Page 93 of The Captive
“You say I have nightmares too.”
He watched her, watched the nervous twitching of her fingers, and knew he was probing close to her wounds. “Your nightmares pass. I hold you, speak a few words, and you become quiet.”
“I don’t…” She regarded herself in the mirror, her expression wary as a thick blond braid came unraveled down her back. “I don’t talk in my sleep?”
“You do not.” Though if she did, it would clearly bother her tremendously. “But you know, Gilly, if you have some dire secret, I would keep it for you. If you put a period to old Greendale’s existence, the man would probably thank you himself were he able. From what I’ve gleaned, at the end, he wasn’t able to chew his food or tend to his bodily functions. An old codger like that would likely rather be dead than so helpless.”
He kept his eyes on her, watching for any sign he’d guessed a truth.
His Gilly, taking another life? He could not picture it, not even in kindness, not even if Greendale had ordered her to do it. She’d probably object to Christian exterminating even the likes of Girard.
The thought gave him pause—uncomfortable pause.
Gilly twitched a few more pins from her hair. “You wouldn’t be nervous to think I killed my husband? Wouldn’t retract your proposal lest you end up in the family plot? You’d endorse such violence despite all biblical admonitions to the contrary?”
“Gilly…” He shifted to stand behind her and put his hands on her shoulders, which revealed her to be as tense as a fiddle string. He spoke quietly near her ear.
“In France, I went a little mad, sometimes more than a little. I sustained myself on fantasies of the havoc I could wreak when I got free, the blood I would spill, the tortures I would devise for Girard and his corporals and lieutenants and superiors.”
“They wanted you driven mad.” She kissed his forearm where it lay along her collarbone. “They did not succeed.”
“Of course they did. I saw things that weren’t there, Gilly. I had no idea if I was dreaming or waking most days. I prayed to any god who might hear me.” He dropped his voice even more. “I tamed the mice so I wasn’t so alone in my cell. I pretended they brought me news. I named them. We had conversations, the mice and I. Sometimes when I was sure I was alone in the darkness, I whispered to them.”
He dropped his forehead to her nape, the nape he loved to stroke and kiss.
“You befriended the mice, so you forgive me the murder of my husband?”
“It isn’t for me to forgive or judge or anything,” he said, relieved she wasn’t questioning him about the mice. “It’s for me to protect you, cherish you, and keep your confidences.”
As she protected him, cherished him, and kept his confidences—kept his very heart.
She had no immediate reply, so he held her, his body bowed over hers, while common everyday English sunshine beamed in the windows and a pleasant summer breeze fluttered the lacy curtains.
“Find out who owns that château now,” she said, laying her cheek on his arm.
“In God’s name why?”
“So you can blow the damned thing up and erect a monument to old Wellie on the site, or to good King George,ortothemice.”
“And you wonder why I must make you my duchess.”
Sixteen
Gilly was losing ground to Christian daily, nightly. No matter how she picked fights, argued, resisted, and flounced off, Christian showed her tolerance she didn’t deserve. He’d learned this endless forbearance in France—from that dratted Girard fellow—when Gilly’s dithering should have turned him into a violent lunatic.
Thank a merciful deity, it had not. She could not have fallen in love with another man prone to violence.
Her courses arrived, and she was honestly grateful—though a failure to conceive gave her no cause for rejoicing. She’d hoped an indisposed female might be unattractive to Christian, but no. He brought her to his bed, the same as any other night.
“Put me down,” she said before he’d left her bedroom. “I am indisposed.”
“By ill humor? This is no impediment to what I have planned for you. For us.”
“Christian, no.”
He peered down at her, looking so dear, so bewildered and ducal at the same time, she took pity on him. “I am…enduring a feminine indisposition.”
“For pity’s sake…” He sat with her on her bed. “No wonder you’ve been such a shrew lately. Poor lamb.” He kissed her temple, and she wanted to smack him.
