Page 94 of The Danger of Desire
A footman knocked at the open door, and they both started.
“Is there anything else you need, milord?” the man asked. “Shall I bring more wine or food?”
Delia glanced at Warren, then said in a lowered voice, “I think we should continue this discussion in more private surroundings, don’t you?”
“Probably.” And once he had her alone in one of their bedchambers, he might be able to distract her from probing further by seducing her.
She turned to the footman with a smile. “No need for anything else, Thomas. Neither of us is very hungry, after all. I believe we’ll be retiring now.”
“Retiring?” Thomas squeaked, having never seen his master go to bed before dawn. Then he seemed to realize that his master had also never before had a pretty wife, and turned beet-red.
“Yes, retiring,” Warren said dryly. “At least for the moment. So that will be all this evening, Thomas. And you may tell my valet—and the maid who’s been helping her ladyship dress—that we won’t require their services any further tonight, either.”
“Very good, milord,” the footman mumbled as he hurried to remove the tray and flee the scene of his embarrassment.
Warren and Delia climbed the stairs in silence, both painfully aware of the fact that the walls had ears. Especiallyhiswalls. The lone servant who’d witnessed one of his hellish dreams had quit the next day, but Warren assumed that rumors swirled among the staff about why he avoided sleeping at home except during daylight hours.
Upstairs he opened the door to her bedchamber and ushered her inside, then shut it and took her in his arms before she could jump back into discussing his nightmares.
To his relief, she met his kiss with her usual enthusiasm. But that relief rapidly vanished when she pushed free of his arms and went over to the bed to pick up Flossie, who was dozing there.
“You’re not going to kiss me out of this, Warren,” she said, clutching the cat to her chest like a breastplate. “I want to know all about your dreams.”
“And if I don’t want to talk about them?”
She tipped up her chin. “Then I suppose I’ll have to glean what I can from quizzing your brother about what he remembers.”
Bloody persistent female. “Blackmail doesn’t become you, Delia,” he snapped.
“Evasion doesn’t becomeyou, my darling.”
The endearment caught him off guard. Made him realize that somewhere down deep, hewantedto tell her. To unburden himself to someone who might not recoil.
Though if she did, he wasn’t sure how he’d bear it.
“Fine.” He released a harsh breath. “But if I’d realized you were going to insist upon continuing this discussion, I wouldn’t have left the brandy behind.”
She gazed at him steadily. “Shall I call for some?”
A smile tugged at his lips, despite everything. “You’re supposed to be chiding me for drinking it, luv. Not offering to fetch me more.”
“You don’t play by the rules, either, so there’s no need for you to play the stoic lord in this. Not with me, anyway.” She settled herself on the bed, with Flossie in her arms. “So tell me about the nightmares. I take it that despite what your brother thinks, you’ve still been having them all these years?”
“Only when I go to bed in the evening, like a normal person.” He began to pace.
“When did they start?”
“The night after I was taken from the cellar. After I’d had two or three a week for months, Mother decided the best thing was to pack me off to school instead of having me tutored at home. She figured it would teach me to... buck up and be a man.”
“She just packed you off for someone else to take care of?” Delia said incredulously.
“Essentially, yes.” He’d never thought of it like that before, but he supposed that was one way of looking at it. “Actually, her solution turned out better than you’d think. At Eton, students generally sleep in a long chamber with dozens of others, unless one’s parents pay for one to have a private room and special privileges in some house in the village. Given my rank, I wouldn’t normally have been put in the long chamber.”
He gave a rueful shake of his head. “But thanks to Mother’s determination to teach us that we were like all our fellow creatures—godless heathens in need of redemption—I wasn’t afforded any special privileges or private rooms. And that worked to my advantage.”
“Because you weren’t alone at night.”
“Not only that, but I was surrounded by lads who rarely slept or who snored or who were always getting up to some trouble. Between the whispers and the pranks and the usual boyish nonsense, there was generally enough activity about me to keep the nightmares at bay. That was true at university, too.”
