Kasey Michaels - Lords of Scandal - The Beleaguered Lord Bourne / The Enterprising Lord Edward

Three hours later, still tossing and turning in her rumpled bed, Jennie heard Kit’s footsteps climb the stairs and halt outside her door. She held her breath for an eternity of time before his footsteps moved on down the hallway to his own door, then tried to ignore the sound of Kit’s voice as Leon helped the earl in his preparations before retiring. It wasn’t until the valet could be heard closing the door behind him on his way out that Jennie felt she could relax at last, and it wasn’t long until sleep overcame her.

“Denny!” a voice called urgently. “Denny, what happened? Hold on! I’m coming!” Jennie sat straight up in bed, eyes wide with fright, her heart pounding in her chest. Someone had called her name. “Denny! Oh no, Denny!” the masculine voice cried yet again, torment in every syllable.

It wasn’t her name that was being called, Jennie realized. It just sounded like it to her sleep-fuzzed mind. Her bare toes hit the floor as she involuntarily responded to the anguish in Kit’s voice—for she could tell it was her husband who was calling out, probably in the throes of a nightmare—and, being Jennie, she had no other thought but to go to him and comfort him, her dressing gown left behind forgotten on the chair.

Swinging open the connecting door between their chambers, the door that had remained firmly closed all the time they had resided in Berkeley Square, she stumbled through the dim light cast by the full moon out that night and made her way to the side of the large bed. Fumbling with the familiar implements, she at last lit the candle next to Kit’s bed, and her husband’s face came into view—a face ravaged with some pain that twisted his features and drove his clenched fists into the mattress on either side of his body.

She reached out her hands and shook his shoulders. “Kit. Kit!” she whispered loudly. “Kit, wake up. You’re having a nightmare.” But Kit was too far away to hear her, his mind locked in some hellish place her voice could not reach. Again, Jennie didn’t think; again, she acted. She crawled into the bed and put her arms around his thrashing body, pressing her cheek next to his, and began to croon softly, as one would to a distraught child.

“Denny!” Kit breathed, seeming to quiet a bit. “I knew I could find you. The cannon—where 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…”