The beleaguered Lord Bourne Page 8

  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…”

  “Oh, Kit, please stop—”

  “No!” he nearly shouted, staring at the ceiling. “I have to say it. I dragged myself over to where Denny’s mount lay, a bloody hole in his belly, and that’s when I saw him. When…when they found me I was still trying to put Denny back together.” He turned toward Jennie, his eyes burning fiercely as he tried to explain. “I tried, kitten, I really tried. But…but the pieces…the pieces didn’t fit.”

  Jennie could stand no more. “Stop it! Please, Kit, stop it!” she pleaded, sobbing as she hid her face in his neck while one bunched fist beat ineffectually against his chest. Kit grabbed at her hand and tried to calm her, suddenly cast into the role of comforter, but his words had taken the innocent child named Jennie and rudely catapulted her into the real world, where sometimes the handsome knights did not prevail.

  He rose up, pushing Jennie onto her back and catching her flailing arms above her head. “Jennie…kitten…hush, sweetheart. I’m sorry,” he crooned as her hurt whimpers slowly subsided.

  Did he know that her tears were for him? For him, and for Denny, and for all the soldiers who were still dying in that awful, awful war? “No, Kit,” she whispered huskily, “don’t be sorry. I didn’t mean to cry. It’s just that it’s all so awful…so cruel—”

  He looked down into her tear-bright eyes and confused, defeated expression, and his heart swelled with fierce, unfamiliar feelings for this caring, compassionate girl who cried for him. “Jennie…kitten…I…oh, God,” he groaned passionately as his mouth came down over hers.

  CHAPTER SIX

  NOTHING COULD BE this comfortable, this delightfully warm and soft. Jennie couldn’t suppress a small sigh as she snuggled more deeply into the cocoon of creature comfort provided by Kit’s embrace—although her sleep-befogged mind had yet to identify it as such. She was too intent on indulging herself in a few more moments of blissful sensuality, allowing the demands of her pleasure-seeking body to keep her mind uninformed as to its actual source. But nothing, not even such innocent bliss, can last forever, and at long last, Jennie began to surface from her slumber.

  Stretching out one small hand, she encountered a smooth expanse of warm flesh that she instantly recognized as Kit’s bare left shoulder. His entire body stiffened and her huge green eyes opened wide as the events of the previous night came rushing into her consciousness willy-nilly. “Oh, Lord!” she whispered almost under her breath. “What have I done?”

  Slowly, praying all the while, she tilted her head back until she could see her husband’s face. Her prayers were answered—he was still sound asleep. If her luck only held until she managed to disentangle herself from his slack hold, she could escape to her own chamber, hide her traitorous body beneath her covers, and try to pretend nothing had happened. Please, she silently entreated any kind spirits who might have been listening, just let me get away from here without waking him.

  Slowly, and with incredible stealth, she backed her body toward the side of the large bed and angled one foot toward the floor, which was maddeningly far away. Ducking her head, she slipped Kit’s right arm into position across his own chest and allowed her arms to trail behind her as her other foot hit the floor and she slid her body over the edge of the mattress. Another inch or two and she would be completely free of the bed. She held her breath as she slid closer and closer to the floor, releasing it in a long sigh only as her knees made contact with the rug. She’d made it! Now all she had to do was find her nightgown, wherever the dratted thing was, and steal across the room to the adjoining door. She gave a slight shiver—it was rather cold on the floor—and adjusted her plan. She could send Goldie to retrieve the nightgown later, even if it meant she’d have to listen to the maid’s sly jokes. She could not dare remaining in Kit’s chamber much longer, or else Leon might arrive to wake his master only to catch a glimpse of one hastily departing naked countess. Weighing her options in the twinkling of an eye, she chose Goldie as the lesser of two evils.

  Jennie swiveled on the balls of her feet and prepared to creep across the wide expanse of carpeting that lay between her and safety, and had in fact begun to take a small step when her head was enveloped in a cloud of sheer white silk. Her nightgown! Where had that come from?

  “Good morning, wife,” came a calm male voice. “Going somewhere? Surely you’ll wish your nightgown?”

  Jennie looked over her shoulder and upward to see Kit’s leering face looking down at her from the edge of the mattress. That he was actually there looking down at her was bad enough, but to know that she could see him almost as clear as day through the nightgown still covering her head was enough to send her into an immediate attack of hysterics.

  “Close your eyes, you lecher!” she yelped in a most unloverlike way. While Kit obligingly hid his eyes (though not his wide smile) behind his hand, Jennie struggled with the cursed nightgown, nearly ripping it as she fought her way through its folds to find the neck and arm openings hidden there.

  “All right, you beast, you may open your eyes now,” she said as she laid her hand on the doorknob in anticipation of showing him nothing more than her rapidly departing skirts.

