened the door, creeping into the darkened room. Sure enough, his breathing sounded quietly from his cradle, and Jessamine paused by the side of his bed, releasing a sigh of relief.
He was all right. Lucy had said so, and there could have been no way she would lie, but now Jessamine knew it to be true herself. She had verified the fact.
She exhaled slowly, pressing another hand to her chest. Why did her heart insist on beating so loudly whenever she was apart from him?
“Goodnight,” she breathed, seeing no need to disturb him, and crept quietly from the room.
That night, Jessamine dreamed she was sinking in a pool of blood. Every time she opened her eyes, blinking away the stickiness, a child was placed in her arms. Percy. Almost immediately, he started to choke, to stiffen and jerk, and hands took him from her.
“No!” Jessamine cried, reaching for him. “Bring him back!”
But nothing worked.
The final time, the baby placed in her arms was not Percy, but William. And as he lay sleeping peacefully, Jessamine sobbed above him, knowing what would happen and unable to stop it. She cradled him close and kissed his perfect head and begged the heavens to let her keep him.
She’d lost Percy, but at least let her keep William.
But then, just as she had whispered her final prayer to the gods, he jerked in her arms. Convulsed.
Spit bubbled in his mouth, and she tried to wipe it clean, tried to hold on to him, but those mysterious hands came anyway, dragging her son away from her, dragging her baby, and she could do nothing but listen and sob as his wheezing, uneven breaths stopped.
“Jessamine!”
The voice was desperate, almost ragged, and her eyelids fluttered open.
She stared into Andrew’s face. Light bloomed beside him. A candle. She was panting, her hair plastered to her head. His eyes, too, were wild, taking her in as though he feared she might have been dead.
“Jessamine,” he said again, a trifle calmer. His hand stroked over her hair in a reassuring gesture that made her heart clench. “It was just a nightmare.”
“A nightmare.” She sat bolt upright. “William. I must—”
“Jessamine.” Andrew held her against him, his strong arms wrapping around her, and in the sudden silence, she heard a baby cry. “He’s all right. Lucy is with him.”
Jessamine exhaled slowly. William was all right. It felt like it couldn’t be true, like everything in her dream was more real than this shadowy reality.
“I know,” he murmured, his heart pounding against her ear. “I get them too.”
“Nightmares where William dies?” she whispered.
“Nightmares,” he said, and the gravel in his voice convinced her.
Whatever he had nightmares about, it was probably just as terrible, just as traumatic. He was probably just as helpless to stop them.
But Jessamine wasn’t helpless.
She disentangled herself from him. “I must see him.”
“It’ll be like when we came home from the ball,” he said, cupping her face between his hands and staring at her seriously. “You will convince yourself he’s in danger or something is wrong, and he will be perfectly fine.”
She licked her lips. “But what if he’s not? What if I take my eyes off him and he’s not, Andrew? How am I supposed to live with myself, then?”
That seemed to have hit a nerve, because his hands loosened on her, and she was able to escape, sliding free of the bed and moving into William’s room in a daze.
Here, she would be here, and she would stay here, and it wouldn’t matter if William’s crying kept her up at night or if she had to spend every single day for the rest of her life here—
It would all be worth it so long as William was all right.