  “Hey, kitten, wait a moment!” Kit called after her as she disappeared on the other side of the closed door. “You haven’t even given me my morning kiss. And after last night, too,” he ended on an exaggerated sigh of longing.

  Jennie’s head reappeared through the partially opened door just long enough for her to say a highly colorful, definitely improper word and disappear again, leaving Kit to howl in delight at her display of temper.

  Once safe in her own room and under the covers just as she had planned, Jennie bit down hard on the soft cushion of her thumb as she struggled with the memories that now crowded into her mind. Had she really allowed him to…encouraged him to…aided him in his desire to—oh, Lord above, she had! How could she ever hold her head up in his presence after her shameless behavior?

  But it had seemed so r
ight, felt so right at the time. She had been listening to his nightmare, comforting him. When had everything changed? How had she reverted from the comforter to the comforted, and when did the comforting turn into something deeper, something infinitely stronger than the mere wish to give each other ease? Somehow, without her knowledge, compassion had become passion, and that passion had led to…

  Well, her common sense intruded, never mind now just where it had led. She poked her head out from under the covers to check the time on the mantel clock, planning to calculate how soon Goldie would be barging in with her morning chocolate, and came nose to nose with a smirking Lord Bourne.

  “Up for air, are you?” he questioned cheekily before vaulting casually onto the mattress to lie at his ease on his side, one hand propping up his head as he gazed up at Jennie just as if he weren’t the most obnoxious, insufferable beast in creation. “You dashed off before I could claim a kiss from my dear bride. Tsk, tsk, how naughty you are, puss,” he said with a sad shake of his dark head. Reaching up, he snaked a hand around the back of her head, pulling her down to within an inch of his smiling mouth. “Pucker up now, sweetings, and give your husband his due.”

  “I’ll give you a punch in the chops,” Jennie retorted, wrenching her head from his grasp.

  Kit allowed his head to plop down onto the pillow. “Oh, woe is me,” he mourned in mock dejection, “the chit spurns me. And after all we were to each other. I believe I am cut to the quick.”

  How dare he! Jennie thought, incensed. He has taken what had been a beautiful—although, perhaps, in the clear light of hindsight, unfortunate—interlude and turned it into an object of fun. Does he spare my blushes, even a little? He does not. Has he so much as the slightest consideration of my finer feelings? He has not. Does he show the least bit of shame for having taken such elaborate liberties with my person? Far from it. So what does he do? He crashes in here and tries to make a May game out of me, that’s what he does! Her fury getting the better of her, Jennie grabbed hold of her pillow and swung it square at Kit’s head.

  “Hey, what’s all that about?” the laughing earl protested, grabbing the fluffy pillow and throwing it to the floor, where his prone body, having been the recipient of Jennie’s none too gentle shove, soon joined it.

  “Get out of my chamber!” she ordered, hanging over the edge of the bed, the better to shout at him—a tactical mistake that soon had her body joining his on the rug. “At the risk of understatement, Lord Bourne,” she intoned crushingly, once she had caught the breath her ignominious fall had knocked out of her, “I loathe you!”

  It had taken him a while—quite a good while, actually—but at last Kit realized that Jennie wasn’t just putting up a token show of anger. She really meant it—she hated the sight of him. How strange, thought the intelligent, but still rather young Earl of Bourne—so perhaps his confusion was excusable. How very strange. My recollections of last night are far from unpleasant. Surely she couldn’t be finding fault with my performance. After all, I know she has no way of comparing me to another, and even in the heat of the moment I can tell the difference between a cry of distress and a cry of passion. And that was passion last night, sure as check, he assured himself in self-defense.

  Perhaps if Kit had been older, had a few more years of exposure to the gentler sex under his belt, he would have realized that Jennie was too shy, too inexperienced, to find any pleasure in verbally rehashing the events of the previous evening. An older man might have handled the “morning after” with a good deal more finesse than had Kit. But Kit was not older or more experienced. And he had bungled his role of loving husband—bungled it badly—and now he would have to pay the piper.

  Or would he? As he fought to control Jennie’s flailing limbs without injuring her, Kit slowly began to get angry. What was the chit carrying on about, anyway? he reasoned with typical male logic. It wasn’t as if he had entered her chamber in the middle of the night dressed in next to nothing and hopped into her bed was it? No! And was it he who had cradled her in his arms and shed sweet tears for her? Again, no! And if he reacted in the same way any red-blooded male animal would react when put into the same circumstances, he’d be damned if he’d spend the rest of his life wearing sackcloth and ashes like some dreadful sinner. If there was blame to be placed in this whole business, then let it rest on the head that deserved it—Jennie’s!

  “Here now!” he exclaimed, grabbing Jennie by the shoulders and pressing her back against the carpet. “Fun’s fun and all that, kitten, but me thinks thou dost protest too much. After all, it was you who seduced me, y’know.”

  “Me! Seduce you!” Jennie screeched in disbelief, her body shocked into rigidity. “Well, if that isn’t above all things stupid. You ruin me, and then you have the gall—the absolute gall—to blame me for my own ruination?”

  “Ruination, is it?” Kit retorted acidly. “That’s a bit strong, don’t you think, Jennie? After all, we are married. Besides,” he ended, softening a little as his ego surfaced, “it wasn’t all that bad, was it?”

  “Oh!” Jennie exploded, rising to her feet to brush her tangled gold locks out of her eyes. “The conceit of the man!” Dramatically pointing toward the door, she pronounced regally, “Get out, my lord, or I shall tell you just how bad things could really become if I put my mind to it, sirrah!”

  Kit took in Jennie’s thunderous expression, mentally complimenting the accuracy of his memory when it was applied to his recollections of the sweet curves hardly concealed by her thin nightgown, and slowly got to his feet. “All right, puss, I’ll leave. But try as you might, my dear, last night did happen, and it happened because you came into my chamber, not through any fault of my own.”

  “I only entered your chamber because of your nightmare,” Jennie protested weakly, hating to see any logic in Kit’s statement.

  “Perhaps. And, if I have not mentioned it before, I do now thank you, kitten,” he said, sobering for a moment. “But you stayed to comfort me after I awoke, didn’t you?” he pointed out, driving his point home with a vengeance. “How dare you stand there and tell me I’m a cad just because I took what was offered me!”

  “Well,” Jennie returned, determined to brazen it out, “how dare you be angry with me for having the audacity to be angry with you!”

  That piece of feminine reasoning was beyond Kit, and he belatedly saw the wisdom in returning to his own chamber before things became so muddled that Jennie ran home to her father in a pet. He had enough on his plate without that! Left alone, Jennie might eventually see their unplanned lovemaking in a more charitable light, and him along with it. Not that he would pine away to nothingness if she never shared his bed again, but damn it all anyway, he had rather enjoyed her company, even if she hadn’t been the bride of his choice.

  Left alone once more, Jennie launched her body onto the bed and indulged herself in a cleansing bout of tears which settled absolutely nothing, but at least kept Goldie and Bundy from asking too many questions.

  HIS MASTER WAS in a fine temper this morning, Leon mused placidly as he deftly caught the spoiled cravat that went winging past his shoulder and handed his lordship a fresh one. That it had something to do with the young countess Leon was certain, but since Renfrew, that old stickler for propriety, had pulled him away from the door last night, Leon was left to ponder whether or not the rumpled state of the bed had anything to do with it. It was unusual for his old major to keep anything from him, Leon having served as his batman in Spain, but the servant instinctively knew that he was not soon to become privy to this latest secret.

  His toilette having suffered sadly for his haste, Kit left his valet to straighten the mess his dressing room had become and slammed out of his chamber, intent on quitting the mansion without breakfast and heading for the nearest club that saw nothing wrong with a purely liquid breakfast. Grabbing the stair rail, Kit swung himself onto the stairs and pelted toward the foyer, only to be stopped in his tracks by a reedy cockney voice exclaiming: “Coo, Del, w
ouldya clap yer glims on the fine gentry mort! Puss like a thundercloud ’e’s got. ’ang me fer a bachelor’s sprig iffen it ain’t the arl ’imself.”

  The object of this speech inclined his head and took in the sight of three banty-legged creatures dressed in Wilde livery standing at some semblance of attention near the wide front door. He knew what they were supposed to be, they were supposed to be footmen, but they looked for all the world to be escapees from Newgate—low toby men who made their living by picking pockets and breaking into people’s houses. Another example of my wife’s discerning judgment of character, he decided angrily. But these three cut-purses make Goliath and Tiny look like the cream of the crop! Forcing his feet to carry him closer, he stopped on the bottom step and introduced himself.

  “See, Del, Oi told ya it were ’im,” the first footman said to the man standing closest to him before turning to his employer. “Morning’, guv’nor,” he chirped, tugging at his nonexistent forelock with one grubby hand. “Oi be Bob, m’self, an’ this ’ere be Del an’ ’is little brother, Ben. We’s yer new footmen, like.”

  It had been a rough morning so far for the earl and he was not in any mood for this. What he was in the mood for was yelling, which he proceeded to do. “The bloody hell you are! You’ll damn well be out of my house before I get home,” he railed at them as Bob hastened to open the front door. “And without the family silver, or I’ll bloody well turn you over to the constable!” he added, sticking his head back in the door before taking himself off down the steps and bounding up behind his pair of blacks and giving them the office to start.

  “D’ya really think ’e’ll set the bus-napper on us?” Del asked Bob in a quavering voice.